this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Fuck Cars
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Yeah, it depends on the context. Is the thread saying "we need to build out far more cycling infrastructure"? If so, no argument.
Or is the thread one of the naiive ones trying to argue about how we can completely eliminate cars? Then people start bringing up the edge cases that still require cars.
You say that as if those threads are actually a common thing, and not just a strawman accusation from the fevered dreams of car-brains.
I mean, y’all literally call the place “fuck cars.” You call anyone that disagrees with you a “car-brain.” Not a lot of nuance.
As someone scrolling by from all, I’m actually surprised to see any acknowledgement that some people may need to rely on private automobiles.
Maybe y’all need to work on your messaging.
Messaging is for urbanist and transport subs, this is a place to bellow "fuck cars" until your voice is hoarse.
If you do want a serious discussion of posting here is just going to frustrate you and give you a very weird idea of the movement.
Go into a thread on autonomous cars and all you'll hear is about how they're useless and we don't need them because we'll just eliminate all cars before they're ready.
I have literally never seen that argument made.
Usually, what I see in those threads are a whole bunch of people arguing that autonomous cars would be some kind of silver-bullet panacea for traffic.
Frankly, what you wrote sounds like a strawman misinterpretation of an argument I myself make: I argue that autonomous cars are not a solution, but not "because we’ll just eliminate all cars before they’re ready." They're not a solution simply because they're still cars, and therefore take up the same grossly excessive amount of space as non-autonomous cars do.
Yeah, the only things autonomous cars might reduce are:
It's the same fundamental problem that electric cars have: geometry. Cars -- even if electric and self-driving -- are simply grossly inefficient at moving people for the amount of land they require:
The velomobile (electric or manual) is the most efficient transport in energy per mile. You could easily design something like a self driving podbike, maybe a little bigger, weighing maybe 100kg.
And self driving also allows for new configurations, e.g. two seats that face each other because you don't need a steering wheel. That means much more narrow and aerodynamic "micro cars" that could solve a lot of edge cases for people who can't drive or not that long or fast (50kmh / 30mph). They might compete with a big bus.
Except that the jury is not "still out" on number two, it is simply a matter of time, engineering, and training before they are statistically safer than humans.
Waymo's cars are already safer than humans in their limited conditions.
I agree that they're already statistically safer in limited conditions; the key part is when/if they will surpass in a wide range of conditions, including heavy snow or the disorganized and often unmarked roads of developing countries, for instance. For what it's worth, however, I do think the tech will eventually get there.
Just an observation, humans aren't able to navigate heavy snow and disorganized traffic any better. We guess where the road should be, what the conditions are, and where other cars are, and commit with full confidence in our lack of knowledge. It works OK, but there are infinity examples of it not working. Literally any logic behind navigating these scenarios is better that what we can do with our feeble meat suits.
My only point is that if I'm being super pessimistic about timescales, I'm estimating ~30years for self driving cars to clearly surpass human drivers, and multiple generations before you eliminate human error from dangerously designed roads, to drunk driving, to distracted driving, to sleepy driving etc.
Congratulations that you haven't, that's evidently because youre not in there correcting people when they claim that autonomous cars aren't a solution.
As long as cars are on the roads and humans are driving them they will continue to kill and maim people. Autonomous cars are the only remotely viable solution to that. They might not be fully ready for all situations yet, but they will be ready on the scale of a decade or two, whereas reorienting north American society to minimize human drivers (get everyone to move out of their homes in the suburbs and country) will take literally generations.
No, that's defeatist bullshit.
It's called risk analysis / wisdom / not planning exclusively for the best possible outcome in case the world doesn't go exactly you as you hoped it would.
You'd typically hear this in the context of Dutch-style city planning, where direct routes through cities are only available to cycles and buses, and only indirect routes are available to cars.
So cars and other vehicles such as ambulances, furniture-removal vans etc. can still drive to every house from the ring-road, but it is no longer convenient to get from one place to another within the same city by car (which is obviously the design, as it promotes cycling and bus use)
People who drive within the city and would be inconvenienced then suddenly discover a newfound interest in the rights of, for example, disabled people, as they search for counter-arguments.
They don't let ambulances use the bus routes?
I'm sure the transponders needed to access/cross the city centre would be given to any city or emergency vehicles that needed them, same as the buses - the point was more that every residential address is still accessible by road for those special cases such as deliveries, garbage collection, trade vans, emergencies, etc., even when you block roads to prioritise transit and cycling
Emergency vehicles generally have unrestricted access as far as I know, which also makes car-restricted infrastructure far superior to regular car infrastructure, on account of not being congested by cars.
Can't agree more.
Fact is that we can't get rid of cars completely in our current society without billions in infrastructure changes, displacement and forced developments and regulations. Which unfortunately also means most roads are here to stay.
Can the number of trips and lanes come down- absolutely. New developments take mass transit and alternative travel into consideration- I hope so. Eliminate- no.