A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
cute! I love informative comics like this.
people always jump to assuming creating an infrastructure that requires less reliance on cars means a flat out ban on cars when really we just desperately need more alternatives to being stuck on the car-only model. of course, rural areas and disabilities and such will mean that cars are sometimes necessary, but there's so much that a fully functional public transit system can do!!
One addition to this is also winter upkeep, which is very relevant in Finland.
People like to talk about "winter cycling", because it's somehow so much different from "every other season cycling". Mainly it comes down to winter upkeep; snow plowing and such. Then some people complain how nobody rides in the winter and they shouldn't use too much budget for it.
It would be fun to see people talk about "winter driving". How much we actually spend making driving possible during the winter.
Where I live in the US that’s in the millions, hundreds of millions even. Also, if that budget dries up then they don’t plow shit. They’ll usually get an emergency fund but it takes a few days, while it’s snowing…
It's not just spending money. In my city, we're poisoning the groundwater with road salt to support winter driving. One well near me has sodium levels in the water high enough that the water utility has issued a no-drink advisory for people with hypertension.
How does a theoretical case of not having insurance companies make a car non-driveable?
It is illegal to drive without auto insurance. Technically you could do it anyway but a single accident could cost you $70,000 or $80,000 easily. Most reasonable people don't want that kind of risk.
Try adding a zero or two to that estimate. If you end up killing people without insurance your life's over, with insurance if you weren't in the wrong you're mostly fine.
"Cars aren't a symbol of freedom. They are a symbol of dependence in places designed to be prisons without them."
Paraphrased from a book I read (sorry, it was 10+ years ago)
Ain't that true. As a car mechanic(in asia), i used to not think about it for a long time, but lately the cost of owning a car seems to bug me to no end. Often in busy day, someone will come in with a breakdown which might take a few hours to do because of the workload, and the reply i get from them is "can you do mine first? I'm in a hurry and i need the car, without it i can't get anywhere". Or someone came in with a badly maintained car, where they have to delay a lot of simple but crucial repair because they're short on money. Or ignore an oil leak while topping up oil constantly because they have no time to get it fixed, which sometimes cost even more in total.
I just paid nearly 1/4 of my monthly salary to fix my 20 years old car, and that's only for the part. Can't get a used car because i need the cash, can't get a new car because i don't wanna have more mortgage. It's crippling if you're poor. It's simply bullshit when people use the poor to justify car-centric development.
Can confirm.
My car has been "on loan" to my parents for a year. I'm lucky to live in an area with decent public trans, but my sense of freedom is definitely vastly diminished.
You have public trans? Can you just like rent them for a while or how does it work?
Owning or renting a home has the same requirements of dependency on multiple companies. Sure, in a city or large town or even some.small towns we could live without cars if we built the infrastructure.
But there will always be rural areas where cars make sense. Insurance would be a lot cheaper without all the city folk driving...
In Japan they have rail lines that seamlessly integrate with the metro system of large cities.
And even if cars for rural users is necessary, their driving experience will be much smoother if all the other people have good access to transit.
Owning or renting a home has the same requirements of dependency on multiple companies
Are you suggesting people go without homes? And that's analogous to going without a car?
Maybe you're really radical and want free public housing like people want free public transit, but that's far outside the overton window.
...i have slight beef with that.
We didn't make cars more complicated because "of the electronics" or "because we had to".
Car companies make cars more complicated because they make huge amounts of money from warranties, maintenance that you can't do yourself for some reason, and of course the leases.
Cars being as complicated and impossible to work on as they are today is because line must go up. Everything else is propaganda.
maintenance that you can’t do yourself for some reason
Also helps hide shoddy low quality parts.
The condensers on 2017-2021 Honda Civics are basically guaranteed to fail. There’s a warranty, but the only people who can open up the AC are the dealerships, who have been trained to find some speck of dust to justify denying the warranty.
It really fucking sucks - I’d love the option of being able to make some money on doordash, but the “reliable” Honda Civic I bought gets up to 100+ F with the air on full blast.
That's...effectively what they said. The added electronics make it infeasible for normal people to maintain their own vehicles. They never speculated on why the electronics were added.
The way you came at them makes it seem like they're provided a scapegoat when they didn't.
Edit: I regret stepping into an arena against a pedant with an axe to grind.
Sure wish I lived in a walkable city though 😢
With a car, you can fix it yourself if you are determined enough. However, if you're using public transport, the same arguments apply + now things are enirely out of your control. There's no way in hell the public transport company will let you tinker with their broken stuff. The insurance company can pull out of them at any time for any reason. The company can go bankrupt, etc.
i feel like independance and not having to rely on someone would work better as an argument for the car.
Consider a bicycle. Very low maintenance, simple to fix, no need for fuel, unlimited range. Complete independence, with the sole exception of winter maintenance of paths, but that's also a problem for cars and public transport.
bikes absolutely do not have unlimited range, at some point the human will die of exhaustion or starvation without food or dehydration without water. cars needs far less winter path clearing than all but the best fat tire bikes. cars suck in cities the majority of the earth is not a city.
cars needs far less winter path clearing than all but the best fat tire bikes
I drive a regular city bike, nothing fancy, just studded tires. I'm talking about Norway here, so studded tires are the norm in winter for almost any vehicle. I prefer biking especially in winter because of the amount of cars stuck on the roads. With the bike I'm flexible, I can drive around obstacles or impasses, worst case lift it over a ditch to make my way somewhere else. On an average day I'm at least twice as fast biking than I would be driving.
The range of the bicycle is constrained only by the rider. Assuming that the rider eats, drinks and sleeps (as most of us tend to do anyways for the sake of staying alive), the range is unlimited. You can't drive a car either if you starve to death.
I'm not disagreeing with you on the rest, I was just talking about dependencies, which the bicycle has the least (apart from walking or skiing for example).
Most public transit in Europe is government backed, they're not just going bankrupt or lose their insurence, and I don't know why I'd tinker with a broken bus, the company has people for that.
Exactly. Also, public transport is a system. Even if the vehicle you are currently traveling in breaks down, there's usually replacements and alternatives to get to the same destination.
In the past 25 years I've used public transport, I think the bus broke down once while I was aboard, and I think it ended up in the newspaper. I think it's a good thing public transport folks spend a lot of time maintaining the vehicles and especially on regular preventive maintenance.
I can barely fix my bicycle, so I don't want to tinker with the bus company's broken stuff. I trust that stuff to the certified mechanics they employ. Doubly so for trains, that's for some serious mechanics only.
No matter how determined I was to work on my car, it didn't matter. That shit sucks, is hard to do, especially if you don't have previous experience.
Also, cars today aren't roomy 1990's (or before) engines. They pack it so tight in there, with the need to specialized tools and knowledge.
Cars have become increasingly hard to work on oneself. Especially as computers and mechanical engines have been fused together.
I'd rather have my bike with a lane, or a sidewalk, lined with trees, than have stroads with rubber dust, smog, and noise, uninhabitable to pedestrians.
I grew up with great public transit, and having access to a bicycle, (NYC.) In my 20s I realized that attempting to own and maintain a car would be so expensive that I would not be able to save money for the future. I ride my bike everywhere. If I want to go somewhere more than 50 miles away, or where transit doesn't go, I rent a car. I rent a car maybe 2x a year tops. Depending on how long I'm renting the car I probably spend $400 a year on rentals + insurance. My last bike I had for 20 years. Cost me $1400 brand new, spread that cost out over 20 years, owning the bike cost me $70 a year. It was easy to repair myself, and the tools to repair it were inexpensive to purchase. Fuck cars indeed.
This doesn't make any sense. The only way to move around without depending on other companies is by walking, and there's no way that can replace cars, trains, buses, bicycles, etc.
Not depending on anyone else is not a sensible goal. We live in a society.
Isn't anyone else disturbed by the concept of independence being a problem for this person?
I'd like more public transportation in America, but I'm not really interested in anything else they have to say.
The concept of independence can be a problem because it tends to manifest in a "I'm a lone ranger that doesn't need anyone" mentality.
If you're someone who generally just wants to live alone off-grid in a cabin in the woods and interact with people once a year that's fine.
If you're massively dependent on your neighbors and international trade and are in a self-destructive anger spiral about it because the realities of living in society damage your sense of self-worth, which has been tied to the fiction that everyone is an island, it's an issue.
in what world is a roadside assistance company required? Friends with oversized vehicles can perform a similar function and actually get use out of their stupid truck.
Imagine having friend with oversized vehicles.
I just wanted to poke fun of how they chose to remove one of the two least needed parts of the pillar instead of parking, gas, or roads.
How do I get to and then around Michigan’s Upper Peninsula? I don’t want to go be in cities like at all? What’s the plan for that?
You use a car.
Do not mistake cars being appropriate for the 20% of population that's rural for them being appropriate for the 80% of population that's urban, 'cause they're not.
Also, people younger than the legal age for driving are unable to get around safely and independently if they live somewhere car-dependent. I know this from personal experience (although where I live car dependency is not the only problem of course)
