this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
212 points (83.8% liked)

Fuck Cars

9629 readers
816 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

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:

Recommended communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

At least in the US. Hopefully other countries do better.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] meowMix2525@lemm.ee 0 points 10 months ago

"safer" still isn't as safe as any system that can get people around without expecting 90% of those (driving-age) people to spend most of their travel time behind the steering wheel of 2 ton machinery at an average speed of 45mph/70kph, over roads that we paved over cities to build and kneecap future progress to maintain, bound by a necessarily authoritarian system to ensure any amount of safety in doing so.

In fact, the industry had to push a lot of propaganda and laws through anti-democratic methods to a) shift away all blame away from the people making and selling the cars and actively destroying all other means of transport, b) make roads as "safe" and convenient as they are despite still being hostile to all road users other than cars, for you to c) be here in a community literally called fuckcars talking like any number of road deaths is a normal and good thing, actually.

You can read about the propaganda and other methods used here in section 1.5 if you actually care to learn at all. Highly recommend reading the rest while you're at it too. Genuinely good and compelling read. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7325856/#s0030title

People got around before cars, they still get around without cars in many places, and fewer cars on the road means less traffic and fewer road deaths. Car-centric infrastructure is expensive to maintain, encourages blight, kills small business, and discourages community engagement. People and businesses and communities alike thrive when infrastructure prioritizes pedestrian transport. There needs to be more alternatives to driving, especially in high density areas; where people go out to eat, drink, and be merry; so nobody has to put themselves and others in danger just to get from a to b.