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submitted 2 months ago by grue@lemmy.world to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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[-] tasho@lemmy.blahaj.zone 28 points 2 months ago

cute! I love informative comics like this.

people always jump to assuming creating an infrastructure that requires less reliance on cars means a flat out ban on cars when really we just desperately need more alternatives to being stuck on the car-only model. of course, rural areas and disabilities and such will mean that cars are sometimes necessary, but there's so much that a fully functional public transit system can do!!

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[-] kimara@sopuli.xyz 22 points 2 months ago

One addition to this is also winter upkeep, which is very relevant in Finland.

People like to talk about "winter cycling", because it's somehow so much different from "every other season cycling". Mainly it comes down to winter upkeep; snow plowing and such. Then some people complain how nobody rides in the winter and they shouldn't use too much budget for it.

It would be fun to see people talk about "winter driving". How much we actually spend making driving possible during the winter.

[-] duhbasser@lemm.ee 9 points 2 months ago

Where I live in the US that’s in the millions, hundreds of millions even. Also, if that budget dries up then they don’t plow shit. They’ll usually get an emergency fund but it takes a few days, while it’s snowing…

[-] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 4 points 2 months ago

It's not just spending money. In my city, we're poisoning the groundwater with road salt to support winter driving. One well near me has sodium levels in the water high enough that the water utility has issued a no-drink advisory for people with hypertension.

[-] glowie@infosec.pub 17 points 2 months ago

How does a theoretical case of not having insurance companies make a car non-driveable?

[-] 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.org 33 points 2 months ago

It is illegal to drive without auto insurance. Technically you could do it anyway but a single accident could cost you $70,000 or $80,000 easily. Most reasonable people don't want that kind of risk.

[-] vorpuni@jlai.lu 6 points 2 months ago

Try adding a zero or two to that estimate. If you end up killing people without insurance your life's over, with insurance if you weren't in the wrong you're mostly fine.

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[-] psx_crab@lemmy.zip 17 points 2 months ago

Because auto-insurance is a requirement in some country.

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[-] psx_crab@lemmy.zip 17 points 2 months ago

Ain't that true. As a car mechanic(in asia), i used to not think about it for a long time, but lately the cost of owning a car seems to bug me to no end. Often in busy day, someone will come in with a breakdown which might take a few hours to do because of the workload, and the reply i get from them is "can you do mine first? I'm in a hurry and i need the car, without it i can't get anywhere". Or someone came in with a badly maintained car, where they have to delay a lot of simple but crucial repair because they're short on money. Or ignore an oil leak while topping up oil constantly because they have no time to get it fixed, which sometimes cost even more in total.

I just paid nearly 1/4 of my monthly salary to fix my 20 years old car, and that's only for the part. Can't get a used car because i need the cash, can't get a new car because i don't wanna have more mortgage. It's crippling if you're poor. It's simply bullshit when people use the poor to justify car-centric development.

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[-] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago

Can confirm.

My car has been "on loan" to my parents for a year. I'm lucky to live in an area with decent public trans, but my sense of freedom is definitely vastly diminished.

[-] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 10 points 2 months ago

You have public trans? Can you just like rent them for a while or how does it work?

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[-] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 10 points 2 months ago

"Cars aren't a symbol of freedom. They are a symbol of dependence in places designed to be prisons without them."

Paraphrased from a book I read (sorry, it was 10+ years ago)

[-] Washedupcynic@lemm.ee 8 points 2 months ago

I grew up with great public transit, and having access to a bicycle, (NYC.) In my 20s I realized that attempting to own and maintain a car would be so expensive that I would not be able to save money for the future. I ride my bike everywhere. If I want to go somewhere more than 50 miles away, or where transit doesn't go, I rent a car. I rent a car maybe 2x a year tops. Depending on how long I'm renting the car I probably spend $400 a year on rentals + insurance. My last bike I had for 20 years. Cost me $1400 brand new, spread that cost out over 20 years, owning the bike cost me $70 a year. It was easy to repair myself, and the tools to repair it were inexpensive to purchase. Fuck cars indeed.

[-] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

Owning or renting a home has the same requirements of dependency on multiple companies. Sure, in a city or large town or even some.small towns we could live without cars if we built the infrastructure.

But there will always be rural areas where cars make sense. Insurance would be a lot cheaper without all the city folk driving...

[-] Little_mouse@lemmy.ca 22 points 2 months ago

In Japan they have rail lines that seamlessly integrate with the metro system of large cities.

And even if cars for rural users is necessary, their driving experience will be much smoother if all the other people have good access to transit.

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[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 14 points 2 months ago

Owning or renting a home has the same requirements of dependency on multiple companies

Are you suggesting people go without homes? And that's analogous to going without a car?

Maybe you're really radical and want free public housing like people want free public transit, but that's far outside the overton window.

[-] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

I am saying home ownership, the freedom that goes along with it, and the need to rely on multiple companies is the same and both have a different context in rural areas. So does renting and most other things in life.

Plus relying on public transportation means trading companies for government, which in theory should be better but then again government decisions tend to be strongly influenced by those companies which is how we ended up in the car centric urban hellhole that we are in now.

The comic comes across as dismissive of a ton of nuance that apply to large areas of the US to make a point that applies to urban areas.

[-] uis@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

In rural areas everyone uses either bikes or railways.

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[-] Demdaru@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

...i have slight beef with that.

  1. We made cars more complicated than they need to be due to electronic systems and all that. I don't say that we should simply go back, that's dumb. But I cannot help but wonder if a line of simple, less advanced ICE cars promoted on their ease of maintenance wouldn't get popular with, for example, rural folks. After all, being able to fix the beast yourself would lover your costs a lot.
  2. Walkable cities are great, I know cause I live in one. My city (or town?) has around 7 km length (at least the parts that matter). Distance an average person can go in ~70, maybe 80 minutes by foot. But if I wanted to hit the relatively nearby lake or beach, getting there by foot is another story. And yeah, bikes exists and make it easier but if I need to hit another city that is 60km from here...yeah.
  3. Author also forgot that these companies won't fail, because these are not "one and only" of each in the world. Each contry, hell, each county has multiple of them. It's highly unrealistic for them to all fail at the same time.
[-] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

We didn't make cars more complicated because "of the electronics" or "because we had to".

Car companies make cars more complicated because they make huge amounts of money from warranties, maintenance that you can't do yourself for some reason, and of course the leases.

Cars being as complicated and impossible to work on as they are today is because line must go up. Everything else is propaganda.

[-] andros_rex@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

maintenance that you can’t do yourself for some reason

Also helps hide shoddy low quality parts.

The condensers on 2017-2021 Honda Civics are basically guaranteed to fail. There’s a warranty, but the only people who can open up the AC are the dealerships, who have been trained to find some speck of dust to justify denying the warranty.

It really fucking sucks - I’d love the option of being able to make some money on doordash, but the “reliable” Honda Civic I bought gets up to 100+ F with the air on full blast.

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[-] RymrgandsDaughter@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

true but America hates public transportation

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[-] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 5 points 2 months ago

This doesn't make any sense. The only way to move around without depending on other companies is by walking, and there's no way that can replace cars, trains, buses, bicycles, etc.

Not depending on anyone else is not a sensible goal. We live in a society.

[-] 5in1k@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago

How do I get to and then around Michigan’s Upper Peninsula? I don’t want to go be in cities like at all? What’s the plan for that?

[-] grue@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago

You use a car.

Do not mistake cars being appropriate for the 20% of population that's rural for them being appropriate for the 80% of population that's urban, 'cause they're not.

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[-] bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months ago

Thank you for wording it so eloquently.

I learned quickly the car took away my freedom. I needed a car to get a job.

I was suddenly forced to have a job to pay an auto loan. By the time I paid the loan I needed a new car as the first broke down.

Then I needed my job to pay for the 2nd car. If I lived closer to the city with public transport I likely would have never gotten a car in the first place.

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[-] callyral@pawb.social 3 points 2 months ago

Also, people younger than the legal age for driving are unable to get around safely and independently if they live somewhere car-dependent. I know this from personal experience (although where I live car dependency is not the only problem of course)

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this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
686 points (96.1% liked)

Fuck Cars

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