this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
1388 points (94.3% liked)
Fuck Cars
9629 readers
613 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
Requiring CDLs for these huge monstrosities would finally put pressure on automakers to return to more reasonable car bodies and it would make sure that people who have to drive big vehicles at least are qualified to do so. Traffic tickets should also scale with the size of the vehicle since a speeding Range Rover presents different risks to the public than a speeding Smart Car.
Real investment in walkable cities and suburbs is the harder solution but the better one. If you could walk your kid to preschool that eliminates a car trip. Walking exposes you to the elements, but walking speed doesn't amplify rain, cold, or heat like biking does. Zoning laws should allow a preschool, a grocery store, a pharmacy, a community space, and a hardware store to exist within easy walking distance for you. Bike paths should connect you to the next community. Miles of uninterrupted residential-only zoning is choking our planet.
Some people do “need” their pickups for recreation, but they’re almost all GHG emitters…towing boats, carrying ATVs/dirtbikes, etc. Campers are another thing, not so bad but I wouldn’t call those glampers anything close to camping.
But then these giant pickups become their daily drivers, and because of that they’re ubiquitous. And because of that, people who have absolutely no legitimate reason for driving a pickup truck or other huge vehicle, end up buying one to feel safe.
And in a way they are right. It’s insane how many people look at me like I’m trying to kill them for backing out of a space real slow. No, there is a giant iron fucking curtain that’s blocking my view of you and any other cross traffic. That’s why I turned on my backup lights and waited a few seconds before inching out. Not because I’m an idiot or I’m trying to kill you, but because I have absolutely no other option than to blindly back out of the space.