Those who depend on cars would benefit too when they are the only ones in cars
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Fuck Cars
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Say this to anybody who will listen, please! I've been using it on my car guy friends, and they're receiving it loud and clear. They love the idea of having the roads all to themselves, many of the actual enthusiast types do anyways.
This is basically how I like to put it:
A good observation from previous threads: "Whenever utility cycling is discussed on the internet, suddenly everyone has to move their fridge 100 miles in the rain"
Suddenly, all the north Canadians who live with snow storms 24/7 appear to comment how all the world infrastructure has to adapt to their specific needs.
What's ironic is my city, Montreal, is arguably the biggest cycling city in North America. Even in winter the bike lanes are filled with cyclists. Why? Turns out that all you need is good-quality bike infrastructure that you actually maintain in the winter and people will happily bike year-round.
It's amazing how people think skiing is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, yet think biking in the cold is somehow impossible.
Skis are optimized to move efficiently on top of snow, while bicycle wheels are not.
This is one of the big reasons why good plowing is a key feature required for winter cycling in snowy climates. My city has been doing alright in this regard, and I've been able to continue cycling for some of my trips. Transit is so good here though that I use that over cycling while the weather is really bad.
Thats terrible argument. Find a better one if you want to help move people from thinking they need a car.
Making bad arguments for good causes does more harm than saying nothing at all.
Yeah, it depends on the context. Is the thread saying "we need to build out far more cycling infrastructure"? If so, no argument.
Or is the thread one of the naiive ones trying to argue about how we can completely eliminate cars? Then people start bringing up the edge cases that still require cars.
Or is the thread one of the naiive ones trying to argue about how we can completely eliminate cars?
You say that as if those threads are actually a common thing, and not just a strawman accusation from the fevered dreams of car-brains.
I mean, y’all literally call the place “fuck cars.” You call anyone that disagrees with you a “car-brain.” Not a lot of nuance.
As someone scrolling by from all, I’m actually surprised to see any acknowledgement that some people may need to rely on private automobiles.
Maybe y’all need to work on your messaging.
Go into a thread on autonomous cars and all you'll hear is about how they're useless and we don't need them because we'll just eliminate all cars before they're ready.
I have literally never seen that argument made.
Usually, what I see in those threads are a whole bunch of people arguing that autonomous cars would be some kind of silver-bullet panacea for traffic.
Frankly, what you wrote sounds like a strawman misinterpretation of an argument I myself make: I argue that autonomous cars are not a solution, but not "because we’ll just eliminate all cars before they’re ready." They're not a solution simply because they're still cars, and therefore take up the same grossly excessive amount of space as non-autonomous cars do.
They’re not a solution simply because they’re still cars, and therefore take up the same grossly excessive amount of space as non-autonomous cars do.
Yeah, the only things autonomous cars might reduce are:
- Parking, but only if we forego our current private ownership model and everyone starts doing self-driving robo-taxis everywhere (unlikely)
- Road fatalities, but only if the self-driving tech proves statistically better than human drivers in a wide range of conditions (jury is still out)
It's the same fundamental problem that electric cars have: geometry. Cars -- even if electric and self-driving -- are simply grossly inefficient at moving people for the amount of land they require:
Except that the jury is not "still out" on number two, it is simply a matter of time, engineering, and training before they are statistically safer than humans.
Waymo's cars are already safer than humans in their limited conditions.
As someone who doesn’t have a license or a car, but does bike a lot - there will be solutions.
I order my groceries delivered. When I needed to get my old bed recycled, I asked the second hand store and they came and picked it up. They weren’t interested in the broken mattress for it (obviously), so I contacted a moving company and they had it recycled for $40.
Now I get that that cost might be hard to swallow for some, but keep in mind that I don’t pay for my car, its insurance, the fuel, or maintenance, and it took less than five minutes for me to be done with the entire thing. All I had to do was open my front door and two burly men came and picked it up for me. I didn’t even have to wait at the recycling station.
Those $40 paid for themselves.
It’s also worth noting that I do live in the frozen north (not Canada, further north), where we don’t see the sun for half the year. I see people biking year round.
The psychology behind prices surrounding cars is outright evil. You don't even notice how much you spend on them because everything is auto-deducted from your accounts (insurance, registration, etc.), gas is death by a thousand cuts, and repairs are seen as a necessity because it's your transportation.
I'm well aware I'm saving money by not having a car. However, spending $40 on bike maintenance every few months feels so much more expensive than $400 on a car, even though the bike is my transportation.
My sister can't move her feet at the ankle. She'll never drive unless we can afford a custom 50k car. She has a 3,000 dollar mobility scooter. We had to spend about a month mapping the city to figure out WHERE THE FUCK SHE COULD GET ON AND OFF THE SIDEWALK.
Edit: Let me elaborate further:
It was so bad, that if we didn't think ahead, we would have to go back a half a mile. I'm not joking. You ever seen those roads between neighborhoods with no turn offs? Better make sure that side walk ends with a ramp, otherwise, you have to go ALL the way back. You also can't lift the scooter, it's over 100lb. If you're reading this, please petition your town to add more ramps to the sidewalk.
My sister has to have every bone from her pelvis to her ankle broken, REGULARLY. They have to cut all of her muscles, stretch them, reconnect them, and then inject them with botox. They then set them in a cast. This is just so she can properly grow, due to cerebral paulsy. And then, just to rub dirt in the wound, we can't even use the sidewalk properly. We're surrounded by beautiful nature and trails. She doesn't get to experience that. Please petition your towns to add more ramps to the sidewalk. I'll get off my soap box.