this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
2312 points (96.2% liked)
Fuck Cars
9663 readers
71 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 Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don'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 topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do 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:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Regulate the market? What are you, some kind of communist?
Meanwhile, builds the largest highway network in the world, many even in cities; maintain shitload of free parking; also enforces minimum parking requirements, all at the expense of tax payer.
People without cars are literally forced to pay to make everyone's life worse.
FREEDOM!
Don't forget the Freedom™ zoning laws that make sure it's illegal for any American to build any filthy communist multi-family homes on their own private property! It's communist to grant private citizens freedom and property rights!
And even when they can build stuff on their PRIVATELY OWNED TERRAIN, they damn better follow the rules and make their house look EXACTLY EQUAL to every other house on the street. Now that's real red-blooded 'murican capitalism'n freedom, baby!
You know it's freedom when you're not allowed to express yourself or be unique in any way whatsoever! Creativity is communism! I ain't no special snowflake who needs to be unique and special like those dang woke libs commies!
When I found out about this after Climate Town's video on the subject, I was so furious!!!!
Doesn’t most of that come from taxes on fuel?
In some state, yes, if by "most" you mean "more than 50% of road expense is paid by toll and car related taxes".
But that is still a huge percentage not covered by tax for car users, requiring other foundings to cover them. The highest percentage paid by user tax and toll is not even 70% in all the U.S. states.
Not to mention many state dont even cover 50%; some only cover as low as 19% or even 12%.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-20/mapping-how-u-s-states-pay-for-roads
Well, we all benefit from the road system even if we ourselves don’t drive, so I guess it’s fair.
It depends, in a country where the road system makes sense, sure. In rural area where every road serves a purpose: connecting business to transport goods, sure.
But excessive roads in cities and suburbs? No. Many roads in city and suburbs of the U.S. should be closed for cars, and be bike, bus, and emergency vehicles only. Since cars either don't use them that much or just don't have good experience on them because of the congestions. This also saves road maintainance, enables a smoother experience in transport and emergency vehicles, controls emission, and encourage a health life style in general.
It is again about the right tools for the job. A loaded van to transport fruit to the local farmer's market, emergency vehicles, these are times where cars are the right tools. On the other hand, F150 is not the right tool to get a Mcdonald's drive through for one.
Ironically, trucks have gotten larger precisely because of regulation. In particular, emissions standards are tied to vehicle size. So if you make your vehicles bigger and bigger, you don't have to make them more efficient.
Also, regulation makes it difficult to import small Japanese kei trucks, and regulation is the biggest reason that the Ford F series truck is the single most popular model of vehicle in the US. In particular, we've taxed foreign-built trucks at 25% since the mid 60s, so there's dramatically fewer models of truck than SUV or cars.
this definitely goes on the short list of "most idiotic laws ever", courtesy of your local car industry lobbyist
Yet more evidence of how effective big government is when regulatory capture is a thing.
the difference between regulation and jokes passed off as regulations
And the Hilux isn't available in the US. I use one as my daily driver. Seats four, has a useable bed, hauls anything I throw at it, gets car MPGs, and is narrower than a Camry. It is as much pickup truck as pretty much anyone really needs.
The Hilux and the older Tacoma are basically the same truck with different trim packages.
This shit is the direct consequence of regulation, not lack of it!
I'm talking about both CAFE standards that encourage manufacturers to build big vehicles to fit in the "light truck" loophole, and (infinitely more importantly!) the zoning regulations that led to all the car dependency in the fucking first place!
The problem is that the regulations drop off in this one particular niche that requires/encourages larger vehicles, not that the regulations exist in the first place.
What part of...
...did you and the idiots who upvoted you not understand?