Cars don't belong in cities, says Top Gear's James May
Cars don't belong in cities, says Top Gear's James May
www.standard.co.uk
Cars don't belong in cities, says Top Gear's James May
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/27638728
34 comments
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This is nice to hear after finding out what an absolute boomer Jeremy is.
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Clarkson has admitted that he knows his faults. He likes the sound and feeling of a car with a powerful engine. He doesn't like the over-computerized and "soulless" modern car.
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What kind of car you like is one thing but does he understand that when he sits at a café next to a busy, congested road and blame the cyclists for the congestion that he's actually just factually wrong? Because I don't think he knows that. Jeremy Clarkson is fiercely anti-bicycle and until he says, in front of an audience, that he's wrong about this and will stop spewing vitriol at bicyclists, I frankly don't care about him.
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All the proof you need that you can be a car guy and still accept that car dependancy is awful.
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Captain Slow was always my favorite Top Gear presenter.
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Same. If you haven't already, be sure to watch both his travel and cooking shows. Both great.
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Also his show Toy stories was really cool.
He would pick a classic toy and take it to an extreme. Like building a people-sized house out of Lego, entering modeling clay flowers into a gardening contest or making a motorcycle out of Meccano.
He would bring a bunch of people together to make it happen, it was wholesome in a not-lame way. Plus the usual James May antics.
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His YouTube is a bit mid, I find. Him shilling his gin, lurpak and even doting on the cybertruck.
I mean all power to him, but I find the content very lackluster compared to the tv he made.
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Loved them. Only thing he did that I did not like that much was his cyberpunk review.
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He always felt like the reasonable one
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I've always felt he's one of us deep inside.
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He's really the opposite of Jeremy Clarkson (although now that he started farming, he also suddenly cares about climate change).
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Even Clarkson would occasionally show up to work on a bicycle. It really is as simple as build the lanes and people will use them, regardless of status and opinions. If cycling is faster, easier, safer or more enjoyable, people will do it.
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I did not come away from this article with a very positive opinion on Clarkson. He strikes me as the type of guy who is incapable of recognising a problem that he himself is not personally facing. Climate change wasn't real until he tried his hand at farming. Driving electric vehicles won't solve the climate problem, science will (did science not develop the battery technology needed to move away from gasoline cars?). Farmers are struggling and will be forced to sell to millionaires and capitalists (is he himself not the capitalist that bought a hobby farm from a struggling farmer?).
I don't think he's seeing his own hypocrisy here. Farmers have been facing these problems for years and no one paid attention. He calls up his buddy in Westminster, immediately gets a full cabinet meeting, and as if by magic the government starts moving in his favour (taking away power from local government, I might add).
This isn't a black and white issue and there is merit to Clarkson's point that local government can get captured and corrupted by personal conflicts and interests. But I don't agree with the image he appears to project as a defender of the common man and poor farmer. He's a millionaire who has never given a single shit about farmers until he personally owned a farm.
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Better late than never?
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As usual, he’s rigbt. Cars hate being in cities. City driving is the worst for them. They’re too big and they’re barely faster than walking.
Cars don’t belong in cities just like I don’t belong in cities.
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I've had my disagreements with this community*, but I absolutely agree that cars do not scale in urban areas. We need good enough public transit to make cars unnecessary, and then replace the previous car infrastructure with something better like cycling or housing or parks or small business.
Ideally, I think we should have
- interstates that go through or around cities
- Extensive parking garages on the outskirts of cities
- Fast, reliable, safe public transit within cities
There will always be a need for vehicles in rural areas, and those vehicles will need to come to the city sometimes, and we need ways to get those people to where they need to go. But people should not need to drive in the city itself.
*Most of my disagreements are with the focus on cycling. Cycling should be a secondary, maybe tertiary goal. Public transit is orders of magnitude more important.
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We reposted this to all our socials, with HT to you.
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Is there a video to the full video?
34 comments