So don’t take this the wrong way, but I do like cars. I am also against car dependency. I just wanted to make this post here to start a discussion about the benefits of lower speed limits in cities and towns, investment in effective public transit and non car-centric infrastructure, and other “anti-car” policies for car people. My goal with this post is to list the benefits of these policies for car people as I see it, and to hear other opinions on this topic.
- Stroads suck. I am a car person and would rather bike on a well-designed street than drive on a stroad.
- Congestion - I like to drive. Most people I know would rather not and would take other forms of transit if there were viable alternatives. If people who just want to go from a to b had viable alternatives, roads would be free for the people who want or need to be in cars.
- Safety - I don’t want to kill pedestrians. I don’t want to wreck my car. I’m fine with driving fast on a country road where I can see for miles and know that there is nothing in front of me to hit. If I do crash, it was my fault, and it doesn’t endanger others. However, cities should have lower speed limits to keep pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers safe.
- Traffic flow - Where I live, there is a 45 mph speed limit down one of the main roads, but I rarely reach 45 during peak usage times because of traffic. Lower speeds would make traffic flow more manageable and allow car traffic through at a higher average speed.
I feel like the name “Fuck Cars” presents a false dichotomy between well thought out urban design and cars. Good urban design opposes car dependency (which I am against) not cars themselves. With that, I would like to leave you with a few questions: What role should cars play in an ideal world? How would or do you talk to car enthusiasts about this stuff? Do you hate cars or car dependency?
Also because this is fuck cars, fuck some cars. Fuck cars with shitty modified exhausts in built up areas. Fuck cars that run catless exhausts. Fuck big ass trucks and SUVs that run over children to dodge environmental regulations. Especially fuck squatted trucks. Fuck the car manufacturers who lobby to create car dependency and manufacture the child-crushing SUVs.
I want cars to be by hobby on weekends - to drive for fun. I want driving and cars I be fun and only fun, not a requirement. Would also like to only put miles on my fun car I put a lot of work into when I want, instead of when I have to.
Big agree
I have an appreciation for cars like I do tanks, battleships, artillery, and fighter jets:
Engineering marvels, but I’d rather not see them in use 🤭
Seriously though, cars have their place, but their dependency leads to way more problems than solutions. I guess the same could be said about tanks, battleships, artillery, and fighter jets 🫢😟
My town is an older one so we really don’t have stroads, but ….
A couple years back, they repainted the lines on a major street to cut it from two lanes down to one plus turn lanes. Sure enough, it proves out: traffic is slower and calmer yet timing verifies we consistently get through noticeably faster.
Now the lines for bike lanes are fatalities waiting to happen but I guess it’s progress that they tried.
My biggest objection to “fuck cars” people is the insistence on removing parking, and otherwise restricting driving. Maybe my experience is different than most Americans, living without stroads and with functional transit., but a lot of that talk is counterproductive. I’m all for reduced parking minimums for businesses assuming there are other ways to get there but for housing is where I object. Transitioning to a world where fewer people need cars is laudable but until we get there, cars are still necessary for most of us, some of the time. Give people a place to put their cars, because they do still need them, and work on them needing their cars less and less. Anyhow that was my experience trying to live without a car. Even using transit or walking most places, in a city with functional transit, I couldn’t entirely do without. Give me a reliable place to stash my vehicle , and I’m all for trying g that experiment again.
I personally like the idea behind car sharing companies:
go to some random car 5-10 minutes away, check for damages, drive, park the car close to the destination, pay a fee, done
Conter argument would be that the driver does not own any car but uses a serviceI did this in SF for several years before Uber and it was perfect. We had a motor scooter for getting around the city quickly, but usually just used public transit. On weekends we’d get a zip car and cruise the coast, and we’d get a normal rental car for Yosemite or Tahoe trips. It was the perfect setup, imho.
For sure, my experiment with going carless was before ride services like uber and before car sharing like zipcar. Would that have made the difference? I don’t know. I’m not in a position to try again any time soon but maybe in the future.
I want freedom of movement, i.e., I should be able to choose which form of travel I want to use to reach the destination. Each mode should have their pros and cons. But i don’t want society/environment/polices to favor a particular form of travel.
While we can more or less agree with this, the reality is different modes of transportation are more useful in different places.
- You’re not going to get an option to take the subway from your farm to the local Walmart.
- In a pre-car city, you get a lot more freedom and convenience walking out your front door with a train pass. Cars don’t scale well to cities and policies shouldn’t accommodate them very far.
The problem we have in the US is not investing in anything but car and airlines, when there is a range of possibilities to best fit any situation. The problem is the last half century of building out cities and population growth only considering cars. Now we finally realize car-centric design doesn’t scale well, but we have all that post-WWII growth built around it. We have a lot of work to undo
You’re not going to get an option to take the subway from your farm to the local Walmart.
Yes, i completely understand this scenario and I would certainly not say to build a subway all the way to my farm.
The problem is the last half century of building out cities and population growth only considering cars.
This is the exact issue that I want society to understand.
Transportation should have a hierarchy.
- Commonly used routes: Subway
- Busy/dense population route with medium distance: Bus
- Short distance to common transport pickup point or places of attraction: cycle/small vehicle, preferably electric/mechanical
- Special vehicles for senior citizens/differently-abled: Haven’t thought about this much but there should be something
There should be parking areas near the city periphery/big transportation hub so that people coming from the suburbs can park their car and use the public transport. This reduces pollution and heat in the center of the city. If you show you used public transport, parking should be subsidized or free.
Yeah I agree. Driving is fun and I like cars, but needing a car to do everything is an exhausting way to live. Especially when everyone else needs a car to do everything and there’s congestion everywhere.
I’ve tried to explain to a car guy before that, while I appreciate cars as works of art and engineering, I hope for a day where owning a car is akin to owning a horse. A quaint hobby. A mode of transportation appreciated for the experience but usually unnecessary for modern life
As a motorcycle lover, and car appreciator - This is my wish as well. I don’t enjoy having no choice but to drive myself. Give me trains!
But given the choice, a nice Sunday ride through the country is something I love. And if everyone was on the train the ride would be even nicer.
Precisely how I feel about it on my moto as well.
In short, just because I’m a car enthusist doesn’t mean I think society should be based around cars.
This is a surprisingly common opinion. I don’t share it but as long as we’re pushing in the same direction, then I welcome you as an ally in the struggle.
An interesting anecdote that supports your arguments is that the Netherlands is one of the best countries for cyclists and pedestrians yet also for drivers. It doesn’t have to be a trade-off. Well-designed transportation infrastructure can work for everyone to some extent.
Oh hey I feel kinda similarly, except I don’t have a car and don’t plan on having one bc that’s an insane amount of spending for something I thankfully don’t need at all.
From that perspective: I think ideally most private car use would be rental cars. We aren’t going to connect every rural place via public transport overnight, and if you need to transport more than people cars make perfect sense for the job anyway.
People in rural areas might still realistically need cars for a long time to come, and I also dislike completely preventing people in cities from owning cars, partially because I totally get that driving cars can be fun and other hobbies have their own carbon footprint. But, as expensive as being a car enthusiast already is, it probably has to get more expensive as cars become purely a luxury. The costs to the individual should reflect the burden they put on society as a whole.
Other than better city planning to simply reduce people even wanting to use cars, I think other good measures (than just increasing taxes) to achieve this could be parking space requirements like japan has. Beyond that I think we really just need a cultural shift away from “everyone has a car obviously” which I’m starting to verrryyy slowly see at least.
Ideally in the long term utopian future I’d want highways to mostly be abandoned, with long distance freight being done by rail and only local distribution by road vehicles. The main use of highways would then be those choosing cars as their hobby and private transport of goods, e.g. for moving. Within cities road vehicle use would only be for transporting goods (and ofc emergency services). But even if we put everything we have towards that I don’t think I’d live long enough to see it lol
100% agree. I love driving, road trips, windy roads, and take pride in having a clean and well maintained car. But I despise the car-centrality of most western cities. Any chance I get, I park well outside a big city and take a train in. It’s almost always faster and far less stressful. Even though I can parallel park, yield to cyclists, not run over pedestrians, and safely follow the rules of the road, most other people can’t or won’t because of how normalized bad driving is. Even worse, most people don’t really want to be driving and do it simply because their job/home are not properly accessible, so they have no other choice.
I hate space yielded to cars that would be better used some other way.
All those cars parked on the side of the road? Could be a bike lane. Could be outdoor seating for the restaurant. Could be benches. Fuck those cars.
Big ass parking lot? Could be something green. Could be another building. Fuck those cars.
i don’t think we should promote private car ownership. If someone needs point to point transit occasionally, we can solve that some other way. I know people that have a car because they go on trips a couple times a year. Wasteful.
If people want a car of their own, they should pay all the externalized costs.
regulating the obscene prices and agest practices of rental companies might reduce car ownership because most rental companies have restrictions on what you can do with the vehicles (no driving on the dirt roads, no using a rental car to haul 2 tons of cement, no using trucks to fel trees) where as if you own a vehicle none of these apply (or more accurately are enforced) and you can haul as much as the little cars heavily overloaded engines can manage.
I live somewhere that is very much not car dependant, the cars still suck and we need way fewer of them.
I also wish kei cars were more of a thing. I like the look of a lot of kei sports cars but I have to wait 20 years after the car is made and more and more states are out lawing them.
Yeah Kei cars are awesome. I live in Japan and my family has one car, which is a kei. The turbo versions are really zippy even on highways. My non- turbo manages just fine though. The one tiny downside is that they can only carry four people (size wise and legally wise). I would highly recommend one if it is an option where you live.
I usually only drive on the weekends. In fact I’m about to go for a stroll to the drugstore as even though I don’t live in a major city, everything is within a walkable distance.
The Autozam AZ-1 type C is my dream car. And four people isn’t bad, the standard sedan in the US can only seat 5 people uncomfortably and is quite a bit larger than a kei car. The us technically has a comparable size classification called “minicompact” but there are no modern cars being sold in this sector.
Colorado just passed regulation allowing it which is nice! Will go into affect in 2027.
They should go hand in hand. I don’t want my car for sitting in traffic, I want it to tinker with and go for a cruise on weekends. I would love it if cars purely became a stupid hobby :)
