this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Fuck Cars

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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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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

Because people want a means to travel independently, as in they are in control and not riding with strangers.

/s

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That is a luxury that should be severely limited. I hate screaming children on flights, but I don't want us to all start chartering private jets, even if somehow becomes affordable.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

The U.S. needs to grow up and get off of its post-9/11 authoritarian kick. Then plane and airport design and system setup can go back to being about the convenience of the flyer and not the obscene hellhole it is now that is driving people away from supporting public transit.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

[Citation needed] on the 100000x easier part, but nice meme.

Electric cars seem like a stopgap more than anything to me.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I found a source. I hope that helps.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (24 children)

I am all for more public transportation in this country, but it wouldn't help me personally. I live outside of city limits- the closest bus line is two miles away. My work is even further outside city limits, a 10-minute drive south of me down a four-lane highway, past farm fields and into an industrial park.

There's just no way public transportation is going to help me there. And even if I didn't have to do it down a highway, there's no way I'm riding a bike there in the middle of winter.

So do please make public transport more available and expansive. Just know that it still won't be a universal solution. Individual transport is needed by some of us.

I plan to get an electric (not a Tesla) for my next car. I currently drive a hybrid.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Well that's a topic that intrigued me recently.

Here in France there was already some debates about how worth it was, mostly because it takes a few years to compensate the cost of production of the battery. But in France we think of the electricity as basically carbon-free (our energetic mix is something like 70% nuclear, 7% gas+coal, then "clean" energy)

However, in the world I think something like 70% of electricity production is fossil (with ~40% of coal), I don't get how electric cars are even a thing, say in the US?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

One power station is easier to replace than 1 million cars but takes a fair bit longer. So you swap the cars over right now. You also immediately stop local production of co2 as well as other noxious gases, stop the transportation of fuel and the fuel that THAT burns and you make people more energy conscious not just about the vehicle but their total usage.

Fossil Fuels in a power station are more efficient than a car ever will be. In addition Petrol and diesel vehicles are dirty from day one until they are scrapped. EVs pay off their debt ( in the EU I believe it's less than 20k miles and falling) and then are as close as you can make to neutral but not ride a bike everywhere. As the grid gets cleaner you immediately benefit also.

Many people hate cars and in America you lot have been very lazy about public transport so you lot are way, way behind on a lot of the mass transit stuff sadly. This means EVs are the future. Are they the end point? Probably not. But they're the best we can do right now and this infighting over them is stupid.

We all should be behind anything that moves us to being fully electric as quick as possible, making the transition to public transport if we can but EVs if not. Fire your ire at the coal rollers and V8 5.0 wastes of energy, not the EVs.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Because they give people a lot more freedom than trains


if you own a car. If you don't own a car but live in a society where everybody else has one you are kinda screwed.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I know it is not necessarily your opinion, but cars don't give freedom to people - even if you own one. You pay so much for your car, the society pays a lot for the infrastructure, this infrastructure takes away the freedom from people (especially children) to live and move outside, when you drive you can (should) do nothing else, it's reputation as individual way of transport blocks expansion of public transit, ... every aspect of a car is taking freedom away from you. A car that gives people freedom is a marketing strategy and the opposite is true.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Batteries used gives you150 ebikes for every e-car

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

B-but think of the iNdIvIdUaL!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (12 children)

People here are saying a lot that cars are convenient because there's more roads... like... let public transport run on those roads? People seem to literally be unable to realize that things are the way they are now solely because you refuse to believe they can be in any other way and don't solve problems because "it's not practical". Short termed thinking runs too much

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

there's more roads

Which, by the way, would not be there like without a government making it so. And if those governments went "nah" to the idea of a stroad and any highway expansion beyond 6 lanes, and threw it all into railways in the '70s, the USA may have had a bullet train network today that'd make Germany jealous.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (16 children)

Because places like America are so spread out (by design) that rail networks, especially in the Great Plains and Southwest, are viewed as impractical unless all of their population moved to cities or towns in close proximity to rail lines, and Americans tend to take up a large chunk of the bandwidth.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You'd think. But the truth is throughout the West and Midwest, almost every town has or has had a rail line.

So what's gone wrong? Pretty much the same thing that's gone wrong with America in general, big corporations realized shipping to big cities is way more profitable than carrying passengers from small towns. Particularly because most people prefer a car over the train.

We have a ton of dead rail lines just waiting to be revitalized.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Public transit good, but in america public transit is not well funded and only really available in big cities. I think sadly it will be years before americans can give up the independence of being able to have transportation direct from point a to point b. Consider that in rural areas it could be a 30 minute drive to get groceries with no transit options. As long as americans are going to drive cars, we can at least try to make them electric vs ICE.

I will continue to vote for public transit initiatives and if we had a bus or train system in my town I would use it. I have a fuel efficient ICE car but trying to buy electric as soon as I can afford to buy something that isn't a telsa pile of crap.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (7 children)

People associated "freedom to go anywhere" with cars but it's a disguised argument. For the most part it's about not traveling with others. To a degree it's also about status symbol but for the most part they want to be alone and dictate their own schedule. If they really cared about freedom to move wherever they would get offroad motorcycles and never need to pay for parking again.

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