this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
1027 points (88.5% liked)
Fuck Cars
9821 readers
97 users here now
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
-
Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
-
No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.
-
Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.
-
No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.
-
No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.
-
No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.
-
No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.
Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Now do bicycles, horses, and dense human populations ;-)
I'm pretty sure even Horses beat cars by a mile on enviromental standards. They're needless though, we have invented the bicycle
Funny thing about horses - apparently when cities moved over to cars from horses they became safer. Because horses spook: and one spooked horse can spook the rest and you get a stampede.
Personally I'd rather be riding my horse from village to village over the hills - and I'm lucky enough to have had need to do that in real life. And I would prefer a city of bicycles to a city of cars. But my point (albeit meant casually) is that most of our solutions have downsides too, even the better-looking ones.
You seem cool enough / not carbrained that I'd like to suggest you to take a closer look at this. The perception of "horse -> car" as per transportation is pretty prevalent but it doesn't really hold up in the sense this fun fact is often touted, it's born out of a car based status quo applied backwards to horses mostly.
I'm happy to merit your insufficient-car-brains certification :-)
What quite do you mean? That horses weren't used in the same way or for the same demographic as cars are now? Sure, and you also don't refill them every 200 miles from the nearest highway hay-station. (Well, kind of...) But there were still horses clustered in many cities for a lot of the time, right? Where now there are cars? And as transport such as did use the one mainly transitioned to the other. I don't suppose there's hard, quantitative data on car-induced vs horse-induced deaths/injuries within cities at certain eras, but maybe someone has that data somewhere!
Actually, to go another step from your point: I suppose if cars, in their same number and usage, were traded for horses, then besides the epic problem of feeding them all, many cities would be far more dangerous now from the great horde of horses marching through every day!
I'll start off here: eh, maybe. Certainly a lot more full of massive amounts of poop everywhere, that was a common problem even with not every man, woman and child a horse, it's where we got sidewalks from - so you could walk in not-poop.
Yes, but nowhere near the same extent. Check out old city street pictures from the 1910 and 1920s. Sure, you'll see cars, they had been invented and hell, you still see horses, except pretty much all of them barring the ones with cops on it are pulling some thing or another. And also there's trams and also there's just a buttload of people walking - which is what most of them did.
The point I'm getting at is the notion that we basically just replaced horses with cars, for the most part, but that's ahistorical. We've replaced horses and trams and walking and cycling - all of which were done a lot - with cars. People used and could use a variety of options, now, eh, not so much, they're not really viable for a lot of people.
But then that's not because cars are so inherently great for any and all transporation, it's just we've built cities to accomodate cars first, foremost and nigh exclusively, to the detriment of everything else. You wouldn't find me arguing to bring back the horses, but trams, cycling, walking? Absolutely.
Because we have pretty much gained nothing from cars. People still have roughly the same commute as before - they just live further away and travel the same time, except now the societal cost of doing that is 10x the price per trip. People have a time budget for travel, not a distance budget, and that's stayed pretty much the same.
Fair point
I don't think that's true, though. Cars bring a lot of utility; even the opportunity to live further from the workplace is not 'no benefit'. After all, bicycles were hailed as the liberators of women, for much the same reason: ordinary women could have the freedom to travel further. I think what's happened is that every gain is an opportunity for benefit; but also an opportunity for the greedy and powerful (not to mention lazy, deceitful, foolish, or any combination of the above) to take advantage of other people (and themselves) through. So (for example) cars bring the opportunity to work further from your house; and now many people are forced into living further from their work because employers/infrastructure expect it to be possible. Cars make it much easier to visit far-away relatives for festivals; now Americans must line up every year on Reddit to moan about Thanksgiving politics.
I will agree with you it'd be better if we restructured most transport away from cars and that we have - in principle - the options for a good solution (trams, bicycles, better-arranged-cities, etc). Still, what would the American dream be, without driving to your gym every week so you can run on the treadmill for half an hour ;-p
Horses don’t need paved roads the way road bikes do. I’m not sure on the return on not having roads when you factor in shit everywhere, though.
bikes don't cause as much tire dust because they are less heavy
oh yeah? you think a better world would be better? heh
Horses - shit everywhere you look
I'm certain dense human populations are better for the environment than non-dense human populations, because dense human populations need to be moved around less.
You're basically advocating for human extinction in this comment.
I'm so glad someone finally understands me