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Communities here are largely influenced and based on already existing communities on Reddit. I was subscribed to r/fuckcars there until I dropped reddit completely, but they have a pretty straightforward page explaining their beliefs and opinions about cars and replacing them with various different more efficient transportation methods.
Secondly… Your comment wasn’t hated, so I don’t know where those “angry car haters” come from.
No one actually thinks that you can replace cars entirely, but making more space FOR PEOPLE on the streets and making public transportation more comfortable and more affordable - is only a positive.
Lol, I hadn’t even noticed that. The pro-car people are uniformly rude and ignorant and all the anti-car people are offering polite corrections.
My faves are all the people going ‘How could I possibly run errands on foot/bike/public transport?’ I do that every day! How weak are these guys? Literally yesterday I ran a half marathon on the other side of the city then went for a meal out and used walking and public transport every step of the way… except for the 21k I did running.
These guys are weird as fuck. My dad is like that too. He’s also overweight by like 100kg and throws a hissy fit when there is a parking spot free that saves him 5 steps. I live very rural and while i have a car, i usually take my ebike to the next town or further. People can’t comprehend that i enjoy walking or biking.
It really depends on where you are though. Much like other public policy debates, a lot of this comes down to where someone lives. People that live in dense urban areas can very reasonably go without cars, and trains (specifically light rail) make a lot of sense. Once you get out of urban areas, suddenly trains don’t make any sense at all, and the ability to realistically take public transportation evaporates.
This is compounded by urban planning that doesn’t prioritize dense housing. Everyone says that we need more and better housing, but no one wants high rise apartments and condos in their neighborhood of single-family homes. That ends up leading to the kind of urban sprawl that makes public transportation impossible to work. Until zoning is taken out of local hands–so that wealthy communities can’t prevent high-density housing–you aren’t ever going to see this kind of thing change. (BTW - this is overwhelmingly happening in the US in communities that have a Democratic supermajority; that’s why housing is so expensive in California, because new housing isn’t being built.)
‘Cities should be better designed so that we don’t have to use cars’ is pretty much the manifesto of fuckCars and that’s exactly how most people have replied to this guy. It’s the pro-car people who are being rude and ignorant about the anti-car position.
‘Cities should be better designed so that we don’t have to use cars’
…Which I agree with. And it’s incredibly frustrating to me that, on the one hand, Republicans actively don’t give a shit about sprawl, and on the other hand, Democrats don’t want to ruin the charm and character of their lovely urban single-family neighborhoods with half acre plots of lawn in order to build dense housing that can make light rail economically viable. E.g., the people that should be on board with this shit talk a good game until it’s their own neighborhood.
I recognize my own hypocrisy here, because I moved to a rural area to get away from a city, and I am now finding that it isn’t rural enough because I can sometimes hear my closest neighbors. I just want to live in a shack like Ted… :(
Yeah, we have the same issues with NIMBYism here. Labour have moved to an increasingly YIMBY national policy, but in practice lots of local councillors are scared of losing their seats to NIMBY campaigners from other parties. This is why I hate the Green party!
so I don’t know where those “angry car haters” come from
Having read those comments… probably because OP already dismissed the legitimacy of the community and therefore interpreted all comments in the worst light. Any hint at even the smallest passion for the subject becomes “angry haters”.
Same as the other commenter who dismissed anyone wanting to go without cars as “paupers”, because they cannot imagine there being legitimate reasons to avoid cars.
Typical car brain. It’s really sad how so many people are completely incapable of even imagining alternatives to car centric design of living spaces.
It’s so wild how absolutely weak some people have gotten honestly. Maybe it’s being lazy, i don’t know. I was sitting on a table with friends and a couple talked about how they go on vacation in a sort of natural habitat or something. There are no cars, you park outside and then walk like 25min. And everyone talked about how insane that 25min walk is, and how it’s possible that they don’t offere rides or someone pick them up on a atv or something. Like the conversation went on for so long that i wasn’t sure if it was just a joke at some point. They googled the resort and looked for ways to maybe uber in or something. 25minute walk is what i do with my dog at night, every night.
I don’t think anyone seriously thinks you can actually get rid of cars entirely, but rather they’re annoyed that everything is built around the idea that you drive everywhere. This is damaging to the environment, human health, and probably even stifles community and culture.
Have a look in the communities. Reading the community explains the community. Their main problem is that most cities are built and often rebuilt to only work with cars and then people use that to claim that other systems doesn’t work.
Many folks see car culture as connected to other social problems, such as:
- Environmental degradation — pollution, climate change
- Suburban decay — neighborhoods with lots of parking but no public life
- Violent crime — road rage, throwing shit at bicyclists, coal rolling
- Long driving commutes — extending the work day for hours of unpaid labor
- Injury & death — driving & being around cars is the most dangerous thing most people do every day
Folks raising awareness about these issues, or just yelling about them, are probably not interested in having a debate right then.
Cars also make an economic barrier, poor people who can’t afford a car can’t get a job far away, limiting their choices and opportunities.
Even if they find a good job, companies prefer people with a car, so it’s very likeky that they’re rejected.
Also, the expense of a car can decimate their income. I don’t know how some people made ends meet when gas prices spiked during the pandemic.
It is mostly serious. There is plenty of scientific evidence on how car centric infrastructure, city planning and policies have destroyed walkable cities and require an in proportion extreme amount of space and accommodations. Cars as a means of transportation are wholly inefficient, you could put several dozen daily commuters into a single bus, multiple times that in a single subway train.
The only space where cars are not short term replaceable to great improvement of the general habitability of the area is in rural regions where distances are huge, people are spread out widely and communal infrastructure is simply too inflexible to accommodate the needs of the citizens.
It’s more of a “fuck car dependent infrastructure” thing. In America it’s basically impossible to live without a car in most places. We don’t need to live this way and we should have the option to walk, bike, bus, train, etc as well as drive.
Try walking to the grocery store in a suburb and you’ll quickly get sick of walking through big empty parking lots and along roads without sidewalks as cars whip past. I wouldn’t even try biking since drivers will run you off the road. If there even is a bus it’ll run every 2 hours and be 15 minutes late. And there is no train because we tore up the rail system that built this country to make auto company owners even richer
I’m living in Dublin and even here folks from mainland Europe complain about the lack of non-car related infrastructure, but friends of ours from Indiana absolutely loved being able to get around for the most part without a car. They repeatedly mentioned things like sidewalks just not existing in many places, which seems crazy to me, everywhere I’ve lived has at least been pedestrian friendly enough.
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When people say “fuck cars”, they usually mean “fuck car-centric infrastructure” (though some do really hate cars).
Having a diverse set of options focusing on walkability and public transportation doesn’t mean the elimination of cars. It just means that everyone isn’t forced to use a car to do just about anything. As a car-lover myself, I hate sitting on traffic. Makes the car I carefully chose to be just a glorified AC box. I hate sharing the road with 90 year old geriatrics, kids taking their parent’s car for a joyride, and bar-hopping drunk drivers. In a non-car centric neighborhood, they could all just walk/take public transpo to buy eggs, go to the arcade, or go home safely when they’re drunk.Trains and short range motor bikes or human powered bikes can definitely replace cars. The problem is the city needs to be designed for it. It can’t replace it in most places in the US because all infrastructure has been biased towards cars for more than 100 years. But if you imagine a city built from the ground up with trains and bikes in mind it is completely doable.
It’s going to take another century to undo the car centric society we have built in the US.
Yes.
I suppose what I’d ask you is: are you an expert in urban or transport infrastructure? Because, if not — and I say this in the politest way possible — the argument you made was probably a fairly basic one that people have heard a thousand times before. Your gloss of it here as ‘trains cannot replace cars’ suggests to me that you’re not really engaged with the issue (nobody thinks ‘trains can replace cars’).
Essentially what you did is the equivalent of me going into a Christian community and saying, ‘But if God exists, why is there evil in the world?’ as though no Christian had ever engaged with that idea, then acting surprised when people started rolling their eyes at me.
Or conversely, a Christian apologist coming to an atheist community and saying “if god isn’t real why do good things” as if declaring you are a poorly educated sociopath is a good way to challenge people’s well formed ideas.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to explain to some people why “woke leftists” are so quick to shut them up that they feel like they aren’t given a right to speak their minds. “Woke” ideas are generally more developed and complex than “common sense” ideas, which requires some thought being put into them while they evolve from basic to their current level, so when you challenge a person’s developed idea with a superficial, usually knee jerk level question or critique, you’re most likely engaging in a line of thinking they were done with quite early in their evolution of the idea you’re trying to challenge.
I think anyone who has a confirmed political ‘identity’ has almost by definition put more thought into politics generally and the position in particular than anyone who doesn’t have such an ‘identity’. I mean, I’m not conservative, but I imagine if I went to /r/Conservatives or whatever and posted ‘How come you don’t care about poor people?!?!?!?!?’ I’d get much the same eyerolling response as discussed above!
No they’re real. Some people are just extremely passionate about disliking cars, mostly due to environmental impact vs the greener alternatives although there are likely other reasons too.
Personally, sitting in a seat with plenty of room and casually watching videos, browsing kbin, or eating some food is a strictly superior experience to the constant vigilance of city traffic while not being allowed to move from my place.
Yes, they’re serious. The problem isn’t that some cars exist, it’s car dependency. Car infrastructure is inefficient, expensive and takes up enormous amounts of space. It’s also ugly and loud. Cities built around cars get very spread out, so walking, cycling or public transport become inefficient or unsafe options. As a result, you have to drive, whether you want to or not. If you want to go literally anywhere, you have to get into your car and deal with traffic. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Cities built around walkability, cycling and public transport are not only more efficient, but also much more pleasant, even for those who still want to or have to drive. Good alternatives to cars are the only way to really improve traffic. The idea isn’t to just get rid of all cars but to make it so you don’t need one.
If you want to learn more about good urban planning, check out the excellent YouTube channel Not Just Bikes to get much better explanations of these concepts. I especially recommend the series about Strong Towns as an introduction.
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With what I’ve seen of the US, I can see why many people over there would unironically hate cars. Car-centric planning has all but ruined the walkability of most US cities to the point of making it almost obligatory to own a car.
Come over to Europe and you’ll be able to see the difference that planning has had clear as day.
Yeah, US cities with their broad, flattened and completely empty plains of undisturbed asphalt always have a dystopian touch in my eyes.
Up until this moment, I was CERTAIN these were nsfw communities.
But yeah, fuck car centric infrastructures. People owning cars and driving cars… You can’t blame or hate the individuals who are just trying to survive. But you can absolutely hate how shitty the availability and maintenance of public transport often is (I hear it’s especially bad in the US?) and the car lobbying, which I hear is especially bad here in Germany. Profits are always prioritised, and the car industry is considered more profitable than providing good, affordable public transport.
