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.
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.