A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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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:
Because to them, 'car' and 'vehicle' mean the same thing.
Autonomous vehicles work better on rails. Also without having to deal with pedestrians.
I find these discussions seem to be dominated by young urbanites. People who don't need a car to get around as opposed to the huge number of people who live in areas that require a car to function. They are also physically able to bike many miles every day in any weather.
I took public transportation when I lived in a big city and was glad to have it but anytime I needed to go beyond a limited area in the city I needed a car. Now I live in an area with very limited public transportation and very very little is in walking distance and biking for my needs is not an alternative. Frequently using 100% public transportation routes would increase your travel time by a large amount, time you may not have or want to sacrifice. If you live in country like France it seems like the transit unions have a stranglehold on the nation as they can shut down everyone at will, if you have a car you at least have an alternative. There are also breakdown issues, maintenance shutdowns, etc. You also run into the last mile issue a lot. Where you need to go is frequently not a reasonable distance from the stop. I usually needed a car to get to the train stations for instance.
huge number of people who live in areas that require a car to function
That is exactly the problem. Areas that require a car to function shouldn't exist. That's what those "young urbanites" are arguing for.
And there are a lot of great point there about mixed zoning, but nuance is important. Should small towns with nearly nothing available locally, where you have to travel outside of town for most things just not exist? Even if they do have train connections (as they often do where I live, in Europe), you usually only have one train every 1-2 hours unless there's some specific significance to your town.
Improving things is a nice goal, but it often feels like here that people just want to eliminate anything that doesn't conform to their ideals of how the world should be like.
Bicycles are one of the most energy-efficient ways to travel, and electric ones even more so. But absolutely no one refers to them as "vehicles"...
Just an add here ... Pedestrian fatalities are up, largely due to huge vehicles in general. But EVs tend to be very heavy because of the batteries. So collisions tend to be very unpleasant.
Can confirm. Rode a 1000w electric bike to work every day and couldn't wait to get a car after all the near-misses I had. It's even more dangerous than a pedal bike cause no one expects a bicycle to be going almost 30 MPH. Almost got hit at least 3-4 time from people turning right cause they didn't expect me to be inside the intersection so soon.
They're a lot of fun for recreation but not as a daily driver, unless you have a suicide wish.
It's almost as of going 50kph with a bicycle isnt a good idea to begin with
Had a friend die doing 60mph on a pedal bike down a hill. He got hit by a car, people blamed the car but he was on the wrong side of the road around the bend and the car was only doing 15mph. I just want to live, we are all headed underground. Just a different speeds.
See and I get the opposite problem.
I wanted to buy an electric motorcycle since I use my old gas bike to make the same trip for work two times a month. The trip is 215 km and only goes though one town (about 45 km from one end). This is easy with most gas motorcycles and I thought that an EV version of a hwy cruiser should have no issue with say a 250 km range (since I stay the night I can charge from a slow plug).
Well let me tell you how frustrating "city" brain is about EVs. I mostly got e-bikes (like a bicycle) tossed at me, and the few that make the cut (Damon HyperSport, for example) are geared like a rocket and all the stats are based on city riding. 200 km max speed and no hwy gearing is stupid, but hey CITY CITY CITY! Where are the non insane vehicles? I don't want to ride a 0-60 in <3 second monster, I don't want to be curled up for 3 hours on a crotch rocket, and I don't want to deal with an app just to charge. We don't all live in your cities, some that do need to leave said cities, and until a normal non toy like EV vehicle hits the market the wider world will lump it all in the same bullshit pile.
I don't have the option for a public transit, hell they killed the trains and buses off even if I wanted to do the milk run.
I can't wait for the REM (bottom left picture) to open, it's in less than a week!! After so many years, at last.
I just bought an electric motorbike, design is like a Vespa. I love it. Top speed kinda sucks but I love it. I'd love to take a train or bus instead but there is literally no line between my work and home that doesn't involve a longer walk than the ride itself.
This video explains really well exactly why transit is better than cars: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=j4s9WDDRE2A
This one too: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=WiI1AcsJlYU
I also like to point to this graphic: 
Cars are just an insanely inefficient way to move people around in cities.
But you can't disrupt an industry without cars! The shareholders won't like that! /s
Because not everyone does or can live in a city? That e-bike would be crazy impractical for my buddy who lives on a mountain in rural WV.
Not everyone lives in your circumstances.
that's an argument to talk about electric cars at least some of the time, not to exclusively talk about them at the expense of any other transportation option. According to US government statistics, people in rural areas make up about 15% of the population, why is their situation dictating the national conversation around clean transportation?
As the other people mentioned. In North America, the percentage of urban populations is 85%, Latin America 81%, Europe 75%
Yes, rural areas are probably in need of private vehicles, but not everyone out of those 85-75% of people need a car. We've become too reliant on them.
Those stats are a bit misleading. For example, I live in a "urban" environnement, aka a town, but the closest anything is still 15km away.
Fair point, but I still think it holds true for > 50% of people. That is still a huge percentage and the rest of the people that would need vehicles wouldn't need such destructive infrastructure in the middle of cities. Cities could be a lot more compact, walkable and without 15 lane highways running through the middle. The vast majority of traffic in cities is caused by people who could replace that with public transport or walking in a better planned city.
Now America is a lot more problematic there because of suburbanisation, idk how you fix that at this point, but I hope that it's possible.
I don't think you do "fix" suburbanization because people who live in suburbs probably want to live in suburbs. Not everyone wants to be in a dense city, for me that sounds like hell.
However, those who do live in those circumstances would find such things useful. It's okay for something to benefit less than 100% of the population.
There is no place for logic on this sub!
Only endless complaining and pretending that everyone has the exact same situation. And god forbid we have choice too.
I'll take mass transit if it is convenient, I'll hop on my electric bike when I want, but I also will take a gasoline car or electric car if it makes more sense to do that or if I simply want to go cruise around for a bit.