this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2026
1347 points (98.8% liked)

Fuck Cars

16697 readers
1166 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Asfalttikyntaja@sopuli.xyz 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

It’s the same everywhere. Not just American thing.

[–] orioler25@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Though capitalism is pervasive globally, I don't think it's necessary to narrow our understanding of its specificities within the US metropole to be able to discuss the commonalities globally.

Car dependency is certainly more prevalent within the US than it is the EU, but even it's presence in either takes on different forms and performs different functions. And then, the car dependency in the US is different from colonized spaces in Latin America, or between Latin American settler-colonial states like Brazil or Argentina.

[–] Zarobi@aussie.zone 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

We have the same car dependency issues here in Australia. I tried to go without a car once, and then I realised it would take me 2 hours and 2 transfers to go to work instead of a 30 minute drive. And good luck going to any appointment; you end up taking a lot of taxis

[–] orioler25@lemmy.world 0 points 5 days ago

yes, it happens in many places. Except, Australia has just under 30 million people in it, where the US has 350 million. Additionally, the US is where the car industry and car-centric city planning emerged, and it did so within the context of a culture with not only a settler-colonial incentive to dominate space, but also a significant population of other oppressed groups who posed a threat to white supremacy, like African Americans. Even though both the US and Australia engage in imperialism, the US has a much more expansive and pervasive imperial presence globally. Consequently, suburban sprawl was as much an element of white supremacy within the metropole as it was a military necessity once WWII concluded and the US state became anxious about decentralizing its manufacturing industries.

So, even though car dependency exists in other settler-colonial states, like Australia or Canada, the context and conditions under which that car dependency is created and functions is substantially different.

[–] cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

The advantage of having an advanced economy is that you don't have to have people living by the rules of the jungle anymore.