stop driving

We should really be investing more in public transit, it's way better than electric cars and could be way more convenient if implemented properly
- It all starts with fixing the zoning code. Cars will always be "more convenient" if we keep destroying our cities to make space catering to them.
- Design a city around electric wheelchairs and you’ll have a system accessible to everyone.
  
  Conveyor belts everywhere ♥️ no need for electric wheelchairs.
  
  What about people with a fear of wheelchairs?
  Checkmate atheists!
- Go start a public transport company. If you're right the market will reward you :)
  
  That's not really how that works.
  When it comes to public transportation, they rarely pull a profit on their own. What they do is drive the economy in the places they go, make a city more accessible to everyone (further driving the economy), and cut costs for the city in other places. They're a loss leader to save money and improve quality of life in a multitude of other areas by huge margins.
  
  Im just gonna ignore the overall stupidity of going "The market will solve it" and instead point out the fact that a public transit company would almost definitionally be under the umbrella of the government. Private transit company is the term youre looking for.

The problem is that citys are built around cars.
The first question is not how people can reach shops by foot, or with public transit. The first step is always to build streets to stuff and later figure out if you can might fit in a bus route, or maybe a cycling lane.
- In the USA at least. In Europe it's everything but perfect, of course, but at least we have some public transport in cities and between them.
  But yeah, the bike paths here in Austria are just getting bigger since some years again - and every cm seems to be a hard fight...
- Cities were not built around cars, they were bulldozed for the car.
  Cities were built to be walkable, and had trams for everything else. Then we invented the car and General Motors essentially took america by the balls and forced everyone in americs to become dependant on the car
  
  You're whining about something that happened decades before any of us were even born.
  US cities are built around cars now and that is the only life most Americans have known their entire lives. You have to fix that problem first to get what you want.
- The problem is that destinations are spread too far apart for walking, viable transit, etc. because the zoning code forces developers to build low density and massive amounts of parking.

Sure, I'll just take the...
Oh wait, I'm in the US and they would have rather destroyed the planet than set up public transport
Oh wait again...

In case anyone wants to correct a corrupted sign that the department of transportation hasn't gotten around to: https://www.safetysign.us/my_weblog/2011/07/instructions-on-how-to-hack-electronic-road-signs.html

- 40 minutes is a long ride, true. Maybe buy a foldable bike or a bike rack for your car, park your car outside of the city and reduce car traffic by riding from there to your workplace by bike? It sure would make this city a better place.
- Doesn't you rural area come with horses or donkeys?
- By forcing your elected officials to work on a public traffic infrastructure that could get you to the city in 30 minutes.
- "How am I supposed to maintain all my privilege and continue a lifestyle that emulates a landed aristocrat?" Fucking move to the city like the rest of us exploited working class assholes. If you can't afford to live in the country without externalizing the expenses on other people, then you can't fucking accord to live in the country. Suck it up.
- Nobody is trying to get rid of cars for those in rural areas, as that's unfeasible. The ONLY place people genuinely care about cars existing is in cities where they can be built and changed to be walkable. I shouldn't NEED a car to get to a grocery store. I shouldn't NEED a car to get to work. I should NEED a car to get to anything fun to do. This is a feasible goal.
  It's about choice. I have no choice but to have a car. I don't want a car. I am forced to have a car because the alternative is... There is no alternative, right now.
  It's about the freedom to have the choice to not drive.
- I used to do a 40 minute bike commute twice a day. Once it becomes part of your routine those 40 minutes are easy to conquer. Now I do the same distance by speed pedelec in 25 minutes. I'm faster at work now than when I used to go by car.
  If you can't make the trip safe though, than you shouldn't. But you can, like me, start out on nice days and incorporate into your days as a workout just to try an see.
- You're allowed to drive if there's no other infrastructure connecting point A to point B. This post is dumb because it lacks nuance. There are some cases where driving makes sense. If you live in a city where other options are safe and reliable, you should use those instead. And if you live in a city where there should be safe and reliable options but there aren't, well that's what you should be really upset about.

What purpose does this serve other than alienating the people you're trying to get on your side?
You have to have the alternatives in place before you can convince people to make a change.
Buses already take hours vs. minutes and any road construction that closes stops & routes down adds time and distance to an already long commute.
If you want people to choose your option, you have to make it an option worth choosing.
- It's more like a chicken or egg problem. No alternative without masses knowing about the problem. It took me 25 years to see what we sacrifice for cars. Maybe this flashy billboard approach helps to shorten that time for someone else.

This is a hack of matrix boards like these that I can 100% get behind.

Cars raped my father!
- They turned me into a newt!

The comments on this post are such a joke. The name of the community is literally 'fuck cars' and people are getting bent out of shape because we're posting about our dislike of cars.
- I like cars. They're comfortable and convenient.
  
  If you like cars so much you won't mind paying for it instead of forcing the rest of the country to subsidize 50% of your little hobby.
  
  You can like cars, go ahead. What I don't like is that I'm forced to have one to complete each and every task outside of my house. I am forced to have and use a car for everything. I WANT to take a quick walk to a shop for milk, not take a 15 minute drive to a big box store, a seven minute walk across its ridiculous parking lot, then do it all again in reverse. Why am I forced to have a car each and every day without fail in order to survive?
  
  i like turtles

I would if I could right now and I'm going to move next year to a place where I can sell my car and forget about it.

They're just trying to get to work, what is this attempting to accomplish
- Lmfao, this is a completely nondisruptive protest, it literally does nothing to stop people from getting to work.
  In the UK, we've been having protests which actively disrupt traffic, which gets people going "why can't they protest in ways that affect oil refineries/politicians etc" except people were doing that prior with no media coverage, and since having gained media coverage and then doing that, they get criticised for protests targeting politicians...
  What this goes to show is that disruptive protesting will get media coverage, and that many people will pay lip service but will inherently lose their shit over people protesting if it even has the slightest chance of disrupting someone's day.
- Making people aware that many child deaths are preventable for example. Car accidents are the leading cause of death for kids 4-15 years old.
  
  Okay so... they still need to get to work. Are you missing that essential point.

Okay done. Now that I have eliminated this here my contribution to CO2 emissions, what do we do about the 100 companies that cause 70% of global CO2 emissions? Or is that no longer an issue once my car is taken out of circulation?
- Transportation is a quarter of global emissions, with passenger vehicles making up half of that number and is only getting larger as more people in the world decide they need a car.
  The number you're looking for is 20 companies making up 30% of emissions. They're almost exclusively oil companies, with more than half of them being state owned enterprises. Reduce the need for oil and you reduce the amount they pollute.
  So, how do you do that?
  Personal vehicles are the most flexible in terms of emissions. Increasing the usability of public transportation has a direct correlation with the number of vehicles on the road. Sure, people out in the middle of nowhere need a vehicle and nobody is looking to take that from them, but you could HALF the number of people in the US with a car if cities had proper public transport or were as walkable as they were barely 80 years ago.
  The private sector is more difficult. We'd need to rebuild our train infrastructure that has been gutted and raided by our rail companies in order to get trucks off the interstate. Coincidentally, that would get MORE people off the road since you wouldn't need a car to go between cities.
  Additionally, you seem to be under the impression that we're incapable of solving multiple problems at the same time. We can make cars unnecessarily (not GET RID of them) while also cutting emissions in other areas.
  Make no mistake, we do need to address other areas, but cars are an easy target that would reduce tons of emissions and increase people's quality of life as well. Cars are a massive waste of space and a huge ongoing drain on taxpayer dollars for very little benefit when you compare it to the alternatives.
  
  I am not saying that we are incapable of solving multiple problems at once, I am saying that we are incapable of solving the main problem.
  I was not joking when I said that my car is not a factor. My individual part in this regard is done. But the point remains that by considering the main sources of pollution too "inflexible" to tackle, it seems that we are debating about which colour to best repaint a sinking ship here while being utterly, completely powerless to address the big hole in the hull.
  So in conclusion, I'll now pat myself on the back for having done my part while sailing this doomed (but [for some at least] highly profitable) planet to hell in a handbasket.
- I mean.. they're making things for us generally. I don't think they're emitting recreationally. Look at a pie chart of total emissions and figure what you could cut to hit 50%. Do away with all transportation.. Boats planes etc and you're not even close.
  
  If the average person cut out 100% of their carbon emissions for the rest on their life, they'd save, on average, the amount of CO2 that industry creates in ~1 second. Our personal emissions are but a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme. Change is best brought about by voting both metaphocally with our wallets and literally with our ballot papers.
- While we're in cycles, the elites are riding in their luxurious car, and flying in their private jets producing all the emissions the world needs.
  Yet! We have to deprive ourselves from vehicles, and they be enjoying life.
  
  Private aviation is basically nothing in terms of emissions. Is pretty gross though.

I can spend 17 minutes driving to work, or 1.5 hours catching buses. Easy choice for me.
- "The only factor I care about is my own personal convenience. Nothing else will influence my choices that affect others." That's you.
  
  Literally no one is going to quadruple their commute as a good deed. Right or wrong.
  People are struggling for free time from capitalistic slavery as it is.

"Cars kill kids"? Can you get more evil and propagandistic than that? What a dirty play on dumb people's emotions.
"BuT wHat aBoUt tHe cHiLdReN?" 😭
- Okay but, counterpoint, cars kill kids.
  Edit, so I don't have to keep repeating myself, and because this is important fucking information:
  https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/
  Passenger vehicles are by far the most dangerous motorized transportation option compared. Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per 100,000,000 passenger miles was over 20 times higher than for buses, 17 times higher than for passenger trains, and 595 times higher than for scheduled airlines.Other comparisons are possible based on passenger trips, vehicle miles, or vehicle trips, but passenger miles is the most commonly used basis for comparing the safety of various modes of travel.
  
  Thank you for excepting the exhausting challenge to explain this to a bunch of meat-/car-brains.
  
  Buses kill kids too. Trains too. Airplanes too. Let's get rid of transportation.
  Or is it about the numbers all of the sudden?
  You've got to be a special level of dumb to think that anything in life has zero risk. Even food kills kids under certain circumstances.
  
  Drowning kills kids. Shall we get rid swimming pools?
- If the leading cause of death globally 4-15 year olds is car accidents then it's not a dirty play IMO.

I live in Canada there is no other option
- You live in Canada where there is no other option and yet somehow a significant portion of your neighbors don't own cars. Wonder how that words, Rab.
  
  All my neighbours own cars. Literally every single one

cars are death machines
"studies show that cars save millions of lives annually"
- Study brought to you by volkswagen of america

you can't stop driving when the city is trash and doesn't have pt, this is just thoughtless optimism that isn't helpful to anyone
- I mean, you could quite possibly cycle... moreso if you opt to use an electric bike
  Out of curiosity how big is your city/your normal commute?
  
  I can cycle but I'll have to cycle next to a 6 lane stroad and I don't want to kms

I agree with all of these except the last one.
Cars don't ruin cities, the assholes that drive them do.
- Guns don't kill people
  Nuh uh
  I kill people
  With guns

I live ~5 minutes from my work, but unless I want to walk/bike on the shoulder of a road where people are regularly going 60mph I have no option besides driving. And i live in a small town, must be even worse for medium/large sized cities
- Not in places where they build proper roads/infrastructure. Generally this gets better the larger the city is, not worse.
  Your situation sounds terrible but your local jurisdiction could choose to fix it. If enough people advocate for it, it will happen.
  
  How many are built for bikes/walking and not cars? All i see are parking lots on top of parking lots all over the goddamn country
- I work 25min by foot from home, and while most of it is by busy carcentric streets, I can walk a bit through a park.
  If I drive a car I can get there in 10 minutes or 15-20 in a rush hour.
  I can ride a bike (my own or a city bike that's free for under 15min) in 13min.
  Or I can either take a bus (25min) or a tram (around 30, because I need to walk further but less than a straight walk.
  I actively refuse to move to any "cheaper" new suburbs because then I would have to sit in a car for 80 minutes no matter how I feel about it that day.

Yeah this'll convince people! /s

Ok well good luck riding your non motorized ambulance to the hospital then.
- You missed the point by miles.
  
  The shitty, ableist, not well thought out point? I’m not gonna feel shit about this. Nothing you could say to make me feel different about that.