Fuck Cars
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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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@HiddenLayer555 This is a messed up era. When I was a kid from kindergarten and up I walked to school alone. It wasn't a super long distance, about six blocks each way but it was unsupervised, and that was the norm back then. What has happened that it has become so dangerous that kids need to be bussed to school even if they're three blocks from the school?
Car-centric society has made it damn near impossible to walk.
Those six blocks you used to walk have all had their lanes widened into stroads, one converted into a thoroughfare, and no attention was given to pedestrian infrastructure so crosswalks, sidewalks or bike paths are almost non-existent unless you're within 2 blocks of the school.
We have literally built most of our cities, or redesigned older cities that used to be pedestrian friendly and walkable, into a wasteland of asphalt and concrete designed exclusively for personal vehicles.
@Crankenstein Obviously you don't live in Shoreline where we spend millions on unused bike lanes where the roads narrow and potted.
If people aren't using the bike lanes it's usually because they're shit bike lanes.
@ebolapie They are at least six feet wide made from concrete that is porous so water doesn't accumulate on top.
That sounds expensive. How many roads have such bike lanes? Hypothetically, if you wanted to replace a trip to the grocery store, how useful would they be?
@ebolapie They aren't. It's hard carrying six bags of groceries on a bicycle and not going to waste time and energy going daily. Hypothetically it would get me within half a mile of a grocery store I don't like, the one I do like is seven miles away.
Given the right bicycle it's pretty easy, but that's beside the point. The question is why don't people use bike lanes that seem pretty nice on the surface of it, right? There has to be a reason other than "bikes suck and nobody wants to ride them," because in some places people go everywhere on bicycles and they love it.
So what, really, is the main difference between those places and your town, if it's not the quality of the bike lanes?
@ebolapie I suspect the weather has a lot to do with it. Kind of sucks biking in a down pour.
I dunno. It rains in Portland too but every time I'm there I see loads of people on bikes.
@ebolapie People in Portland are special.
Cool story bud
A vicious cycle happened. 24 hour news reports every child abduction basically in the country, making parents feel that they're more common than they are. Kids freedom starts getting restricted. There's less kids outside, so parents are less comfortable letting their own kids out, and kids have less incentive to go out. At the same time, the number of indoor entertainment options explodes. As they stop being seen outside, the world adjusts to life without them.... Less crosswalks, less bikeable areas, less parks. With so few kids being outside the house, the parents who still encourage their kids to play outside or go do things become the minority and law enforcement fucks with them accordingly, as in this story, making parents even more reluctant to let their kids out of their sight.
There's some resistance to this. Free Range Kids comes to mind. People see the problem and want to do something. But as you can see even in this thread, people have so accepted "kids should stay inside supervised at all times" as the norm that it's an uphill battle.
@psivchaz I suspect this has something to do with the obesity epidemic.
Have you been to an American school recently? The elementary next to my house could be confused for a prison at first glance. It hasn't gotten bad, if anything it's actually safer than when we went to school. They have promoted a society of individuals ruled by fear.
Our most recent school levy addressed basically nothing but turning the schools into jails by wanting to hire a bunch of cops, install metal detectors and a bunch of other “security measures” and this is a rural small district, we have zero need for that stuff, why not propose paying teachers better, buying updated textbooks or funding after school care, something but I’m not and never will vote to turn our schools into prisons
There is a pervasive ideal in this country that has been a core part of it since the Pilgrims landed: Puritanical Ethics of "punishment is Divine, to suffer is to be Holy"
Something is wrong? Punish the wrongness until it becomes righteous. If it doesn't work then punish harder.
It's how this country has always solved its problems. Label the other as wicked then beat them into submission.
Gun violence is the #1 cause of child mortality in the US.
In the home, mostly, yep. Outside the home is statistically safer now than almost any other time. Overall crime is down to historic lows.
Ironically, at this point, and for the last 30 years in the US, owning a gun makes you more susceptible to gun violence. That may be changing, but I seriously doubt it since the cops are now public enemy #1, and have been since the mid '90s.
Oh and before you try to defend the thugs with badges, they were declaring war on the public all throughout the '80s and '90s, by using yellow journalism and Hollywood to manufacture a "war on cops," because people were rightfully questioning qualified immunity. It didn't exist until Harlow V Fitzgerald in 1982. It shouldn't exist at all according to the law as written and recorded in The Congressional Record.
US cops have always been nothing more than glorified slave hunters. It seems that nothing changes in that criminal organization. The DOJ is still reporting that cops commit far more crime than all of the arraigned, but not convicted, potential criminals in the US.
Are you saying you think the idea of having all important services within 15 minutes is tyranny?
I was confused because it's such a bad take... That's not what 15 minute cities are about. That's just the dumb conspiracy theories.
your intent is NOT clear.
restricted in your ability to travel is totally normal and not tyranny. Drivers licences are smart, Pilot license make sense, dang are speed limits tyranny?
15 minutes cities is just a concept that all or most of the typically important services citizens need to survive and thrive should be within a 15 minutes of where they live without REQUIRING a car. Modern car dependent culture is the tyranny if anything, and 15 minute cities idea is a response to that
@nanook @aeischeid No one capable of basic logic thinks 15 minute cities have anything to do with restricting travel. Either you're being disingenuous, or you're sorely lacking in the logic you think you possess.
I have literally never seen the idea of a 15 minute city being restrictive anywhere other than the ravings of Alex Jones tier wingnuts. Everybody who actually pushes the concept just thinks you should have a grocery store, a doctor's office, a library etc. near your house.
Edit: and don't get it twisted, nobody is saying you should be forced to relocate either, it's a guideline for urban planning.
Has anyone ever actually said, "I think we should have all services within a zone of 15-minute travel, and we should restrict people from leaving their zone, and this is called 15 Minute Cities and I support that idea"?
"Having services readily available" is the entire idea. "You're not allowed to go to another area" is nonsense that someone else tacked on to the concept to make people hate it.
I looked this up and found this information about it:
First, the article says it was separate. Nobody said, "We are blocking everybody's access to this road because the goal of 15-Minute City is to restrict people and forbid them from leaving their zone."
Second, it was just traffic-calming. They put up some planters blocking roads to vehicles to encourage access by bike, pedestrians, etc. That's not restricting access, that is INCREASING access. By bikes.
They decided that a different, busier road was more appropriate for cars. How on earth does that equate to restricting access? So your car had to drive further, using a big busy road instead of a local quiet street - boo-hoo! This, to you, was a sign that the government wants to confine you to a 15 minute area and never let you leave?
Are the following measures, to you, a sign of nefarious "restricting access"?
All of those technically "restrict access" by your seeming definition. Well, at least by vehicle. Is it your assertion that private vehicles reign supreme, and if the government does anything to slow down, discourage, or increase the cost of vehicle travel, it means their future goal is to create walled mini-cities that folks can't leave?
Edit: also, you say that people threatened to hang the city council to get them to renege - are you proud of this? Your "side" is threatening to murder people if they don't govern the way they want, and that's just "being vigilant"? To prevent planters from being placed on a street? What the hell?
I don't see it as a cage at all.
I know my comment was long, but you haven't answered:
If you want to believe in a conspiracy, why not look at the ways in which the auto industry has suppressed other modes of transport, from inventing the term "jaywalking" to suppressing electric trams to building giant highways through poor neighbourhoods?
@sthetic Answer 1) Because I think the latter is their goal, and offering convenience is just a way to try to achieve it.
Thanks for answering.
"I don't have any evidence, I just think so, and I'm old" is enough for me to understand your mentality.
Same. I vaguely remember some shooting happening my Jr. Year of HS. I wanna say Bowling Green or Paducah, KY. This was before Columbine. Columbine was my Freshman year at Transylvania University.