I agree it seems a strange choice of words.

Japanese monks and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years. They accidentally In doing so they built the world’s longest climate dataset

Something like that seems more straightforward.

I’ve been living in Melbourne for ~10 years and don’t own a car. The public transport and bike infrastructure around where I live is pretty good.

If I need to move house or something like that there’s a car share service that has vans you can hire by the hour.

Interestingly the State Government here has made all public transport free for the month of April. They only announced it late last week. LINK.

I don’t think it’s “regardless” at all.