Fuck Cars
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
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Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
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No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.
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Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.
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No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.
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No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.
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No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.
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No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.
Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.
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All necessary vehicles can be accommodated in pedestrianised areas when needed, as they already are in many places around the world.
Car infrastructure comes with many extra external costs, such as increased heathcare costs due to pollution, increased travel due to the extra space needed between everything, etc
Individual transport is great when it respects the world around it. A bike doesn't need so many resources, nor does it take up so much space or cause harm to those around it.
Autonomous electric vehicles don't go far enough with fixing the existing problems. Sharing helps but you still don't need to take all that mass along with you on your commute, and there isn't space to have everyone else in a city doing the same every morning.
You see, progress comes with cost. But car infrastructure is so popular, because it is relatively cheap. It’s an economic problem, that has proven that the current situation is the most effective we currently have.
And in the end, some people want to drive cars in cities. Even people that live in cities want to do so.
So as the systems continues to work as it does, one has to expect, that the majority thinks the way I do. And that’s what we usually call swarm intelligence.
It's cheap because it's subsidised. Car users don't pay all of the costs. And it's popular because places are designed for it to be the most convenient option. When you design places that aren't for driving, people will use other modes.
I already answered someone else about this topic. So I will mostly copy my comment:
“The subsidisation argument is one that occurs quite often. I can only speak about the situation in my country, Germany. Since every citizen is dependant on car infrastructure, due to their dependance on Trucks transporting goods into the supermarkets, Police service, Ambulances,… and especially they are in need for this infrastructure, because it is used to build the houses people live in and it is used to maintain these houses.
So everyone in my country is somewhat paying for car infrastructure, totally independent from their use of it for private transport, because they are indirectly in need of it. This is what is commonly called subsidisation for car infrastructure, because the use of the capital is often not directly declared by the government.
Now car owners, that drive, have to pay an additional automobile tax, because as it is with all cars, they slowly wear out the road and repairs need to be paid. Due to their additional use of the roads, they have to pay additional for damages and repairs. “
Yes and no. In Germany we have many options, but cars are still an important and often chosen mode of transport. The infrastructure for other kind of transports exist. But they do not manage to compete with the flexibility of a car.
And I will paste another part of a comment to someone else:
“A modern city is welcoming to the new. This also includes scooters, bike sharing, car sharing, EV, and so on. And addressing the point of a stronger economy, I highly doubt that economic strength is dependant on 30 meters of rail, 10 Meters of Asphalt or whatever. “
It is not. Car infrastructure is some of the most expensive there is. It's cheap because it's heavily subsidized. It's popular because car manufacturers made it popular, with propaganda and lobbying for making cars the default form of transportation.
If your opinion is the obviously correct one where driving is the only thing accomodated for, why does the actual data show that the model for walkable cities with good transit have happier, healthier, more comfortable people, and are economically stronger than car dependent cities?