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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It's a very American perspective. By focusing on car design, he is missing out on the important issues.
Nothing in the video matters. If all the SUVs were instantly replaced by Igos, society would still have all the same problems, maybe 10 or 20% smaller. It wouldn't solve anything.
Focusing on the differences in car design is a distraction from the important changes, which are mostly about city planning. The need for cars (among other things) disappears once city planning is done properly.
The Not Just Bikes guy absolutely understands that the need for most cars disappears once city planning is done properly. The whole message, the very thesis of his entire YouTube channel is all about exactly this. His series on Strong Towns is a good example of this.
He knows what the important issues are. This is just one video where he demonstrates in detail that the detrimental design of SUVs in the US is just one part of the overall picture. That's why the video matters! The planning of cities is, among other things, tied to the willingness to accommodate huge, wasteful vehicles.
The sheer fact that he is calling out this trend -- his willingness to point fingers at the auto industry for manufacturing a nationwide desire (or a misguided "need") for bigger, heavier vehicles -- that's what makes it NOT an American perspective.
His other videos are much more forward-thinking, it's true. I have not seen the "strong towns" ones so I'll have a look later.
I look at this the other way. If cities were properly designed, people would no longer need SUVs. Right now they need them to feel safe, and it's okay for people to want to feel safe. If cities were developed a bit more soundly, people would no longer feel this need.
You don't need to push people out of SUVs by making cities more hostile to them. You just need to make cities less hostile to cycling and buses, and everyone who can will use them. Cities should accommodate everyone, including cyclists and SUV users, whereas right now the accommodate neither.
But I understand the other perspective too, that SUVs are more dangerous and therefore should be banned. But I don't find the video convincing at all, unless you were already convinced about that before watching.