this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
1382 points (94.0% liked)

Fuck Cars

9379 readers
1805 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
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They don't understand the issue. Americans have been brainwashed for 80 years by the oil companies that car ownership is the epitome of freedom. Any policy that seeks to remove cars from the road is a policy that seeks to remove personal freedoms from their idiotic perspective.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Very astute observation! It makes a lot of sense to explain the rage at government policy changes, but I'm not sure that it entirely explains the rage at individuals just trying to exist on a bike on a street, even when we're not in anybody's way. There's definitely a feeling that drivers want everybody else to drive, and not driving is a personal affront.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, there are definitely huge psychological and ideological factors going on here. Consider these two studies, showing the dichotomy between how cyclists are perceived by drivers and how they actually are:

https://www.bicycling.com/news/a26977798/dehumanization-of-cyclists-boosts-aggressive-drivers/

https://jalopnik.com/study-finds-cyclists-are-better-people-than-drivers-1850964103

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world -1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I try to be ultra patient with cyclists, but a portion of them do indeed suck ass.

You can see them whenever you go for a stroll and almost get run over on the sidewalk, or at your nearest stoplight biking through the cross-walk like they're a pedestrian.

I understand personally that cycling infrastructure would solve most of this stuff (some people are just assholes and would remain assholes), but it's difficult enough for most people to see the things that are right in front of their faces already that I think asking them to imagine some future where cyclists aren't annoying is way too high a bar.