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:
cross-posted from: https://pawb.social/post/23351353
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.
"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)
Thank you for wording it so eloquently.
I learned quickly the car took away my freedom. I needed a car to get a job.
I was suddenly forced to have a job to pay an auto loan. By the time I paid the loan I needed a new car as the first broke down.
Then I needed my job to pay for the 2nd car. If I lived closer to the city with public transport I likely would have never gotten a car in the first place.
Cars are basically a life tax
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.
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.
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.
...i have slight beef with that.
But I cannot help but wonder if a line of simple, less advanced ICE cars promoted on their ease of maintenance wouldn’t get popular with, for example, rural folks. After all, being able to fix the beast yourself would lover your costs a lot
No car company will make a car which is maintainable by a common man because it affects their bottom line. We can dream of alternate concepts (open-source car design/metal 3D printing) but government regulations and lobbying will kill such concepts. We have to focus on the current scenario.
But if I wanted to hit the relatively nearby lake or beach, getting there by foot is another story
The majority of the anti-car people are not saying "destroy all cars. Nobody should have cars". We are just saying "please don't make our entire lives car-dependent. Please design cities/governments/social life in such a way so that it's accessible to non-car folks."
I also have a car, but I only use it for going to places which are not reachable by public transport. For traveling to work, I use public transport 5 days a week. Cars should be (IMO) a recreational mode of transport.
Author also forgot that these companies won’t fail, because these are not “one and only” of each in the world
I agree with you; they won't fail. However, they surely can make our lives hell if they want to. This is a power that I don't want them to have over me.
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.
But "electronics" don't mean "impossible to repair yourself". And to be clear, I'm not expecting someone to become a shade tree mechanic. Remember, "right to repair" also includes the ability to go to a 3rd party repair service.
But requiring your mechanic to buy $15k+ in licensing per year, making specialized (and proprietary) fasteners, taking months to get replacement parts to the mechanic, or not honoring warranty because you went out of network are not things that are intrinsic with an electronic system.
Cheap cars are more dangerous. Simpler cars have higher emissions. I think the more complex ones are better. I would like to see legislation against the anti repair methods manufacturers use
With cars less needed other transit methods get built for popular trips
Failing all that, hire a car the few times of year you want an out of town holiday would be cheaper even than a very cheap car
I envy you for your walkable city. I don't think I did better by getting a thousand square metre block and a detached house. I'd like to see our cities made walkable and the outer suburbs connected by rail so no one needs a car. I'd like to see cars banned from the city centre except working vehicles, taxis, disabled people, tourists with a hotel in town. For long trips off the transit network one would take a train to a car hire depot out of the city and drive from there. Hopefully cars will be sufficiently smart that the fact the drivers will have little practices will be mitigated
Sure wish I lived in a walkable city though 😢
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?
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!!
exactly - I saw a couple of bad faiths in the comments and I just thought like "c'mon guys, be serious."
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)
@callyral @grue don't forget disabled people. Cars are always touted as the solution for disability but there are *many* disabilities which completely remove driving as a possibility (blindness, epilepsy, many learning disabilities, many physical disabilities ... And generally being elderly, if we're honest) and car dependence leaves you entirely reliant on a chauffeur of some kind for any and every time you want to leave the house.