Are car break-ins and catalytic converter thefts actually a good thing? a la "popping off a few rounds to keep the rent low", plus in terms of transit adoption (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 months ago by Chronicon@hexbear.net to c/urbanism@hexbear.net

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semi serious question.

I stumbled onto my local metro area's reddit while trying to look up some historical photos and stared into the abyss for a few mins.

I resisted the urge to leave libreddit and make an account just to reply but, I ran into this post that is basically complaining about having a car in one of the most central neighborhoods in the city, and asking for advice on getting off street parking (in reality, anything that isn't an overpriced surface lot that offers no protection is going to be quite a hike away from their apartment, there's no way this will work out).

They claim they work in X first ring suburb where "there are no buses" and that's why they have to have this car, which is hilarious because they could one seat ride to half of that suburb in under half an hour from a bus that leaves from their front door. the other half it'd be a 2 seat ride but still under 45 mins, and obviously way cheaper than a car. There are also plenty of neighborhoods they could move to that would have less breakins and cheap off street parking, but they seem convinced that's not the case.

But I digress.

The fellow reddit-logo ers in there commiserating about how horribly expensive off street parking is (in a neighborhood that is basically in downtown) got me thinking... If we can't get city governments to do shit about on street parking and massively unsafe roads, is allowing the street to be so unappealing to park on that people have to actually pay for their giant waste of precious urban land, a viable option to improve things?

this expectation that you should be able to just leave your 2 ton death box lying around in public anywhere for any length of time and nobody will so much as touch it doesn't apply to any other kind of property (just look at bike theft), and it really fucks with people when you violate that. I feel like that's a usable weapon, in a way, against gentrification and car dependency and traffic violence.

Were kia boys doing praxis?

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[-] Frank@hexbear.net 27 points 2 months ago

I don't think terrorizing random working people is a productive way to promote public transit.

[-] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 16 points 2 months ago

Yeah, the average person isn't going to be like "Guess I'll take the bus/train/bike" they're going to be pissed

Seems somewhat counterintuitive

[-] Chronicon@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago

In the aggregate, rather than the acute example of a hypothetical person doing it as a visible political protest, I think it does push people away from cars (or towards white flight 2.0 depending on the persons background) but you're right, its ofc not actually a productive strategy, just a byproduct of poverty that impacts those who least deserve it the hardest.

[-] LanyrdSkynrd@hexbear.net 17 points 2 months ago

Nobody sells their car in reaction to a catalytic converter theft. They just get more reactionary politics when it comes to crime, and become more likely to shoot a stranger that wanders into their yard.

[-] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

As someone who has in the past relied on a public bus to commute, I'll say that 30 minutes is a dream and my commute temporarily went from 15 minutes to over 60 because when my car broke down and I couldn't afford to fix it, I had to go in the opposite direction of work and then come back towards work from there due to no direct bus route, and my time to myself at home shrunk even more because the last bus to arrive at work arrived well before my shift started while the first bus to leave after it left a while after it (I don't remember exactly how far off, this was like 8-9 years ago, but I remember having minimal time to myself or to spend with my partner).

Frankly I could have easily lost my job and possibly ended up homeless, and if someone has destroyed my car on purpose instead of it being bad luck, I'd have been on the verge of illegal-to-say over it.

Unless you're in one of the like 3 places in the US with good public transit I think this is kinda shitty, and if you do it to a cheap car/poor person's car, you're actively a bad person.

[-] Chronicon@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago

realistically yeah petty shit is only going to hurt the people that least deserve it as usual. That was the unserious part for sure. Not that I would do any vandalism but if I were going to it wouldn't be to random shitboxes, and I haven't exactly appreciated when it's happened to me.

I'm definitely happy to see parking treated as the scarce resource that it is though, we have pretty good and rapidly expanding transit service here and I'm sick of people acting like we live in nebraska and they have zero options. If the post said "I work in 2nd/3rd ring suburb and can't take transit" it'd be different, but this was so egregious

[-] macerated_baby_presidents@hexbear.net 15 points 2 months ago

No. Nobody seriously decides not to get a car, shaving time off their commute, because it might get damaged. The cost of a new cat, even if it was guaranteed to be stolen eventually, is marginal compared to the guaranteed up-front cost of a car and continuous maintenance costs which they're already willing to pay. What is necessary is better transit so that spending money on a car doesn't get you anything worth buying.

[-] Abracadaniel@hexbear.net 8 points 2 months ago

gonna go with no.

[-] wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago

stealing and destroying personal property is not praxis

[-] BobDole@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago

If there are transit alternatives, I guess.

[-] ped_xing@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago

I've thought about this in the context of car alarms. There was a reddit-logo discussion about banning car alarms in densely populated areas and somebody said that that would enable car theft and I was like [where is the two cakes emote?].

[-] WalrusDragonOnABike@lemmy.today 3 points 2 months ago

AFAIK, you can drive without a cat... it just hurts everyone around you. So its not even that much of an inconvenience. Like, it would take something like expecting to have your car towed once a month due to damages while you were away to make people thing "I don't want to deal with the headache of having a care". Bike theft certainly is cited by many as the reason they won't commute by bike. Probably not because cheap bikes are expensive to replace (even replacing one for $200 every single week would be cheaper than what many people spend on cars in the US each year), but because not knowing if you will have a ride home from work each day probably sucks. If driving was like that, people would certainly reconsider driving.

[-] Chronicon@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This is true. My catalytic converter was stolen a few years back and I drove on it 2-3 times (when I realized it was gone and when I took it to a friend's garage to repair. In the intervening 6 months I just bused/biked.)

You are more likely to be harassed by the police for your loud exhaust (they don't give a shit about the cat in most of the US) but in most places they don't seem to care even about the noise unless its an excuse to us-foreign-policy

I still harbor some affection for the idea of a mass campaign of deflating SUV tires but honestly its lib shit and wouldn't work

[-] WalrusDragonOnABike@lemmy.today 2 points 2 months ago

I still harbor some affection for the idea of a mass campaign of deflating SUV tires but honestly its lib shit and wouldn’t work

Deflating just means people spend $50 on a tool to conveniently air up their tires if it became super wide spread. Probably better to use that energy to do tactical urbanism to make the environment more friendly towards alternatives and less friendly towards oversized vehicles.

[-] Chronicon@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

you can physically remove the valve core as well, or slash the tire, neither of which are going to be as easily solved, but yeah.

I'd love to see some practical examples of tactical urbanism that aren't just cutesy BS that does nothing (not accusing it of all being like that I just wish it were posted about more!)