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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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I wish this form of protest would catch on elsewhere as well. Every day I'm struck by the number of huge gas-guzzling pick up trucks parked around the city, and seemingly every bed completely empty. Letting out the air to their tires would certainly be slower and more work than the old method of puncturing their tires, but has the dual benefit of not necessitating replacement (which has a carbon cost of its own) and not enabling the vehicle owner to file an insurance claim.
This is a horrible form of protest because it is likely to cause property damage as most people are completely blind and oblivious and will drive on their now deflated tires for a bit before realizing something is wrong.
That will likely ruin the tire and possibly also damage the rim.
Second, you have no idea who you hurt and the repercussions of it.
There’s no immediate “big car = bad person” logic that’s valid.
If you want to protest in a meaningful manner you should support politicians who want to increase taxes for fossil fuels.
There’s a reason the average engine size (and thus vehicle size) is lower in Europe, and it’s not small streets and parking spaces.
Obviously since giant cars never took off here we didn’t scale things to fit, but that’s a chicken and egg thing.
The situation you are describing where a car owner returns to their vehicle, fails to see their four flat tires, fails to notice the note on their windscreen explaining that their tires have been deflated in protest, fails to notice their car's tire pressure warnings, and drives any way, and drive enough to ruin their tires AND wheels seems unlikely enough to qualify as catastrophizing. The far more likely outcome is that the owner returns to their car and then spends some time, perhaps an hour or two, figuring out how to reinflate their tires.
I'm sure the individuals taking part in these protests also support politicians who desire stricter regulations about the types of vehicles they are targetting. Participating in peaceful protest and participating in a political process are not mutually exclusive.
You are still assuming a lot of things:
That deflated tires don’t get damaged either. Look up how tires are built.
That everyone gets a sticker under the window and all four tires deflated.
Apparently it has to be “catastrophical” to be bad.
The only thing you are taking away from society is someone’s time.
IMO as long as you are messing with someone else’s property you are not “protesting”, you are a vandal.
However good you might find their intentions it’s not much better than blowing up mailboxes or slashing tires.
And whether or not you want to see it I strongly believe that point four is the most important part.
What happens to the people who couldn’t be treated at the hospital in time because their surgeon was left stranded with flat tires?
Sure, he could have just called a cab/Uber, but what happens when everyone in the neighborhood does?
Someone else could step in? Sure, but again it suddenly might be more than one that’s affected.
I’m not trying to argue that everyone has a job that society will miss if they are stuck at home for a few hours, but do you think that the people running around deflating tires do any kind of legwork to figure out if they should?
There was a “protest” like this in Oslo, Norway, recently, targeted at fossil gas guzzlers. However the “protesters” failed to discern between electric SUV’s and fossil SUV’s even though most of the electric ones carry special license plates.
At the end of it I guess it all boils down to what kind of ethics you apply. While I can agree with the viewpoint I wholeheartedly disagree with the method and form.
At what point do you find it is ok to do bad things to random strangers in some weird hope to do something good?
It’s not a “trolley problem”, you’re not killing one person and saving five, you are simply putting unnecessary hardship into people’s lives because you don’t like what they drive.
Do you honestly expect someone to go “oh no, not again, well I better go buy a different car”?
On the EV point specifically- big EVs are bad, too. They're still spraying tire particulate, and their high weight is more dangerous for pedestrians, small cars, bikes, kids, etc.
Never said they weren’t.
But when you put a flyer under someone’s windshield wiper saying you are purposely letting air out of their tires for driving a big gas guzzler, heating up the planet, and polluting the local environment with their exhaust - and it’s an EV, right?
Weight doesn’t matter so much to pedestrians btw. Front end design and hood design is much more important.
Lots of new cars now actually have a deployable hood that lifts (next to the windshield if you hit / are about to hit a pedestrian.
This allows for a more cushioned landing.
Doesn’t help if the vehicle is so tall you get smooshed in the grill, though.
Increases tire width also helps stopping quicker in many circumstances, but yes, definitely, added weight makes it harder to stop in conditions with reduced grip like rain and snow.
What we need is better safety systems - ie. automated driving as an end goal.
Kids and bicyclists will still be at risk due to their own behavior, but autonomous driving will still be able to perceive quicker and be more consistent in reducing speed around observable high risk “actors” in the environment.
Not saying any of this is an argument for unnecessarily big and heavy cars, but at the moment there is only two electric station wagons in the market. So if you want a bigger trunk than a sedan can offer, but not an SUV you can choose between the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo or the MG 5.
Not much to choose from sadly.
The Audi A6 Avant is coming, so is the ID.7 wagon, but they’re still at least a year out, if not 1.5.
And the Nio ET5 wagon is coming out right about now as well.
And this will bring the total amount of electric wagons up to 5, three of which comes from VAG.
In the meantime there’s a boatload of huge electric SUV’s that offer no advantage over a wagon except maybe roof height since batteries eat up some underfloor space.
I read everything you wrote because you went through the effort to write it. I think the "agree to disagree" place is about as good as we're gonna get.
Didn’t expect anything else, but thanks for the civil response :)
I appreciate you and I mean that
I appreciate that you guys can disagree in something highly connected with emotions and still have a civil conversation.
I appreciate that you guys can disagree in something highly connected with emotions and still have a civil conversation.
It's very easy to tell the difference between a big car that's big for a reason (7 seats for large families, van for a business) and a car that's big just because (i.e. a large SUV).
So a single person driving a 7 seater Volvo XC90 passes muster, but a family of four with the five seater doesn’t?
Yeah, they should just slash their tires.
Breaking things that are bad is kinda the point of direct action
The problem is that even if 90% of people don't need an SUV or truck, you can't tell if someone is in that 10% that does need it. You can't just look at an empty truck bed. Obviously nobody is gonna use their bed 100% of the time. They might have the truck for work purposes and also use it for personal use. They certainly shouldn't own multiple cars, cause that's even worse.
I'm sure the 90/10 ratio is simply a rhetorical device for the sake of argument, but since you brought it up, given that the protest does not destroy personal property but merely inflicts considerable inconvenience on the owner, what ratio would be permissible in your eyes? 95 and 5%? 99% and 1%? What if instead of deflating tires someone merely put some sticky jam under the drivers' side door handle along with a note explaining why the owner has been "jammed"?
The sticky jam is probably a better idea than the flat tire, due to the lower risk of real damage. Issue would be to make it really uncomfortable while still being easily accessible for the protestors. It has to be as uncomfortable as the tire. But I guess the goo could easily produced at home from household supplies.
I drive a large truck because I truly need and use the bed on a weekly basis. I wouldn't be able to get by without it, being more than a convenience thing, as I have tried (and failed) for years to use my wife's minivan. There are a lot of things that you straight up cannot do without a truck. I live on 7 acres of mostly heavily wooded land. That kind of property has a lot of maintenance needs that you really need a truck for.
But when I go to the city, I almost never go with anything in the bed. First, I think it can be unsightly to have my bed loaded up with rotting construction material or large bulky items that need to be taken to the transfer station.
Second, it can be dangerous, depending on what I'm hauling. The load needs to be secured. I'm more likely to get into an accident in the city, so if that happens, now in addition to whatever comes off from either vehicle, now whatever else that I was hauling is going to be all over the place, impeding traffic even further.
If my load is heavy, as it often is (think: maybe 1,000 lbs of cord wood), that has a pretty big impact on my gas mileage.
And if it rains? Whatever is in my bed is going to get wet and soggy and nasty.
And then there's the winter. I live in New England. You may have heard about the snow we get here. My driveway is 1/4 mile long, and REALLY steep. I use my truck to keep it plowed. There's no other way we're leaving our property when the snow falls. But obviously I don't have my plow attached in the off-season, so it wouldn't be obvious to you that I also use it for that.
So for many reasons, I need a truck. It is almost never loaded when I have to go into the city. It's not lifted, I don't have obnoxious wheels, but it's a big truck (they don't seem to make them any other way these days). Now I have to also worry about people with attitudes like yours taking their misguided vigilante justice out on my vehicle because you're not thinking beyond your nose? Do you really think that's fair?
Yep, you do, sorry. Change doesn't happen when you politely ask. Change happens when you're a disruptive asshole for long enough. Look at the history of protests and activism that actually brought about change.
Except NOTHING is being accomplished by targeting individuals like this. You're not winning people over, you're not changing minds, you're not effecting change. You're protesting the wrong people. I, as an example, am a huge supporter of education and change regarding climate change. But I still have to live and work within the very system I am protesting. You're not doing anything by attacking allies like me. Instead, you need to go after corporations, and politicians. Those are the entities that are responsible for and have the ability to influence real action.
Everyone is pointing at the others for the actual cause. The corporations that buy the stuff you move around in your truck should be targeted? Or the politicians that allow you to buy a gas gurgler (and ruin the environment) by driving it around without it being prohibitively expensive?
Or should you suffer because you bought the car and are driving it into city centers (where public transport is available, and most SUVs are not used for hauling goods)
Public transport in a LOT of US cities is poor, or non-existent. Even where it's good, getting to the city, when you live outside of it, is often not an option without your own transportation.
I appreciate your enthusiasm, really, and in fact I share much of it. But you are oversimplifying and dismissing the reality for many people in the US.
Too many people buy big dumb cars. With 0 mass transit, you can do just about everything in a Civic, then rent a Home Depot truck once a year for that one big load of plywood. People buying pristine brodozer pickups that don't fit in their garage and emotional support suv tanks need to be force fed more reasons to not be part of the problem.
Things ONLY get accomplished this way. Civil Rights, Labor, Women's Suffrage, etc. It's how it is, accept it.
You're making a generalized argument to support terrorism.
even if you need your truck for work reasons, you should not be taking it into a dense urban area like Hamburg or London (where this group also operates.)
Well, the activists target SUVs in the middle of Hamburg. That's not really a comparable situation. I agree it would suck if you visit a big city and get targeted there, but I would hope the activists can decide between a polished up city-only SUV and an actual working-vehicle and act accordingly.
People like the guy I replied to don't, though. See the other reply to my comment as evidence.
They're not leaking the air out while the car is driven. Modern European cars all have pressure sensors and will warn the driver when there isn't enough air in the tires to drive safely. Saves you from walking around the vehicle to see if everything is tied and pumped up properly.
To be perfectly frank, I think it's weird to write so much about your personal life in a reply to a stranger on the internet. How am I supposed to respond to any of your personal details without risking you taking it personally? Are you looking for my approval of your rugged individualist lifestyle? For whatever it's worth, it sounds very romantic and if I knew you in real life I'm sure I would be polite enough to keep whatever opinions I have about your vehicle to myself.
I suspect we both agree that vehicle sizes have gotten out of control, especially with respect to pick up trucks. Would you have bought a smaller truck if it were available? Would you support governmental regulation to bring pick up trucks back in line with where they were 30 years ago?
When I think of "vigilante justice" I think of violence, so it seems a little disconnected with the reality of letting the air out of someone's tires along with posting a note on their windscreen. I think the protestors would agree that 'thinking beyond your nose' is very important, and that individual choices can have collective impacts.
Nppe, you don't need a truck. We don't need these things to survive.
Haul what you need on a bicycle or don't haul those things because you don't need them.
I feel this would go over differently in the land of "fuck around and find out". You'd have bored old dudes with rifles setting up watches. And ~~if~~ when something did happen, public opinion is not going to be on the air-letters side.
My insurance comes with road hazard that would cover this at no cost; and I'm a poor.
It seems misguided. The people doing the most climate damage aren't parking their cars on the streets. Go pop some private jet tires.
This tastes the same as right wing efforts to convince people making $50k a year that their enemies are those making $100k a year when, in fact, the enemy of both those groups is billionaires.
If you're a climate activist, your enemies aren't those with a carbon footprint 2x or 5x what yours is. The enemy is those with 10000x the carbon footprint
The most dangerous people aren’t the rich, they’re the moderates who would rather continue the status quo than risk any sort of uncomfortable truths. You are not going to be able to live the standard of living you have now for the rest of your life. The moderate can either choose to catch on and willingly sacrifice some comfort now for the good of everyone, or everyone can suffer significantly more later.
The rich will always try to use their influence to exploit and extract. As long as there are Ways to become rich, there will be people who are incentivized to be bad people. That is unavoidable.
The real problem is that billions of people have collectively surrendered all of their sovereignty to these few individuals. The many who accept the status quo are class and species traitors, hell, planetary traitors, choosing Their own small comforts over the life of the entire planetary ecosystem, and actively fighting against those who aren’t cowards as they are.
Even though per individual the rich are the greatest polluters, in absolut numbers average people might have a stronger influence on the climate due to being so many more people.
Average people who don't care about the environment did not get that way in accident but because of a concerted disinformation campaign that has lasted decades. You can't change the culture without going after the perpetrators of that disinformation
I don’t think it is only because of disinformation. Our modern day consumption is desirable on its own. I don’t think you need disinformation to convince people that flying to a sunny and exotic location is desirable. Or the flexibility and mobility that driving thousands of kilometres per year in cars provides. Eating meat and drinking milk…
I agree and you're forgetting old people. A lot of them have straight up told me, "I'll be dead when the worst hits, so why should I care?" People need more cynicism for human behavior; it's not entirely cartels and conspiracies.
Catalytic converter theft is at an all time high in the u.s. Those old farts ain't doing shit.
https://jalopnik.com/suspected-catalytic-converter-thief-shot-twice-then-dra-1847107538
https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-shooting-lakeview-catalytic-converter-wolcott/11223327/
https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/texas-car-owner-shoots-thief-stealing-catalytic-converter-police-say/NSGS2UWGBZHJTDJUU44CXYXK7U/
They're doing their part.
Bored old dudes with rifles watching over their parked vehicles in dense urban centers seems like a disproportionate response to having some tires deflated. I think your speculation about the public supporting someone being murdered over their participation in peaceful protest is pretty depressing. I hope you don't actually think that.
This is a good point - I'm not very knowledgeable with respect to insurance, especially internationally. Thank you for your insight
I think this is something we can all get behind
As far as they're concerned, they're innocent victims and you're a criminal.
And they're not wrong. Property damage is a crime, and working-class people aren't the ones obstructing the development of electric vehicles, solar power, etc.
The argument of climate activists is that everyone is factually the victim of SUV drivers, because SUVs unnecessarily but lawfully contribute to deaths statistically.
The problem with this argument is that it claims without evidence that an adequate alternative means of transportation was already known and available to the owners of all SUVs at the time those SUVs were purchased. That assertion that makes a lot of questionable assumptions about the circumstances of millions of people, the vast majority of whom the claimant has never even met, let alone interviewed.
Well, they say that SUVs never made sense in cities. Actually, also in villages, as this is happening in Germany. I'd say 99 ℅ of those SUVs are not used as an SUV. Not that I'm supporting manipulation on other people's property, but I understand that part of their argument.
Maybe so, but I'd hate to be the one guy who actually needs it and finds it vandalized over something someone else did.
"They" meaning the bored old dudes with rifles watching over their parked vehicles and dense urban centers? "They" are a hypothetical group of people who don't exist and don't have concerns. Or are you also speaking hypothetically about how an imaginary group of individuals would respond to a potential form of protest?
Oh, absolutely. I'm not advocating for it, just commenting on the local climate. All it would take is fox news saying "AnTEEfah is coming to cut your tires so you can't go to church and worship jesus! Why do they hate baby jesus?" and there would be people willing, if not itching, to kill over it. It is very depressing, all that rage could be put to much better use.
If you deflate the tires, doesn't that reduce the mpg of the vehicle?
Not really that big of a factor, German car owners will not drive around with flat tires if they notice, which is likely rather soon.