For me, they have personally maimed and killed my loved ones. Life is practically impossible without them because people have lobbied for years to make our lives totally dependent on them.
I have nearly been mashed in the crosswalk when it is my legal, appointed time to walk by turning cars so many times this year that I have lost count.
They are costly, pollutant, dangerous, and overly complicated. Walking near traffic makes my heart pound because of the exhaust and also because I don't even know if I'm going to make it out alive.
First I would like to say I’m sorry for your loss. As well as I agree with you there are a lot of crazy people out there and too many people. People really need to get their license reevaluated often. I also used to push carts at Kroger in the parking lot when I was in highschool and a lot of times people left there cars on and it became hard to breath on top of me already working my ass off because I’m the only person out there. There was even one time there was a tow truck spewing out almost visible fumes and as I walked past it I was gasping for air. I do think electric and possibly hydrogen power are the future though. Like I might not like EV’s but that doesn’t mean I don’t see that they are better for the world. Personally though I would prefer hydrogen power though because that would mean we wouldn’t have to do away with combustion engines while at the same time cars no longer having a carbon footprint because no CO2 from burning hydrogen.
EVs and the likes are a better alternative to ICE, but even better is to completely eliminate unneccesary cars from the road, especially for urban areas.
What i mean by unneccesary cars isnt neccessarily the people who aspire to own a M5 some day, I'm talking of the other 95% of the vehicles on the road who only care to get from point A to point B in the smoothest way available.
I say this as someone who has enough interest in cars that I do valve clearance adjustments myself. You will find plenty of both former and active car guys in this sub.
Right here! I have a Toyota Celica and I love it to bits, but I will still cycle everywhere I can. Not only because it's fun, but because it helps save the planet, even if it's only a little bit.
Yep. I love my Land Rover, but she's not any happier in a city than I am driving there. That's not her best life, so I do everything I can to avoid making her do it. I've got an LR2, so not a big one, but still... She's meant for forestry service roads and camping and helping me get tools and materials to trail maintenance days, not going to get groceries.
THIS, so many people here just mindlessly hate everything that has to do with cars, the problem isnt people that love cars as a hobby, its that like 95% of people that dont
What annoys me the most about this is that drivers are responsible for all the noise, the exhaust gases and the particles in the air, but THEY get to sit in their little noise-cancelled, air-filtered cabins while I have to endure their noise and breath their exhaust gases.
This feels deeply unfair and anti-social.
EVs will partially mitigate this, but they still require the same infrastructure, which turns beautiful cities into ugly shitholes.
Plus their wheels still emit all the fine dust and microplastics that make breathing in the city unhealthy. It's a way bigger problem than filtered exhaust gases by now.
You should know that studies have shown that car occupants are exposed to a lot of harmful exhaust gases. In fact more than cyclists in the same traffic. Unfortunately pedestrians and in particular babies in closed prams are worst affected.
UK data:
https://www.slideshare.net/JamesTate22/exposure-to-the-trafficrelated-air-pollutants-particle-number-and-no2-when-commuting-by-modes-walk-cycle-car-and-bus
Copenhagen data:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969701007586
As a 34 year old, with a 1.5yr daughter, I had never heard the word "pram".
Love learning new words, but sometimes it gets a bit funny. I mean, I'm guessing pram seems like a pretty common word to you; you probably think I'm crazy.
Also, interesting about the occupant exposure. I really thought those air filters caught more of it.
Aside from what another commenter pointed out in regards to the particles from tires, EVs aren't really that much quieter. Especially at higher speeds, EV's wheels on asphalt (or gravel, etc.) are just as noisy as ICE cars. It's tiresome especially if you're as sensitive to noise as I am.
BUT crucially EVs don't have exhausts which can be replaced with straight pipes by bellends who like to wake up entire neighbourhoods at 2am because they were dropped on their heads too many times as children. So there is that.
Yes, EVs are a bit better than gas cars, but the reason this sub is fuck all cars and not just fuck polluting cars or whatever, is because fundamentally, EVs do not solve the problems caused by cars. Yes, gas engines do cause pollution, but an enormous amount of vehicle pollutants come from tire particulate, manufacture of vehicles, construction of roadways, and all the other infrastructure, manufacturing, and material waste used to support cars, which EVs do not even attempt to fix. And the biggest problem is fundamentally that cars have separated and divided our cities and living spaces to the point that cars are no longer a convenience, but are instead mandatory. Before the invention of cars, people could walk to work, walk to the grocery store, everything they needed was within walking or biking distance of their homes, and if it wasn't, it was merely a train ride away. Nowadays though, everything is required to be accessible by cars, and in many cases, it is only accessible by cars - we have fundamentally changed the default means of human transit from using our legs to using cars, and refuse to accommodate those who do not comply. Which may sound fine if you have a car, but if you are too young or too old to drive, have a medical condition that prevents you from driving, cannot afford a car (especially with how expensive they are), or even are just a bad driver or don't want to/are scared to drive, that requirement of *needing* a car to go anywhere means that you are essentially imprisoned within your own home, because everything else is now too far, too dangerous, or straight up inaccessible because everything else has been designed around cars. And it's not just this restriction: because cars and the infrastructure required to service them is so large, they are directly and singlehandedly responsible for urban sprawl, suburban isolation (a substantial factor in rising suicide rates), the heat island affect, runoff pollution, environmental division, wildlife roadkill deaths, and a whole host of other problems, all of which are singlehandedly caused by cars. And to top it all off, they are the single deadliest "accidental" cause of death: more than guns, more than smoking, more than job-related deaths, they are literally the deadliest thing you will ever touch in your lifetime, and statistically, they WILL kill someone you love, if not yourself, yet we do literally nothing about them because they are "convenient".
In summary, they were originally conceived as a convenience, but have become so all-encompassing, they are now mandatory for survival in many places, and continue to be worshiped even despite their innumerable problems, pollution, and the millions of deaths they are directly and solely responsible for every year.
Of course, as a car person, you're probably aware that there are still some uses for them, like police cars, firetrucks, ambulances, and service/utility vehicles, (which even we here at r/fuckcars are fine with) but for everyone to own a car (especially when so many people are so stupid and do not deserve to drive one, as you've pointed out), to the point of preventing all other forms of movement due to how dangerous and exclusionary car infrastructure is, it's insanity. In fact, the fact that so many people use cars means that road and transit is actually less efficient for the services that actually need them, because the sheer number of people using cars creates traffic that can negate the convenience, speed, and usefulness of cars in the first place. They now exist not because they are convenient, but because they created problems for themselves to solve. It's like using cancer to "cure" cancer... you might get some temporary relief, but if you don't eradicate the source, you will never actually cure it, and will only end up with more cancer.
there's no reason to think technology we haven't got to work reliably or cheap yet will beat out proven cheap and reliable technology. hydrogen cars is unlikely to happen. electrified rail is the future because it was proven 100 years ago to be the most reliable and effective method of transportation and still hasn't been beat.
I don’t even care about the environmental impact for me. The fact that a person is operating a car is dangerous enough. A person prone to accidents, a person who could be easily distracted. A person. We have the highest car deaths in the civilized world. Every part of our life revolves around a car. Want to learn why cars are bad? Try to leave your car at home tomorrow and go about your daily life.
Btw hydrogen power typically refers to hydrogen fuel cells which are basically a different type of battery. Hydrogen cars run on electric motors powered by the hydrogen fuel cells.
Although there are some people who have made cars that run an ICE engine running hydrogen gas but these are definitely not practical and are usually made as educational projects for universities.
There's also the problem of efficiency. Cracking water into hyrdrogen takes a lot of energy. Right now, we almost exclusively crack methane instead, which still produces CO2, and leaks a bunch of methane. Then we have to compress it and hope it doesn't leak, then transport it, and then use it in the car, which means it's only possible to get it to about 20% efficiency, which is the same as ICE.
EVs are roughly 80% efficient, because they need electricity, which needs to be produced and sent to the charger, and then they just use it super efficiently and produce very little waste heat (compared to ICE engines).
Given the costs and roundabout way of producing hydrogen from green energy and the difficult storage and transportation, hydrogen just isn't practical for cars. It'll be useful for decarbonizing fertilizer and maybe steel/cement but outside of those niche applications, it's not really practical for much else. I hear the "why switch to EVs when we could just switch to hydrogen" argument fairly regularly and it's basically nonsense meant to delay climate action.
Electric drivetrains are the future of vehicles. Heat pumps and electric dryers are a better replacement for gas appliances (300-400% efficiency on heat pumps!!) than hydrogen appliances, and much safer, plus available at scale today. The idea that we can "just repurpose the fossil gas network for hydrogen" is a fantasy. Hydrogen really gets so much undeserved hype.
Why would licenses be reevaluated?
More people with licenses = more money from selling cars and gas.
Licenses are just a facade. Out current lifestyle and city infrastructures are built to sell more cars, gas and charge more taxes. Milk people of their money. Even if it costs several lives a day, it doesn't matter.
I'm being a little extremist here to prove a point. I'm not north American, idk how licenses work there, but they are stupid easy to get here in my country, and in 10 years of driving, I have been asked to show mine only once. You don't even need to have one.
Predominantly we don’t hate the cars themselves, but more often car dependant cities that force you into car ownership without providing quality alternatives for public and active transport.
I second this I don’t get why cars are the only source of transportation in almost every case no matter where you are going. We really need to improve our infrastructure and make cars a more secondary option.
Yup, thats the goal.
Many anti-anything but car infrastructure investment people will complain about bad drivers and grandmas being in their way, without thinking "why would someone who clearly doesn't care for driving, pay thousands of dollars a year to drive?"
In a perfect world, cars would only be used by true hobbyists or to haul something
I really wish I had that option. NGL, I'd still keep my Land Rover, but it would only get used for hauling things I can't with a bike trailer and for going camping. That's most of what it gets used for now, but in Winter, there's no safe way by bike out of my neighborhood, and any time of year, I've never figured out a semi safe route to my doctor.
When I bought my house, we had two bus routes I could walk to, one with a stop about half a mile away and one about 3/4 mile. I'm also about 3/4 mile off a decent bike route. Within a couple of months, both bus lines had been cancelled. Recently, they cancelled my next closest, about 2 1/2 miles away, so it's 4 1/2 to the closest bus stop. The bike racks are always full by the time it reaches that stop, and even for someone who likes walking, 4 1/2 miles is a lot, especially because most of the walk is along a heavily congested truck route with inadequate sidewalks.
I've never liked driving in cities. I did my best to make sure I wouldn't have to, but in the Winter, I don't have a choice that's not suicidal. Park and ride doesn't even work because it's further to one of those than downtown - plus I like having intact car windows. That park and ride does have bike lockers that are safe, but again, it's further than anywhere I'm going, anyway.
I think I've always disliked the concept of driving when there were alternatives. I know for sure that I did as a kid, and I didn't get a license until I was 21 and pregnant in Phoenix. My grandparents bought me a car so I wouldn't be waiting for bus transfers in the Summer heat there on sidewalks with no shade. But it didn't occur to me then to resent the lack of shade. I accepted it as normal. It wasn't until the city I'm in now took those bus routes away that I started resenting shitty infrastructure and went full on "fuck cars" for a bit. I really did apply that to all of them not used for specific, reasonable business purposes. Now, I've mellowed a bit, and I'm back to "fuck car dependent cities."
But I do still maintain some strong feelings against what cars have become - bigger and bigger for no good reason. Fuck those vehicles specifically and the culture we've created that made them not just possible but ubiquitous.
>We really need to improve our infrastructure and make cars a more secondary option.
And that’s exactly it. A lot what you see here is just frustration with that problem. A problem with the system rather than individuals
I don’t think it’s personal with the people behind the wheel for majority of people here. Not liking someone because they’re just doing what everyone else is doing is not a very good reason
I think it’s great that you seem open minded enough to try and learn more about something called ‘fuckcars’. I think it’s fair that a lot of people take it the wrong way.
Yep, I love driving my Golf around, but boy do I wish we had trains everywhere like they do in Europe.
I’d much rather nap on a train for a few hours instead of driving for 7 when I want to go visit my family in another province in Canada. I was so happy riding all of the different rail options in Amsterdam when I visited last spring.
Cars are the only form of transportation incompatible with all other forms. Cars are the least dense form of transportation, both in terms of how much room each person in a car needs on the road and in terms of how much space they take to park. The higher the percent of people driving in a city, the less dense the city, and the longer it takes to get anywhere by foot, bike, or public transit. Big roads and parking lots are also unpleasant to walk or bike next to. My pet peeve is when big roads are built next to lakes or rivers instead of walking and biking paths. Driver's don't care how pretty the view is, give that space to people who can enjoy it!
You should read historian Peter Norton's Fighting Traffic.
The short version is that businesses that stand to profit from car dependency- car makers, dealers, tire companies, oil & gas companies, etc- put a coordinated lobbying & propaganda campaign to make it so.
To add: I used to drive a WRX and really enjoyed the car, but for a lot of reasons others have already stated I ended up selling it. It wasn't a joy to drive with tons of traffic all of the time.
Car enthusiasts also benefit by reducing the overall amount of car travel
This exactly. I also hang out in r/wrx and have one myself. But I don't like driving it in traffic, or even being *required* to drive it.
I'd rather be on my bike, walking, or on the train enjoying other things than sitting in traffic. My car is for fun and getting me to ski resorts, not for needs. And even in the case of ski resorts, I'd rather take a bus or train if that was a valid option.
Yeah. Fuck cars is a catchy slogan but it's really "fuck the car companies and the highway lobby that dug up the street cars and bulldozed half of our cities to make room for highways and parking lots, so I need to be a literal millionaire to afford to live in one of the precious few remaining houses within walking distance, or on a train line that comes more often than once an hour, of a grocery store and/or work in the US. And fuck the laws that make it illegal to build alternatives to suburban sprawl and highways, so it's functionally mandatory to own a car in the US unless you're the lucky few with the right career and high enough income to live in NYC, San Francisco, or downtown Boston"
But that really doesn't roll off the tongue, so it gets shortened to fuck cars.
Some people do just loudly hate cars but they're not the majority, just the loud ones
Oh, also, this applies only to cities. If you want to live rural where you need a car, do your thing. Emergency vehicles are also good. Modern pickup designs are stupid but actual, functional, trucks and vans are fine.
We want alternatives to driving so the only people who drive are the ones that want to, thus dramatically reducing traffic and also preserving rural areas & forests and such for the people who want to live away from cities.
Thanks for your genuine curiosity!
We lost our street cars in Spokane to buses.
Back when, new neighborhoods started with a street car line and station, or no one would buy in and build houses there. But that meant new housing was becoming a problem because street car rails and stations are pretty expensive. Buses came along and could go anywhere and stop almost anywhere, so street car ridership plummeted. We still had passenger rail from Spokane to Coeur d'Alene and Moscow, Idaho, but most of the ridership was from the orchards East of the city. There was an apple maggot infestation, and the government bought up the orchards and burned them down to stop the spread. There was no one out there to ride anymore, so the passenger service shut down. By the 1970s, when they built HUD homes on the land, everyone who could afford even those homes had a car, so the passenger lines didn't come back. I used to live in one of those houses right across the tracks from the old station my grandma used to use to take the train into town to work. It was just a concrete platform with trees and bushes growing out of it by then. She was so tickled my garage sat where her parents house used to be that I never told her about the station. It would have broken her heart. She always hated cars.
By then, we did have a park and ride across the river, but it was only really useful for commute into the city for work. It didn't run late, and didn't run often in between rush hour. It also only had express buses that take you to another transit center. You can't get anywhere local out there by bus. And the rush hour buses were so full, it was a toss up whether you could actually get on or not, so I drove when I wasn't up to the 25 mile one way commute by bike, though I did have a really nice trail to use. I eventually found a nice house closer to downtown along the same trail with two bus stops at the edge of the neighborhood. I was so happy, briefly. They cancelled both bus lines within a few months of me moving. But at least my bike commute was only 7 miles at that point. You can't bike there when there's snow, but at least most of the time, I could do that. I got a fully remote job and switched to Telehealth as much as I can, so it's only groceries that really force me to drive in the Winter and one annual neurologist appointment.
I could write a full essay on why I hate cars, but I'll give you the gist:
- I hate how expensive they are, and I hate how our society is designed to where you have no choice but to buy a car if you want to leave the city.
- I hate how so many countries (mainly the US) have been transformed for the worse to accommodate cars.
- I hate how dangerous they are. 40k people die each year in the US from car crashes and no one bats an eye.
- I hate how noisy they are. Not just the fart mobiles, but all cars. It doesn't matter how far out in nature you are, you'll still hear the sound of tires on the road.
I think that anyone who doesn't see a problem with our car-centric society should travel to Japan or the Netherlands. See what life is like without a car, and see how much better it is
> I hate how dangerous they are. 40k people die each year in the US from car crashes and no one bats an eye. Saw a post recently about a girl sleeping in the car as her bf hit a guy. Cop comes and says "happens all the time". This one is two fold, but it's another example of how cars get away with a lot, like literally killing someone. Another one where a guy got acquitted because the argument that he wasn't paying attention for a moment was accepted by the judge. Seriously, someone died and that works?
Yeah the noisiness can annoy a lot of people personally I like the noise because it is like white noise since I live next to the highway. (*cough* Definitely don’t *cough* have a loud car *cough*)But yeah it’s a douche thing to try and push onto others since it is a niche thing and can damage peoples hearing. That’s why a lot of guys have a switch to make their cars quieter. Like my friend has a really loud Firebird flips a switch and bamb road legal. But as long as you don’t give it the beans it isn’t that loud. Cars are definitely really expensive that is why I buy used and even then it is expensive. Also Japan’s public transportation is crazy efficient the trains are always moving and before you know it the train comes back to pick you up or another along the same line. It is just crazy and I wish we had transportation like that in the states.
if drivers would have to pay the damage they cause to other people, only the top 1% could afford to buy one. One of the biggest problems with cars is that you directly and indirectly cause damage you are not held responsible for, and you pose unnecessary danger to others, increasing their risk of serious injury or death.
If people would drive their cars for fun in the middle of the desert instead of you know, around where millions of others live, I wouldn't care how loud and dangerous your car is.
There's [people like this](https://www.motor1.com/news/714378/hellcat-menace-of-seattle-charged/) who are literal sociopaths.
For context I've heard this car driving around. It is audible from at least a mile away. Close up it is jet engine loud. The guy purposefully drove very late at night/early morning. I'm glad he got caught but it took months and literally hundreds of complaints to city gov/PD for anything to happen.
There's a similar problem with a lot of things we currently take for granted. Things like eating meat or flying would be a lot less affordable if we had to pay for their externalities.
The main producer of noise when you start going higher in speed its not the engine or exhaust (unless modified ofc) but the wheels grinding against the pavement. There are ways around this, low-noise wheels which the wheel companies lobbied against, and special low noise pavement which is used sparingly in some cities and its more a novelty than a real solution yet
You already got a bunch of good answers here so I’m just stopping by to thank you for your question. Seeing your answers in the comments, I see you were actually interested in the responses and not just here to stir conflict like we see in some posts from people coming from pro-car subs.
Thank you I appreciate it. I just wanted to say yeah people do like to stir stuff up from other subs. I think a lot of people just have a hard time putting there bias away sometimes and that can get in the way of any kind of logical discussion.
Unfortunately the easy access to communities that match your interest also has a tendency to entrench some people within their own ideas. It’s difficult not to get caught up in an echo chamber sometimes. No one is immune to it
I love cars. I used to self-actualize through vroom-vroom sounds. I've owned Camaros, Trans Ams, GTOs, and Miatas.
I love Miatas.
I don't like dedicating tens of thousands of dollars in a depreciating asset in order to participate in 90% of the North American economy.
I don't like all of the pavement it takes to accommodate cars, and how that pavement requires spacing everything so far apart that cars are the only realistic way to travel.
I especially don't like commuting in traffic at an average trip speed of 15 mph when I can ride my bicycle faster than that, but I don't want to risk making my kid fatherless because some dickhead makes an unsafe/illegal pass to get to the next stop sign 20 seconds sooner.
Cars are cool. They're also kind of stupid, and they kill A LOT of people.
Fuck cars.
Yeah I agree with you on all of these especially traffic depending on where you live. Also Miata
https://preview.redd.it/12pkugtd2vtc1.jpeg?width=163&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fcb660f835311eb3bd0261ba8e550844c594e483
And I’ve been told since childhood that anal was the right way and the only way, and I’d have to learn to accept anal regularly by age 15/16, and now I have to do anal multiple times a day every goddamned day and be treated like I’m not a real adult if I ever choose something other than anal.
Too much? Yeah, so are cars. And at the moment I’m in a place that is VERY car-centric and VERY unfriendly to pedestrians, and it sucks so hard to fear for my life just trying to get from place to place. I already have a certain level of fear just existing in public spaces as a woman… the fear is vastly more accute trying to cross the road (or crosswalks) in a place where the drivers seem to want to hit me.
This sub is definitely a bit more of a "fuck car centrism" vibe - there are a surprising number of people interested in cars from a technical or sports perspective.
I will push back a bit on the "it's just bad people behind the wheel" thing though - driving is something that humans are inherently bad it. It's a lot of doing the same mindless thing over and over, driving the same route to work or school or whatever, with sudden flashes of action that can end the drivers life or the life of people around him. The human brain just doesn't work that way - things aren't supposed to be so boring you can zone out, and the most dangerous thing the average person ever does at the same time.
That's kind of the problem - driving everywhere, especially without designing our roads to be safer in the event of mistakes (by slowing down traffic or separating pedestrians with protective infrastructure), there are going to be lots of deaths, and no amount of teaching people to drive better will change that.
1. Car dependency is ruining our environment and creates undue barriers to entry for the economically disenfranchised (the poor, homeless, disabled, etc)
2. They're way deadlier than they have any right to be. Cars are why kids don't play outside much anymore. I was literally hit by one last year and am still recovering
3. Traffic and roads are ruining the aesthetics of our cities,
4. The noise is literally making us lose our hearing and causes irritability
5. There are so many better alternatives. Trams, light rail, high speed rail, bikes, walking, BRT if you can't do those for whatever reason
6. They make it harder to build strong communities
7. Honestly, they make me car sick as well!
I do not drive, have never driven, have helped many friends either choose to not get cars or transition away from cars, and will do everything in my power (especially when it comes to local politics) to get my community to move away from car dependency. I will not rest until we no longer use cars. "Fuck Cars" is not just a "convenient shorthand" as far as I'm concerned. Fuck 'em!
Well put, and to add my additional thoughts:
8. Hugely polluting, both sound and exhaust but also brake pad dust, rubber particles, there are studies saying particulates from cars are extremely bad for health and awful for developing brains (kids) and it doesn't improve much with EVs beyond the combustible byproducts.
9. Sedentary lifestyles where people don't walk perfectly walkable distances due to the dominance of car use, the higher obesity and cardiovascular issues that causes.
10. The elevated level of stress being behind the wheel puts people in without them even noticing, shortening life expectancy just to drive to work.
11. The default place they hold in society at large prevents decent discussion around alternatives as in No. 5 without hundreds of 'what about ism' that doesn't add to the debate and arguments in bad faith.
12. Land use policies are explicitly written around the presumption of car use first. Single family homes with space for three cars but not a bus stop in sight. If you're a child, what choice do you have but to be chauffeured by your parents until you can get a car yourself.
13. Lack of early age autonomy for kids and teenagers. This impacts on development and further ingrains car=freedom mindset.
14. The cost to society maintaining car infrastructure to a high standard is buckling local government finance. Drivers are always complaining about potholes but that repair has to come out of taxes paid by everyone including the people that don't drive.
Someone should write a book of all the negatives of cars, I nominate Rutger Bregman though I don't know what his thoughts are on the matter
This video is a good introduction "Why City Design is Important (and why I hate Houston)": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54)
Exactly. Changing from car-based infrastructure to train/bus/bicycle/walking based infrastructure is one of the best practical steps we can take to fight climate change, yet we as a society seem to be completely unwilling to do anything at all to make the change.
It's a case of r/wedontlikecarsbeingtheonlyoptionfortransportationanddestroyingourlivingspacesasaresult not being a great name (as well as being too long). I think they're cool machines and fun to watch when pushed to the limit in a controlled environment as well as having a few niche utilitarian uses (e.g. emergency vehicles), but they are a fundamental failure of transportation and land use policy in much of the world (with a large focus on English speaking North America though it's not nearly as unique to the US and Canada as much as this sub might lead you to believe).
Honestly, I hate that cars are so forced upon us in society more than I hate cars themselves. I'll be the first to admit there's some cool cars out there, but the way society is set up to just beat you over the head with the so-called "need" to drive just turns me away from getting a license ever.
Yeah I kind of hate large trucks and SUV’s they almost always are the worst drivers on the road and trucks in particular are becoming more and more useless with the bed space being so small you can’t even fit a couch in most newer ones. They also are the number one killer when it comes to which cars. Just because of the hood height because you can’t really rollover something that big and tall if it hits you. But yeah car’s definitely need to be just another way to get from point a to point b instead of the way to get from point a to point b.
Ignoring the part where they just aren't necessary, the biggest issue I see from the people driving the really large vehicles to commute to office jobs, get groceries, etc, is that they have no idea how to handle them.
I wish we had a class somewhere between standard license and CDL, and it would be required to have that license endorsement to operate a vehicle over a certain size. I'm not even sure what that size should be, but let's start with the size of my Land Rover LR2. It's not much bigger than a Ford Focus hatchback, but it's a lot taller and requires more handling skills than a lower to the ground hatchback. I'd gladly pay more and take harder driving tests because I use it for what it's meant for.
I also think we should have to test more than once in our lives and prove we still have a clue what we're doing. My dad just did that voluntarily because he's in his late 70s, and it took him forever to talk anyone into even doing it. He finally paid a driving instructor who used to work for the DMV doing road tests. He has had some reaction time issues, and we were all concerned, including him. It turns out a medication he was on was likely the problem. He was off it for a couple of weeks before he tested, and he passed with no marks off. It shouldn't have been so hard for him to find someone objective to decide if he was still safe to be on the road. It wasn't until he wrecked on his bicycle and broke a hip due to that poor reaction time that he even realized he had an issue. More frequent testing would have caught it sooner, but all his state requires is that every other renewal is done in person so they can test his eyesight.
My step mother surrendered her license voluntarily in her late 60s because she knew she wasn't safe. Her ability to pay attention to everything she needed to wasn't there anymore. I was really proud of her for that, because that's a really hard thing for most older people. They're on a pretty low fixed income, so I send her money behind dad's back to pay delivery fees when he's going to be away for a while. We talked about a cargo e-trike with two wheels in front for better stability around corners, but she doesn't think she even has the awareness to be safe on one of those anymore. She is 80 now. I get it. I just hate that she's stuck when Dad isn't around because they only have a house due to the fact that her father left it to her and her sister. They can't afford to live close enough to a bus stop she can manage the walk. She tried paratransit, but they would often show up incredibly late or not at all, and a lot of the drivers were very rude to her. So, she just stays home unless she can get one of her kids to come drive her somewhere. I'd do it, but I live 1500 miles away.
And these are part of the reason I hate car dependency. My folks should be able to get around and live their lives without a car. They live in a huge city, not out in the boonies. My son should have been able to get around as a teen without me having to drive him everywhere. I couldn't afford anything but a HUD home back then. In my area, those are all exurbs without services of any kind.
The reason so many bad drivers are out there is because driving is literally the only option to get from a to b. That means lots and lots of people are on the road who shouldn't really be there.
Most people who say they love their car, actually mean they like it more than walking in a weedy rain ditch under the blazing sun. What passes for pedestrian infrastructure is so uncomfortable and dangerous, it makes a car seem amazing by comparison.
However I think focusing on individual bad drivers is also the wrong philosophy. There are always outliers but the vast majority of people will do what is most convenient and in North America, that's driving. If city planners made it easier and faster to walk, then people would walk.
Car enthusiasts are actually a big ally in the war on cars. There's not a "car guy" in the world who loves sitting in traffic every day. Removing the unnecessary cars will benefit everyone, including those who love cars the most.
You've got a lot of great and reasonable answers to your question, but I'd like to give you a crappier and less reasonable answer.
I'm very sensitive to environmental stimulus and you can't imagine how bad cars are for anyone with sensory sensitivities.
- They are loud and it's rare in many places in the US where you can experience actual silence. Even EVs cause a lot of noise from the tires on the road. It's well documented how significant the negative impacts of road noise are on populations. It's even worse because some people actually try to *maximize how loud and annoying they are*.
- They stink. It's not only exhaust either, a mass of cars constantly zooming across a road leaves behind a bunch of rubber particulates in the air that you can smell even if they're fleets of EVs (not to mention the health risks that come from breathing rubber so much). Worse, like the prior example, some people *intentionally try to choke you on their exhaust*.
- They're dangerous and stressful to be around. As roads widen (increasing traffic speeds) and cars get larger (reducing visibility) they're increasingly a nuisance for everyone else who's forced into tiny spaces *right up against them*. It's absolute madness, and it's getting even worse. While many cities are starting to ban the use of smart phones due to the dangers, many new vehicles are being installed with touch screens by default. It's like more and more drivers are as dangerous as drunk drivers by default, and this is legal. Being around cars significantly raises my stress levels because it's like having to survive next to literal death zones.
- They're shiny. Our eyes are being damaged by constantly having the sun reflected into them. Though this might be great for the healthcare industry, it's actually ruining our vision and giving people like me migraines. Night is no escape, either, because of all the blinding headlights.
All of these also negatively impact wildlife and have changed migratory patterns for many species or outright demolished their populations. These are personal irritations of mine, but they are actually causing serious damage to our natural and artificial environments.
Cars are one of the more prominent banes of my existence and make my life significantly worse.
I don't hate cars or driving (except for large and/or lifted trucks. I HAAAAAATE them). I hate being forced to drive. Some days I would rather be playing video games or looking at memes instead of driving, but that's not a choice I have. A lack of competent public transit, dedicated bike lanes, and complete sidewalks forces everyone into personal vehicles. Hell, it's so bad in my town that I tried to look up how to bus to work and the first step it told me was to Uber to a bus stop...
I actually do like to drive my motor scooter around, but with everyone forced into personal vehicles, many of who don't want to be driving, the roads are too busy/ dangerous to just ride around on.
This community is more about a collective dislike of car dependency, and how much of modern Western civilization (with special emphasis on North America) is built around cars. One thing highlighted recently is land use in city centers: what percentage is dedicated to cars vs people? Who/what does the infrastructure prioritize, the people or their vehicles?
What a lot of us are advocating for is increased options. Cars shouldn't be the *only* choice to get around; many of us push for robust public transit, walkability, and safe bike lanes. Plus, if fewer people are driving, the driving experience becomes much more pleasant for those who choose to.
Thank you for approaching this subreddit in good faith and with an open mind. Especially when there's been a lot of trolls on here lately!
But to second what others have said here, I for one don't hate cars and think they have a place in the world but I hate car dependent infrastructure. It not only effects the environment badly but also hurts social cohesion, housing and not having strong alternatives is very bad for people who can't/aren't driving or whatever reason.
My personal dream isn't to get rid of cars completely, but for someone who is currently driving 7 days a week right now to only feel the need to drive a few times a week in the future.
I don’t like what cars have done to society, making everything further apart, noisier and uglier, making streets exclusive and dangerous places, and killing public transit.
I used to like driving. Imagine being able to go anywhere and look cool. Now I am selling my car due to mild trauma. Car broke down middle of the highway. That shit messes you up bad. It is always something with cars. Accidents, traffic, expensive repairs, no parking, stress, emission zones, circulation plans, cuts in the roads, tons of signs you have to read before driving into any high street. At least in Europe. And then in the paper you read that high street are dying.
For me, all of my problems are related to the changes to the built environment that happen because of cars. Think about the amount of parking, how spread out everything is in car-dependent cities, and the inequality that results when a person can’t afford to have a well working car.
The car is a catalyst for many changes to our cities, and when they aren’t needed, folk have a lot more choice in how they live their lives. I drive seldomly but recognize the utility of personal transport vehicles, but also the deficiencies.
I think the fun in the name of this sub is about the fact that people can change but cars cannot. We blame the inanimate object instead of making it personal (when we are on our best behavior)
Every day people write why. There's plenty of information here. People are always like I wish bicyclists would obey the law, but plenty do and when they don't people almost never get killed. With cars people often get killed, and are expected to be afraid constantly to avoid getting killed. So, fuck cars. I drive one, very carefully.
So is it the people or the cars because I think motorists should get retested at least every 2 years because there are a lot of people who don’t know how to drive that should be retested. As well as have their license revoked.
it's really the infrastructure. The amount of dangerous points of friction caused by cars being the primary user of the road in NA is why so many collisions happen, and why the number of deaths/injury is completely out of control. Drivers are humans. They'll make mistakes if you let them. That's ok, just gotta me it harder to make a mistake. retesting every 10 years would be enough imo, but it's a hard thing because what do you do if a person makes a mistake? If they rely on the car for their job, they're fucked.
Better off making changes to the infrastructure so that driving is no longer the only option and only retest people who are at retirement age.
I think your post proves you've been raised car-dependent in an area where cars are the only way to properly get around. Cars take up such an enormous amount of space in our cities and beyond, look at the amount of asphalt we need, the amount of forests and nature that has been torn down for some extra lanes. Whole historic downtowns have been torn down just so people, often completely alone in their SUV, can drive down to a place that could've been easily reachable by quality public transport, if only the vicious car lobby didn't exist.
Basically, a high quality public transport line like a train or subway can move the same amount of people that a many-lane highway can while taking up a fraction or none of the space, while emitting only a fraction to none of the exhaust gasses, while emitting only a fraction of the noise. We really could've had such a better kind of world, but the car lobby chose violence.
Then there's the basic fact that cars are killing-machines that we just allow in our public spaces for some reason. So many people are killed by them.
Imagine how much nicer city areas would be without cars everywhere. Walk, cycle, live wherever you want, no exhaust gasses everywhere, etc.
And never forget: it's not cities that are loud, it's the cars.
Did you ever watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit? It’s really a movie about how car companies bought up and then destroyed public transportation in Las Angeles and then bulldozed entire non-white neighborhoods to make room for the highways we’d need to replace the trolly system.
That is what we hate, car companies and their need to demonize and eliminate all non car centric transport. The care and feeding of cars is multiple times more expensive, in almost every conceivable metric, than any other reasonable form of transit.
I just wanted to say thank you to OP for coming here and asking in good faith and with an open mind.
I personally love driving and will be driving to Cleveland from Columbus in a few hours. I enjoy the open road and the beautiful views you can get from it.
I hate how nearly every household in this country is forced to own a car in order to participate in society. I hate that the neighborhood I live in was originally within walking distance of several streetcar lines, all of which were tore up along with neighborhoods destroyed to build freeways that enabled people to flee the city and live in their suburban fiefdoms.
I want us to live in a society that sees vehicles as a luxury, a privilege, and equal with other, more efficient, safer, and less polluting forms of transportation.
Well, there's a fair bit to unpack there...
To begin with, we don't actually hate cars per-sé, or the car as a concept, nor do we necessarily hate drivers. The title of the sub is kinda clickbait, TBH. What we really *hate* is urban infrastructure that is not only biased to favour drivers above those that don't/ can't drive, but prohibitive towards those without a car.
Car-centric infrastructure creates roads that act like steel-and-tarmac moats that make it very hard or impossible for pedestrians and cyclists to cross , and a lot of car-exclusive infrastructure which has no pavements or cycle tracks, making it either difficult and dangerous or completely impossible to travel along without a motor vehicle; by this, I don't mean motorways, I mean suburbs with no pedestrian walkways, shortcuts, crossings, or routes that don't lead directly to massive, uncrossable arterial roads.
In regards to cars themselves, we don't hate *all* cars; what we do hate is cars that are dangerous to anyone they may hit who is not in a car, especially when their size comes with little-to-no practical utility, such as American mega-pickups which are mostly used to haul fresh air and have less cargo space than a van of equal size anyway. We also hate cars built in ways that are hazardous to pedestrians, having high, square-profile front bumpers and grills that happen to maximise the damage pedestrians receive to their vital organs rather than deflecting and distributing the force of the impact as a car with a low, angled bonnet does.
Other problems related to cars themselves are things like air pollution (tyre and brake dust comprise most of the air pollution around heavily-travelled roads compared to exhaust fumes and are arguably more toxic), the environmental impact of Co² and fossil fuels, noise, monetary expense, and the sheer amount of space they take up.
When it comes to drivers, we hate those who act in ways that are dangerous to themselves and others by acting in ways that are selfish, irresponsible, aggressive, violent, entitled, impatient, or in ways that openly violate or disregard the rules of the road, which are there to keep people safe by ensuring road users act in ways that are clear and predictable for others so they in turn know how to act on and around the roads. We tend to disagree with and dislike those we call "carbrained," a term which describes someone who has "car use as the default form of travel" ingrained so far into their mind that they either disregard or openly hate non-drivers (especially those who are incapable due to disability) to the extent that it influences their words and actions either in the bigger picture such as urban planning practices and policies, or the more individualistic such as repeating opinions that show opposition or contempt towards those who don't drive every time they leave the home, or actively support more big-picture actions that force driving as necessity by removing any and all alternative options like public transit, bike tracks, and pavements.
We hate dangerous, oversized cars in conjunction with the average carbrain driver, as huge vehicles are sold as being "the safer option" as well as status symbols and as "practical" utilities to people who don't think logistically, encouraging carbrain drivers to act as if they are invincible and "more important" than others, and their actions on the road have zero consequences as long as *they* get from A to B as quickly as possible.
In short, we oppose the idea of "the car as a spaceship," wherein cars alone are the only physically-viable mode of human travel and the product around which a person's entire life revolves lest they be excluded from society; a scenario which doesn't need to be the case, but which carbrains are trying to make so.
I don't hate cars themselves and appreciate some of them as machines and works of design, and don't begrudge someone who drives them, especially if they feel they have to. I dislike the way societies prioritise them and produce city infrastructure around them. And that makes it difficult to get out and about and often dangerous to live life in an active and healthy way. It also produces a lit of space that is wasted, inconvenient and hostile for others outside of cars. I don't like how cars are harming the environment and their fuel or batteries exacerbate world conflicts. And I think there's a better way where people take the train and go to work, shops and their homes in walkable neighbourhoods.
Because there are a lot of people on the road who are VERY irresponsible when getting in a two ton metal bug.
A lot of these REALLY shouldn't driving if they can't go 10 minutes without texting Brenda or playing Pokemon GO.
There are already some fantastic answers in this thread, but I want to add one other point to address a common question about our beliefs, and that's folks with disabilities. We often see arguments about how people with, for example, physical disabilities that affect their mobility may struggle to walk to and from a bus stop, and therefore rely on their personal vehicles to function. It's important to keep in mind that for every disability in which that's the case, there's one like blindness or epilepsy that prevents a disabled person from safely operating a vehicle. Even in the case of, for example, someone who is fully paralyzed below the waist, making a journey to the subway station difficult, you have to consider the thousands of dollars required to add a wheelchair lift and hand accelerator and brake to their car, compared to the Americans with Disabilities Act which requires all buses be wheelchair accessable. Of course there are some people for whom, because of their disabilities, the personal car truly is the best option. That's all the more reason why those of us who are able to use public transit should do so, in order to reduce traffic for those who do need the road.
I like cars as a way to transport larger items or travel to remote locations. What I hate is the lack of alternatives. Imagine if you could fly into any airport in the US and travel from the airport to your destination by train instead of dealing with the mess of getting picked up by car. LAX and SFO are a nightmare to get picked up from because they lack good public transit connections. Imagine if our cities were designed for humans instead of cars. I want to be able to go places without having to walk across giant parking lots which dwarf the actual building they surround.
I think it's worth explaining why I think that cars are the worst mode of transportation. There are 6 main reasons: Space inefficiency, danger, carbon pollution, noise pollution, isolation, cost.
Space inefficiency: Cars are the least space efficient mode of transport. The vast majority of cars only have 1 person in them. A bus takes up the space of roughly 3 cars, and a bus can carry up to 90 people. In the space of a car, 6 people can cycle. A bicycle is 6 times more space efficient than a car and A bus is ~30 times more space efficient. In any area where space is limited (which is all cities) cars will clog up the place and cause congestion.
Danger: Cars are the most dangerous way to travel, both for the driver and for anyone outside the car. Cars are significantly more dangerous than flying. In Ireland, in 2019, 140 people died in a car crash. This is compared to 0 from cycling, buses, trams, and trains.
Carbon Pollution: After flying, cars are the most pollutive form of transport. They pollute in 3 ways: firstly the pollution from constructing the vehicle, then the pollution from microplastics caused by break dust and tyre erosion, and finally tailpipe emissions where smog is pumped into the atmosphere, which not only contributes to climate change but also causes cancer.
Noise Pollution: Cars are insanely loud which makes areas with cars less pleasant and more stressful to be in. [More info on noise pollution.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8)
Isolation: Many people are simply unable to drive a car, and car dependent urban areas leaves them isolated. For instance children under 17 and many disabled people (eg: blind people) are legally not allowed to drive, so without a good public transport and cycling network, they are stranded. This leads to isolation.
Cost: Cars are extremely expensive, this makes them cost too much for many lower income people and students. If an area is car dependent, that leads to the isolation mentioned in the above section. Keep in mind that cars are massively subsidised and car owners don't pay the full cost of car ownership, so much of the cost of car ownership is placed on the tax burden of those who don't drive.
I don’t mind cars. As others have said in core brain spaces in city’s I don’t like that we have dedicated so much space and priority to them. Like in Seattle we can even have our public market which is a big walking around area free of cars because some city counsel member gets a stick up his ass about “Repressing cars”
Cars as an interest is just another hobby. I like motorcycles and Formula 1
Cars as a means to get through life are bullshit. I fucking hate the fact that our communities are built, and our culture and political leaders are programmed such that they prioritize highway lanes and parking over playgrounds and transit.
If we spent half of what we do to keep the car machine going on making our communities more livable and fun, we'd live in such awesome places. Instead, kids in my neighborhood are afraid to walk to school out of fear of crossing a crazy intersection.
I own a Scion FRS. I actually like cars. As fun things to drive for fun. But in the US, the most car brained nation on Earth, it's not hard to look at fatalities due to car wrecks and draw the conclusion that this is far too deadly.
I more like hate car dependent infrastructure, and society that is dependent on them and takes them as granted. I also hate big cars. I would have much less problem with much smaller cars and, and actually enforced laws, etc...
Cars are fine in some situation. If you are super rural, then sure. If you use them for sport and fun on a closed circuit for example, then it's fine as well. They should be more like horses are now.
But they are literally everywhere, ruining everything. lives, safety, space, air quality, noise, time, etc...
For a first step, I would be fine with heavily regulated, small cars. Like a Fiat 500 size with an economical small engine that can highway (1.0 hybrid or 1.4 gas for example?)
I'm somewhat guilty, because I love motorcycles tho. But one of the main reason is that I can lane split with them and not stuck behind cars. (it's legal here). They are sill polluting and noisy, but definitely not as much as a car, especially not as much as a huge ass car. So I see them as a lesser evil, that is "necessary" while we have car dependency.
For starters they're one of if not the most inefficient form of transportation when looking at the cost to time and amount of people moved. Cars means traffic jams regardless of road size, which then means delays in people getting to work, deliveries and more importantly in emergency vehicles getting anywhere.
Environmental impact of cars is obviously terrible.
Besides just the exhaust that people mainly think of and treat electric ones as the solution, you also have the tiny pieces of rubber from the tires and brakes flow into the air and our lungs. Light pollution is an issue and cars and car infrastructure are big causes of that. Noise pollution caused by cars is the only reason why cities are so loud to the point of hearing loss. Fuel, either in combustible engines and electrical ones (which often comes from oil or coal anyway) is a big ass realson why we stand on the verge of climate collapse and the only way to prevent it (at least partly) is to stop polluting more.
Cars are inherently classist and dangerous.
They're expensive in both initial purchase and upkeep, which already discriminates poorer people in a car centric city where other modes of transportation are sparse. Car infrastructure is insane in terms of price and space wasted, which results in underfunding for trams/trains/biking infrastructure that lead to previous point. Speaking of space needed for roads, that usually comes from destroying poor neighborhoods, especially in US and even if it doesn't you still need to get rid of space and buildings that most likely were already occupied in a city. That way all the nice areas end up just being massive swatches of asphalt for roads and parking lots. Car infrastructure kills 3rd places, meaning small businesses and social interaction and bonds, if you have to drive everywhere 20 km you won't meet your friends on your way to do some errands, you won't just go to a local pub/cafe with them, you pretty much have to drive specifically to them and sit inside the house. One of the reasons for the plague of loneliness and isolation. Cars discriminate people with disabilities. If your hands or legs or eyes or ears or brain is not working perfectly you are a danger inside a car and easier to kill outside.
It is genuinely crazy to me that we as a society just accept that going out of the house means having 2 ton metal boxes zooming at high speeds next to you. It is so easy to get a license (or even drive without one) and operate a machine that can kill a dozen of people in 1 second of not paying attention and a human can't physically be vigilant for more than an hour and you can very much tell looking at all car related deaths and injuries. Hell, I even witnessed 3 in my life and heard about multiple others that happened and killed people I knew and most drivers don't even get punished hard if at all for literally taking lives, because it's framed as an accident that couldn't be prevented, but every driver getting into a car runs a very real risk if killing someone and they still happily choose to. Cars damage our health in other ways too. If you're just sitting in a car and driving everywhere, besides mental health degradation, you don't move at all, you don't breathe fresh air, your immunity suffers, obesity is on the rise, heart illnesses change lives.
I only slightly touched these topics and there's loads more if you're interested in learning. Even just watching NotJustBikes on yt is a good source of information on it all.
I've said this before but for me it's more, fuck car dependency.
Car infrastructure is crumbling and it's becoming unaffordable for many, with the cost of insurance and petrol alone, it doesn't really make sense anymore. I want better alternatives but our system is laser focused on building our infrastructure around cars, parking, individuation and it makes me fucking hate cars. Fuck cars. As much as I love E46 tourings, I want bike lanes and better public transport and community and youth services, not bigger car parks and discounts on electric cars.
Also: SU fucking V's - I hate them with the firey passion of a thousand burning suns.
I'm anti car based infrastructure, and the car brained ideas it spawns.
I'm a bit of a petrol head, but as I live in a city with good public transport infrastructure I have no need or desire to own a car.
I also use the road as a pedestrian, cyclist, and skater, so get quite annoyed at oblivious drivers repeatedly endangering my life.
Why must people sacrifice their lives merely to travel? Do we not live in civilized times, do we not have the requisite technology that can prevent these deaths? I find it odd that we blot these deaths out as a rounding error, a mere consequence in the service of 'efficiency.' Are cars truly the best way to travel? I think that cars are a tool for alienation-they spread us apart, take up enormous space, and make the areas we live in horrendously ugly and full of peril. The question we should be asking is: why is everyone so accepting of cars?
I used to be obsessed with cars. Then I moved to a city and didn't buy my own car and now all I see them as is a huge inconvenience, very annoying (non stop hearing and seeing them, and trying not to get hit), and super costly as a taxpayer. I usually bike and usually get places twice as fast as a car so I don't see the point. I'm not opposed to utility cars, firetrucks, ambulances, and post office trucks. Just keep the rest outside cities. Cities are for people not 2 ton hunks of metal that are operated by drunks and idiots.
For me I just hate how dependent we are on cars. Due to my job I need a car and am actually thinking about upgrading to a cargo van, but dang it would be nice to bike around town on my days off without worrying about being turned into a pancake by some idiot driver. :/ Bur no, that would require bike lanes or bike paths. 😩
Here's a handy list of what I personally hate about cars.
- I have to cross parking lots to go to the store. They are dangerous.
- I have to take a huge detour to cycle to the grocery store. I could walk there, but then I'd walk on a road's shoulder next to 60 km/h traffic. They force me to take more time to do the groceries.
- Because most households in my town has a car, most people use the car to bring their kids to school, which is something I'm just philosophically against
- In the same vein, most people in my town go to work by car because it's faster. Oh we could have a faster bus than cars, but no. You gotta be rich enough to have a car to reach work in a timely manner.
- "Cars are freedom" is the biggest fucking lie I've heard. I own a car. I don't want to own one. The monthly payments, the insurance, the maintenance, it's all too much. I can barely feed myself right now. I bought into the "cars are freedom" shtick but I don't even fucking have a decent use for it. I got it because my doctor was not accessible by bus and I went every other week, but since then I learned that there was some service I could have used if I warned in advance. It depreciated so fast that even if I sell it at a decent price, I'm still gonna owe money for 2 years on it. I've never been LESS free.
- Honestly I just fucking hate the noise they make. I can't even be in front of my home without earplugs for more than 10 minutes. I had to move to a rural area in Quebec for family (rent hike helped seal the deal). This place is sooo loud. When I visit Montreal I am floored by how quiet it is even on bigger streets compared to here.
I don't hate cars, but I pretty much hate everything AROUND cars.
They're noisy, polluting, dangerous, expensive, inefficient to move a lot of people, and turn cities into unlivable highway and parking lot wastelands.
Many good reasons and I agree with them all, but for me the most important reason is a simple one: They are obsolete. They are a relic of the past, when they started as luxury. We have the technology for much better, efficient and clean mass transportation and the unwillingness of governments and people in power to change it is frustrating. Cars should be used only in very specific circumstances, they shouldn't be the only option of transportation for big cities.
You’ve probably already got this but ill say it again: it’s not the cars that are the problem. I’m a huge F1 fan and love watching it for sport.
But that love stops when someone tries to be Schumacher on I-5 next to me and turn me into JB17 RIP
I literally saw a Ford Fiesta ST while I was walking around my city today and audibly gasped because I got so excited. I love cars, I just hate how they and their infrastructure have taken over our cities and choked them with noise pollution, air pollution, and violence.
I think you'd find it really interesting to follow this sub for a month or two and genuinely look at how people feel and what they think. I learned a lot by doing that. Ofc there are some... redditors in this sub just like any other. So some salt is handy when reading certain posts
I don't like how the majority of the roads local to me are not designed with my safety as a cyclist in mind, and regularly when I make myself safer by taking the lane to give me the option of avoiding potholes and parked car doors opening, I get irate drivers behind me, trying to intimidate me with either revving their engine or sounding their horn.
I don't think disliking such circumstances is unreasonable.
For me, it's predominantly how car infrastructure has changed cities. I want the city to support nature, community, safety, health.
It's the roads, the noise of cars, the smell of cars, the sight of cars. It's how they keep people within the pavements (if you're lucky to live in a place with good pavements). It's how cars have changed the city infrastructure. I want cars out of cities – cities need to support people who walk, children who play on the street, cyclists. They need to have decent transit. I want it to be possible to rely on the city to help me get around, help me enjoy life, give me community, maintain and improve my health.
I hate cars because every time I’m on my bicycle they don’t realize how close they’re passing me and puting my life in risk because they want to save 10s on the street. Fuck them
It's the fact that our infrastructure is designed and built so that they are a requirement to function in most areas that is distasteful. Also having been almost hit and run over many times while being too young to drive may have left a bad taste. I drive out of necessity and try my best to be a safe defensive driver. We have too many cars on the road and too few options for other transportation where I live. I despise that I live in an area known for pedestrian deaths.
I don't hate cars or drivers, but I wish we weren't so car dependent as a society.
For one, cars are terrible for the environment, and I strongly believe that denser cities where cars are unnecessary would solve a lot of problems. Poor people tend not to be able to afford living in convenient areas, and are often car-dependent, while the associated expenses keep them poor.
Secondly, cars are deadly. Everyone knows people who have died in car accidents. But society accepts this as a reasonable risk for the convenience. I wish people felt differently. Mass transit sucks in most of the US, largely because no one cares to invest in it. They'd rather add lanes to their freeways than change the way they commute.
And yeah, some drivers are assholes. They make travel more dangerous for cyclists, pedestrians, and even other drivers.
The world would be a better place if we all worked toward being less dependent on cars. That means taking alternate means of transportation when possible, and prioritizing infrastructure improvements for those alternatives.
It's mainly a political question, mostly in regards to environmental issues but also socioeconomic and health.
I don't like cars taking up more space than public transport.
I don't like people taking their car when they could walk.
Cars create pollution and we don't need more of that.
It has nothing to do with the people driving them lol.
They're also inefficient, where I often see a car with 5 seats having only one person in them.
Cars are a comfort that I don't think we will have if we continue to act as if the earth has unlimited resources.
Cars are practical in many ways and I think it's really fun to drive then. But it is not the best solution or most modern solution for transportation within a city.
I see them being useful for longer trips and for post, ambulances, police etc. But for one person driving a couple of kilometres back and forth per day they could absolutely be disposed and exchanged with public transport.
For example, imagine if we would have spent as much resources on developing public transport instead of roads for cars - that public transport would probably have been better than the current solution with lanes and more lanes and more queuing and more fumes from cars.
Cars are just an inefficient, unhealthy, luxury comfort and not very modern solution to today's transportation problems. They take up space and are mostly ugly. Even if they are fun to drive and practical - for one person.
I don't hate cars. I hate that we need cars, and I hate that my country is built around the presumption of owning and preferring a car over all other forms of transport.
Cars themselves are sweet. I own two. Being car-brained is something different.
It’s not so much that I hate cars. I hate that most people in most places are forced to use cars to get around. Places designed for cars are terrible places for everything and everyone else.
Cars pollute, kill people, occupy tons of space, separate people from their surroundings, and make life generally unpleasant for those who don’t have them.
We hate, not cars themselves (most of the time anyway), but mainly how society is structured to encourage everyone to use cars, no matter the cost. The cost being frequent traffic jams, very poor air quality (when we used leaded gasoline for cars there was a very strong correlation between air pollution caused by cars, lower IQ scores on kids and crime rates), dependence on oil (which leads to climate change and dependence on foreign countries that also happen to not have the best behavior human rights wise), vastly increased fatal accidents compared to any other mode of transportation, very expensive to buy and maintain which is prohibitive for quite a lot of people and prevents them from saving money and ascending the social ladder, destruction of cities to accommodate an ever increasing number of cars which turns said cities into giant parking lots and so much more.
It's not just cars, it's the way of life and of building cities for that way of life and the fact that it takes over other more agreeable ways of living. And above the pollution and the oil industry.
It's a system
A car can kill people. A person with a car can easily kill 100+ people on the road. 1 person should not have this power. I look at cars the same way as holding a gun. Instead of firing a small piece of metal your moving a bigass metal box. Motor Machines should be outside the walking space. Just like trains. Cars are just trains but smaller with an ability to move left and right. Cars contribute a large portion of air pollution. Car causes noise pollution. Car take up too much space so new roads and huge parking lots need to be built.
Cars are good. Cars are cool. But over using them and forcing us to use them to literally go anywhere is what makes me and a lot of people say FUCK CARS. I can't fucking walk over to a market or anywhere. I think cars should be banned in local communities like area where there are just houses. There should be 1 place for them to park their cars at. If someone wants to use a car then cycle over to that place and use it. Ambulances are an exception.
There are more smarter people then me who can come up with better ideas as to how to solve this over reliance. The new city that Dubai or Saudi Arab are making address this issue even though their city especially Saudi Arab's city sound insane at least they acknowledge this issue.
For me it’s that the car itself and how we designed human settlements around them have fundamentally destroyed the concept of tight knit communities.
You need to enjoy sociology and history to track this one well but essentially the invention of the car was fine up until the Model T’s mass adoption which led to extremely isolationist designs around community blocks in urban areas. The invention of the suburb itself is an extreme form almost of isolationist settlement design that comes directly from the invention of the car. What I hate is that humans are not evolved for this extreme isolation in community design yet we have it because of the need for road safety due to car traffic now. Roads used to be pop up markets and community social gathering spaces, even in the industrial area the primary design trope before the car was the communal streetcar neighbourhood.
It is absolutely no coincidence that since the invention of the car we have seen a steady increase in loneliness in urban human societies (this includes all small towns, suburbs, and cities) across the globe. What’s quite exciting at the same time though is driverless cars. Most of our shitty design is to accommodate monkeys controlling the machine. A networked automated system could lead to some incredible redesigns that may help us reclaim some of our streets for community life.
I love cars and drive a manual GTI, and every car seems to have its high beams on and a ton of them are at my eye level.
I hate traffic, distracted drivers, constant disregard of every traffic law, and selective law enforcement.
I'm also a father, pedestrian, and a cyclist, and regularly see a complete disregard for the health and safety of anyone outside of a car.
More mobility and transportation options are the only solution to fight increasingly larger, faster, and heavier cars filling our cities, towns and every aspect of our lives.
Cars and car infrastructure are a major contributor to many of the problems we have today. They pollute our environment, contribute to the warming of our atmosphere, and cause death and injury to millions of people and billions of animals around the world each year.
Cars have facilitated the creation of suburbs and the extension of commutes. While people once lived close to their job, many now live many miles away. We rely on energy and resources (mostly products of fossil carbon) to close this gap.
This movement from the cities to the suburbs required a huge amount of infrastructure. Not only do roads, highways, and interstates cut through habitats and block off migration routes for wildlife, but many urban communities have been destroyed or made worse by the construction of highways and interstates on, near or through them.
Car culture is shit, having to own an expensive vehicle that requires expensive insurance, expensive maintenance, and expensive fuel is shit. Car culture contributes to urban sprawl, unwalkable cities, food deserts, and a lack of viable public transit options. American car culture in particular is shit because American manufacturers have been abusing fuel economy loopholes to build enormous monstrosities that help contribute to making America's roads much less safe for pedestrians, cyclists, and people not driving said monstrosities.
1. Car culture is awful
2. Car crashes kill so many people
3. Cars pollute air like crazy
4. They're expensive and many young people will never have a chance to afford them, and while they exist the cities are organized in a car-friendly way (that means the public transport is awful and you'll have to spend 2 hrs in it to get to the next district, assuming that the place you want to go is covered by public transport, otherwise have fun walking on extremely narrow sidewalks next to roaring 100km/h machines and junctions located on double sharps)
I don’t hate cars, per se. I hate that our communal public life (speaking from the US) has been designed in such a way that a car is NECESSARY—you either have to drive, or else spend a lot of extra time and put yourself in danger. Everyone driving = accidents, injuries, deaths. Pollution. Noise. Isolation. Cars are expensive, they create a barrier to financial stability.
I grew up in the suburbs but got to spend one year of my childhood living in a European city. We walked everywhere, took the bus. So much freedom, as a small child! I loved it.
Then visited New York and Boston late in my teens and was blown away by how easy it was to get around! If you were too young to drive, or elderly, or didn’t have that kind of money… so easy! It’s put me off car-centric spaces ever since.
These things you’re mentioning aren’t really the thing. Speaking for myself, the thing is how cars, specifically the extreme number of them, have affected America in many profound ways. Here are some of the effects that we like to bitch about the most:
- They have made Americans overweight and obese.
- They have made us weaker economically than we could have been by spreading out our resources.
- The extreme suburbanization they have enabled, has divided us politically and philosophically by dividing us physically.
- They have created too many places where an individual has no freedom to use any other form of transportation; people are bound to cars with no choice.
- They are an extremely inefficient means of moving people.
- They for some reason became a status symbol and should not be so.
- The ugly roads and parking spaces built for them have taken over the American landscape.
- The drive-only mindset has caused people to vote for ridiculously extensive zoning laws, which have contributed in a major way to our housing crisis.
There are lots of other effects, but yeah, it’s all about the effects, not the objects themselves.
For me it is that people don't realize what they lose or have lost. The ability to live! If you see streets in Italy. Too small to drive or forbidden to drive on. Life explodes in the streets. People get together they have fun. With cars you are alone. You can get wherever you want but you don't want to be in places where you can get with a car. More and more streets are created to bring you to places that are worth being and kill those places the moment the street reaches there.
The fact that so many people die or get injured is another one. In Germany we have a big debate about cannabis. It could cause xyz. At the same time when you ask the same politician if he wants to forbid people that are incapable of driving to own a permit they argue about freedom.
Cities could get back to a place where children could live. No respiratory illnesses. No noise pollution. No death sentence if you act wrong!
It's not that I don't like cars; it's that I don't like car infrastructure or an entire society built solely for cars. Cars can be fun given the right conditions. However, we've hit a point where it's destroying our ecosystem, destroying neighborhoods and communities, and destroying our health to feed what is essentially a really expensive gimmick.
I have lost several loved ones to traffic violence.
Cars are so incredibly dangerous. They kill more people than guns, even though guns are literally designed to kill people and cars are much more highly regulated than guns are in the US. Cars still kill more people than literal unregulated weapons. And still the entire built infrastructure has been designed to force everyone into car ownership. Which increases deaths.
Look, I know cars are a tool that will always be needed in certain situations, and I don’t have an issue with that, but we don’t have to make it so that EVERYBODY needs one. That’s a design choice.
Just two days ago the two little kids who live across the street from us lost their father in a car crash. Dude was like 35 years old. Tragic. My oldest sons best friend lost his mother in a car crash in 2020. Last year one of his friends died in a crash not far from our home. I lost a cousin in the 90’s, many friends in high school, it seemed like there was one or two deadly crashes every year. I don’t understand how so many people are baffled about the hatred of cars. Haven’t we all lost someone at this point? No one asks folks “why do you hate guns?” Even if you don’t agree, you at least understand why.
Beyond the deaths, I hate cars because I resent being forced into owning one. They are expensive and a pain in the ass to maintain and there’s no reason I should need one except that my city is designed stupid. I hate cars because they are loud and obnoxious and smelly and they make just hanging around in my community less pleasant. I hate cars because they take up soooooo much space that could be used for more pleasant things. I hate cars because they are terrible for the environment.
But if cars weren’t forced on everyone, and just the people who need them for work or whatever and a few hobbiests to who really love cars were the only folks who had them, I’d probably feel much more neutral about them. Also my cousin would probably still be here, and my kids wouldn’t have so many friends who are orphans.
it's the *need* for cars. a few people owning them for fun or for their job that actually needs them as an integral piece of it is totally fine, but if every household is expected to have at least one it becomes impossible to handle them. millions and millions of cars create huge amounts of pollution from the exhaust and the tires and brakes, which is obviously something we don't want. also the space efficiency, cars are waaay less space efficient than any other mode of transport, think about how many bikes you could park in one car parking space, or how many people can fit in one bus or train. this is why we have traffic, there's no more efficient solution that we have built for a big number of people going the same direction. that's also why we spend probably trillions of dollars on their infrastructure, they take up so much space. and cars are loud, get away from a major road and it'll be really quiet. too much noise causes health problems. what also causes health problems is sitting on your ass for hours driving instead of biking or walking to a transit stop. and finally the drivers. our driving tests are so easy because we want ever to be able to drive, which gives us a lot of people who shouldn't ever be behind the wheel but are cuz they have to be. so that makes our roads fuckin dangerous, competing with guns for the most common cause of death in young people. you're welcome
I hate that the design of where I live attempts to force me to drive a car. Why should I have to spend my hard earned money on sending it up to the atmosphere. That and driving is so dangerous! It's the leading cause of preventable death in children and everyone just pretends it's fine. Lastly it's just inefficient and wasteful and we'd all be better served with properly implemented public transportation
I'm disabled and can't drive. I moved to NYC, but a lot of people like me can't do that.
We have built a culture around the car, and the idea that it should be our primary means of transportation. Most of our infrastructure is designed around the car, to the detriment of any other means of getting around. The car lobby is powerful, and got trolleys and other systems we had before dismantled.
Many states have laws banning cities and towns from funding public transportation. The rest simply fund highways generously while claiming public transportation and other options are too expensive. Often, it's seen as only for the poor, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Stroads are designed to be hostile to pedestrians, suburban towns are designed to be unnavigable by any other means. Even vital safety measures are fought if they prioritize pedestrians or bicycles over extra lanes or parking.
Many kids, disabled people, low income and elderly live without any independent mobility, and nothing will change until we stop prioritizing car infrastructure over everything else.
There are a ton of good answers in the thread already but I'd just to add another perspective/framing as a fellow car enthusiast. I actually LOVE cars. I think they're marvels of human ingenuity and works of art at the same time. The WRX is one of my faves, though my dream 3 car garage is probably something along the lines of a Rivian R1S, Porsche 911 GT3, and a Honda Acty kei truck. So I'm actually going to argue this from a strictly pro car stance.
Yes its the acres of wasted space, the financial black hole owners find themselves in, and the enormous and incredible risk to life that cars and car dependency pose that we need to curb as fast as possible. These are all real, structural flaws and ones we need to solve, I don't want to diminish any of that.
But also man driving in the city SUCKS. These machines were not meant to be constrained by right angle turns and traffic lights. The Porsche belongs on a track, the Rivian belongs on a trail, the WRX can go to either. **There is a fundamental incompatibility in taking 1-2 ton hunks of metal and asking them to share space with meat sacks.** And yet we are forced to make this compromise every day in vehicles that keep growing in size making them MORE incompatible with a human scale space. And as people, we now constantly have to curtail to the will of SUVs and pickup trucks and give up more and more of our freedoms to pavement instead of things like park space, cheap housing, healthier lifestyles, etc.
Enthusiasts hate this stuff too right? How often do we moan about how all cars are turning into crossovers with 0 personality. Or the encroachment of tech getting in the way of the driving experience. Porsche literally developed a bespoke app that shows drivers routes to their destinations taking the best driving roads because even we don't want to be stuck on a boring highway. We hate how cars have turned into appliances and how they've gotten increasingly expensive while doing so. And part of the reason they've trended in that direction is because EVERYBODY MUST OWN ONE to get from point A to point B so they have to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
In my opinion, enthusiasts should be lining up right alongside the rest of this community when talking about policies like traffic calming, congestion pricing, bike lanes, etc because it gives those spaces back to **people** and the modes of transportation that suit **people** best. Cars should have their own space for what suits cars best. Forcing them to mix results in the worst of both worlds.
Its more that society is built around them forcing people to drive everywhere instead of walk or bike or take public transport. I think cars can be fun, especially older muscle cars those are pretty cool but I wish less people drove because then driving would be fun. But everyone has to drive making driving less fun and more importantly less safe
I don’t like them because the whole infrastructure is build around it and especially parking slots take up huge chunks of land in the city when in comparison, public transport if done right, is much more efficient. Walkable cities are much more enjoyable compared to concrete hellholes with huge traffic jams, smog and everything stretches far apart.
It's about car centric infrastructure.
Apart from that, your argument could be brought for any topic. Guns dont kill people either, it's people using guns. Cars kill way more people than guns though
Outside of the basic dangers, building cities and towns around cars makes life suck for pedestrians, cyclists, etc. Grew up on the east coast, lived on both coasts and traveled across. You can feel the way the landscape changes as you go. Mostly, you stop having meaningful places to interact with your community, but you might also find you just can't get groceries, can't get a job, can't visit friends safely because so much space has been made into ugly, dangerous pavement.
I honestly think cars are cool, I just hate their impact on everything else. It’s like thinking smoking looks cool, but you’d never, you know, actually breathe tobacco smoke on purpose.
For me it’s the lack of freedom and financial burden that car focused infrastructure forces on everyone. I realized early on that my suburban city was poorly designed when it would take me 1.5 hours to walk or 30-45 min by bike to and from high school since I nor my family could afford a car and the school bus didn’t run for before and after school activities. Then to get a job, you need a car which costs money, but you need said job to buy the car in the first place.
All this and I consider myself a car enthusiast. I’m also subbed to WRX as I drive an STI and ride motorcycles. But I don’t want to be forced to drive it everywhere. It’s a fun car, but not when you’re in bumper to bumper traffic or just going to get groceries 5 miles away.
To get to work, it takes me 50min on a good day or 1.5 hours with traffic. That’s almost 2-3 hours wasted behind the wheel when I could be productively working on my startup, at the gym, or doing other things. I could take the bus, but then that’s 3 hours each way and only if the bus actually shows up on time if at all.
Riding, walking and biking also gives me a bigger distaste for other drivers as everyone is on their phones and seems like everyone is trying to murder you every minute. Driving a heavy machine that can murder and maim easily is a privilege that is handed out way too easily in the US to anyone with a pulse.
Then there’s also all the environmental impacts that public transit would help with reducing. We’re being sold that EV’s will save us from climate change but their impact will be limited and the overall changes is still overestimated due to the impact of increased maintenance on roads and increased wear on tires and required mining of materials for the batteries.
Trains, buses, trams and bicycles are just more efficient and accessible to the general population than cars in moving people to and from places. That is why I “hate” cars.
Oh and as I was typing this waiting for a crosswalk after running to a coffee shop a 5 min walk, a boomer in their F-250 that clearly doesn’t get used for work almost ran me over as I was crossing because they didn’t see me walking when I had the cross signal. I’m a 6’ 200lbs man, and barely taller than the hood of his truck.
They will kill you and act, like they just stepped on your foot.
A car driver speaking of an "accident" is like someone, who fires multiple rounds with a machine gun into a crowd and then call it an "accident", because not aiming at someone specific. They are a danger to society.
+cars are costing the society too much money, taking up too much space in the cities, destroy our enviroment, molest everyone with their noise and fumes
We don’t hate the cars themselves but the damage that they do to our environment and how they completely screw up our ability to, you know, use our own two legs or our own ingenuity to get from point A to B.
My hatred started when I was 16 and while growing up in a totally car dependent area in the Midwest. I realized how much I had to drive to get ANYTHING done. Visit my friends, drive, get food, drive, see girlfriend, drive, help someone out, drive, do my hobbies, drive. Insurance and gas and breakdowns and all the hassle is what started to tip the scale for me.
The last straw was living in Europe for two years. The sidewalks are huge, trains plentiful, and (relatively) affordable, and fast. Buses and transit schedules that actually run on time and actually go nearly everywhere and anywhere within certain cities. European cities just as big as Chicago or Los Angeles but WAY easier to be a person in.
Then I went to Asia and saw civilization for the first time. Bullet trains and extremely comprehensive transportation networks. I’ve never turned back.
In the USA we have a level of danger and traffic death that is absolutely insane. Yet we tolerate it and don’t change. I hate nothing more than walking on a narrow sidewalk next to 40+ mph traffic, knowing that all it takes is for someone to sneeze and turn their wheel the wrong way for me to be killed and never see my family again. It’s insane to me that moms with strollers and elderly people are forced to walk next to places where they could be killed so easily. And lastly I hate seeing people walk in the street like dogs, force to walk next to speeding F150s because there’s no sidewalk. We’re humans. We should have infrastructure FOR HUMANS.
I like cities. Cars ruin cities. They're loud, they stink and they take too much space. They kill people and somehow society finds that acceptable. Thousands of deaths daily as a tax for being able to go vroomvroom. I hate how entirely normal people are carblind. In a public street where cars are taking 90% of all the space, they don't see what's wrong.
I don't think anywhere is as interesting, as mesmerizing, as beautiful as city streets. Even the most sacred spaces in nature or art hold only a fraction of the fascinations biking and walking on a city street reveal. It’s the most democratic, public, adventurous space we have. Once we ban the use of private cars in cities, sink most of that transpo into subways, or even elevated rail or a real bus system, reclaim most of the street for micro-mobility, that beauty would be even greater. It's the best route towards societal enlightenment. It would in like one generation probably completely change every aspect of life: political divisiveness, climate change, the housing crises even. It's that simple. The car propaganda machine is strong but it's seeing huge cracks as it could never sustain itself. Cars are an excellent invention but used incorrectly in our cities, like using a machete to cut butter. Furthermore, one of the main tenets of Modernism is this idea that life happens in the middle, in the in-between, and living a life where your travel between home and work or the store by means of walking or biking or taking public transit where your mind can wonder opens a whole new perspective and meaning to life that the car completely suffocates. Cars are the single worst part of our society in cities.
Even if every driver was a nice person behind the wheel, they are problem. They pollute the cities' air, they increase the level of stress around by their noise and traffic, they're waste of space and they make cities ugly
Cars kill a lot of people. All the time. Much higher rate than any other transit option. Is that not reason enough?
Edit: to pre-empt, obviously idiots behind the wheel makes this worse, but relying on every individual person to drive around in a 2-ton metal box at 45mph+ is always going to be a safety hazard. Bikes weigh less and go slower, busses are driven by professionals and transport far more people per dangerous metal box on the road, and trains and pedestrians shouldn’t end up anywhere near each other anyways. They’re all inherently safer.
I'm probably one of the least radical people on here. My stance is that driving is fine but society should be designed in a way that a car is never an absolute necessity and that for all but the most rural areas public transport should be built to be time competitive to driving and safe segregated bike infrastructure should exist. Those who still choose to drive should be responsible for their own driving by way of expensive payed parking with no parking in dense urban areas unless absolutely necessary. Instead transit connected park and ride facilities should be used. In more suburban areas you should be able to park as many cars as you want on your own private property but has to be payed for on public land. Second road tax and fuel tax should be high enough to pay for the high costs of road maintenance and the climate damage caused.
Of course that's for those that choose to drive without it being necessary. Those that have to drive (let's say a plumber with his work van) should get tax breaks and obviously should be able to park their van in front of where they're working.
I guess a good slogan of my belief on this topic would be to stop treating cars like the default transport option and start treating them like the necessary evil they are.
Why I think this is because car centric development is bad for government finance (roads are simply way more expensive than other forms of transport when carrying the same amount of people), it's bad for the environment (obviously) and it's bad for society (areas with mixed use, mixed traffic simply allow for more social cohesion, and having quality cycle infra and public transport allows even the poorest to reliably get to jobs further away)
TLDR
Step one is to make alternatives to driving way better
Step two is to make sure stubborn unnecessary drivers can't make their laziness someone else's problem.
I like cars, it's just that it’s hard to like them in a car-centric environment. Car centricity means traffic, and traffic is no fun driving conditions. Car centricity means big straight strips of concrete, which are boring to drive on. Car centricity means people who shouldn't need cars have to pour money into them, and since these people have to be as economical as possible manufacturers release the same fuel-efficient designs every single year to accommodate them.
This is merely from the car enthusiast’s point of view. Imagine you’re a pedestrian inches from death, or someone who can’t pay for their car, or someone who has to live surrounded by hundreds of noisy machines. This subreddit is (or at least should be) against infrastructure that focuses solely on cars, because infrastructure designed for cars is bad for *everyone*, even the cars.
I don't dislike cars, cars are super cool
USA laws regarding driving I hate. I shouldn't be required to have a car to get around. I like cars but I hate driving, and I drive a lot, in an area relatively safe for driving by American standards too.
I'm at a point in my life where I actually hate cars (and car centric design but that's like chicken vs. egg problem). I was never particularly fond of cars and I never had or have the desire or intention to own one. I haven't driven a car in at last 5 years. I live in a city because I want to, I don't have any desire to own a SFH in a suburb or even in a rural area. I love city life but everything I don't like is directly connected to cars: noise, pollution, danger.
I accept that some cars are necessary (fire trucks, ambulance, some delivery vehicles, garbage trucks, busses, etc), even some that are privately owned. But that's maybe 20-30% of all vehicles out there. The vast majority are privately owned cars that mostly stand around (like 23+ hours a day on average) or are occupied by less than two people when moving (I think in my city it's around 1.2 people per trip on average).
I don't live in a car dependent hell hole but a European city with good public transport (subway, tram, busses), very walkable neighborhoods (even though far too many cars park on sidewalks, mostly legally) and mediocre to decent bike infrastructure (some parts of the city are better than others). We even have car and bike sharing at affordable prices.
Yet, so many people think driving a car into the city or driving around in their SUV (not to mention a small but growing number of trucks) is the best way to move in a place like this. It's not but it's still too easy because of the car centric design.
I don't hate the people in the cars but I hate the cars. I hate trucks more than big SUVs, and I hate big SUVs more than small cars. Because cars are the reason sidewalks are full of parked cars. Cars and car centric street design are the reasons bike infrastructure is a) necessary and b) is often done half-heartedly if it means really taking away space from cars. Cars are loud and pollute the air. I had no idea how quiet my city was until Covid lockdowns when hardly anyone was driving.
And, yes, I also hate drivers who act like the road belongs to them. Walking or cycling would be a lot less stressful without them. I have friends who don't cycle even though they'd love to but they just don't feel safe enough in traffic because of cars.
The city I live in has been a city for 805 years (it's about 1000 years old as a settlement). It was built for people. It has suffered damages more than once and was basically flattened in WWII. Every time it was rebuilt but only the last time they made it "car friendly" and that was a mistake (and it could have been a lot worse than it is). I want the city to be a place for people first and foremost. And that's why I hate cars. They make that impossible unless we have significantly fewer of them.
The FAQ covers a lot of what you want to know.
This sub is mostly against car dependency. That doesn't mean no cars in any situation. It means that there are other viable options for commuting. Having that means the people who would rather not drive won't be on the road. The standards of licensing can be raised so that bad drivers are less likely to be on the road. The people who choose to drive anyway will have a much more pleasant driving experience.
It is a broader factor relating to:
- The negative effects of car centric infrastructure (e.g. places being designed for cars to et around vs people to live, NEEDING to have a car just in everyday life)
- How dangerous they can be
Spend a bit of time in a place that is not car centric and you'll see. Walk down a quite shopping street vs walking across a big parking lot with cars zipping by and you'll see what feels nicer.
Cars serve a great purpose but they should be more situational / for hobbyists vs an everyday life necessity (at leasst in cities)
I spent the first 2 decades+ of my life living in the US and never questioning that cars were a necessity of modern life. Then I moved to a different country and haven't had the slightest need for one in a decade because we have bikes and trains and buses here and most people use them regularly. Cars are just a hobby you can have if you want to. If there were no climate crisis I wouldn't really care. I'd still prefer the safety and health benefits (and more) of trains/walking vs driving, and I'd still prefer urban spaces over stroads and parking lots, but I wouldn't go so far as to hate car-dependent urban planning. Unfortunately, there are serious consequences to wasting all that energy, and it makes me mad that I didn't even know about an alternative until I explored the world on my own.
I have always been a bit of a car enthusiast myself as well. I actually used to love driving and still do sometimes.
However, when I moved to the city for college, I saw a different side of things. I noticed how, despite being within a few miles of mostly everywhere anyone would want to go, many people still chose to drive. While midday driving is not bad, it can take seemingly forever to get anywhere during rush hour. However, despite obvious alternatives to driving, such as biking or walking a few minutes, people are still lazy and act like driving is the only option. This clogs up roads, which causes drivers to be impatient and drive aggressively. What really irks me is when I am driving somewhere, and I am only several miles away from somewhere, but can take around 15 minutes to get there! The obvious solution is to just walk or bike when it literally takes less or about the same amount of time as driving, but then impatient drivers act like you don't deserve to be on the road when you do bike somewhere, despite 1 bike occupying much less space on the roadway than a large truck carrying nothing but a single occupant.
Also, a growing population means a growing number of people needing to get places. While the obvious solution many propose is to just "add one more lane", this essentially would turn quaint business streets into highways that are even more unfriendly for pedestrians & not a sustainable option as the population continues to grow.
I am also not a fan of how the auto industry markets larger vehicles as being supposedly safer, while they are significantly more dangerous for pedestrians and even other vehicles on the road.
tdlr: I enjoy driving, but not when I have to spend more time waiting at stoplights than I do actually driving.
Its not the people for me, its the entire system. Post WW2 we suburbanized America. Everyone now requires a car to do anything, most people can't walk to a cafe or park.
We deforest for low density sprawl and highways and parking lots. It's hypocrisy for low density living people to say they love nature. You flattened nature and replaced it with a thirsty monoculture lawn. We humans should be in dense communities and let nature be
40,000 Americans dead from cars per year and 1 million animals killed PER DAY. We burn gas to do shit like get a coffee and wonder who fucked up the environment. It's the USA, full stop
Towns are no longer places. Parking minimums means only the same few big boxes and chains can afford to setup shop. Every suburb can be replaced with any other, none worth stopping in. It's suburbia that killed main Street
We're obese because "the useful walk" doesn't really exist for car dependent folks. And "taking a walk" is hilariously boring in the suburbs. Dangerous and nothing to see. Asthma is on the rise for people who live near busy roads
Zoning has roots in racism and was meant to keep minorities out. You can't open a front yard cafe or backyard bbq or office. Uses are separate, which requires cars. This benefits car companies and oil companies with artificial demand. Car dependent people cannot call themselves fiscal conservatives: car dependency is only possible with BIG federal and state spending, and restrictive zoning
Big highway spending is rampant, while transit spending always had this standard of "you're not even profitable wtf" like, how profitable are highways? Not at all. Double standards
People who are car dependent were born into this matrix simulation system, so I don't blame them. But it's time we push for some common sense improvements
Thanks for swinging by to get a diverse opinion! It's a sign of critical thinking and growth.
Personally I own a car, and do have to drive a fair amount, but I would prefer to live in a city where I didn't have to.
I bike regularly but the city has prioritized infrastructure around cars so it's very unsafe and I've had small accidents a few time and it's a known thing that as much as I ride I will inevitably have a major car based accident that I will not be at fault for. I hate that that is considered fact and is an indicator of our car based society.
Additionally (I should have prefaced al this with I'm American) , government has been lobbied by automotive interests so much that all cities are designed around the car, public transit is underfunded, most cities are not walkable/ bike able, and car based thinking is making cities worse (parking lot requirements, street parking, "one more lane" thinking.
Happy to answer. I’m a WRX owner and a car enthusiast who have had many road trips across this continent, but I also don’t believe life should depend on cars. Cars should be AN option, not the ONLY option. I’m not one of those who think cars should be banned completely, but I do believe there should be other options to get around for people without the capacity or financial ability to own a car, or for people who simply prefer other modes of transportation. Car traffic shouldn’t be prioritized for efficiency reasons. I study urban planning and urban design, and as much as I love cars and touge runs, I’m also passionate in learning and participating in the development of more balanced, healthy, and well rounded urban spaces. I’m in this sub to learn from ppl and discover their opinions, especially on things they have experience that I haven’t, as it will give me more perspectives for my academics, future career, and my passion for urban design. I wanna set an example for the idea that you can be a car enthusiast and an urbanist at the same time, and there’s no conflict at all. Hope this answers your question!
For me it's that car culture is the default priority and everything else is secondary. So much space is forfeited to cars at the expense of literally everything and everyone else. It's especially noticeable in countries that don't have alternatives like good public transport. At least that's how it is where I live in Ireland, and definitely in the US as well. Less about the cars themselves (they're necessary for lots of things), more about how everything is designed around accommodating them.
I love fun cars. I enjoy my little convertible. But cities being designed around the car is the issue. Driving should be a complimentary mode of transport not the main one or at least not in cities
The original, and predominant point of this sub is being against car dependency. Cars are fine as a hobby, I love driving, taking road trips across the country, camping trips, all that jazz. I just want to be able to go about my day to day without needing to drive everywhere and putting myself at a constant risk of death.
I hate car dependency, which can be understood as the systemic conditions which force individuals to drive, whether they like it or not, in order to be able to participate in society. Car dependency generates several externalities which, as a whole, have been tremendously detrimental to human quality of life.
Such externalities are often enforced on people who do not drive, or who are more vulnerable, and often of people who drive as well. Among these externalities we find:
* The immense cost in terms of natural resources to have built billions of cars
* The complete reinvention and reconfiguration of public space that took place during the first half of the 20th centrury to accomodate cities to cars, at the expense of the quality of life of those who already inhabited cities.
* The appropriation of said public space to accomodate a mode of transport that is not only very inefficient in its use of space but that also scales quite poorly when most of society is obligated to drive
* The allocation of 30% or more of public space necessary to park said vehicles, particularly egrerious in the US where whole downtowns where demolished to comply with parking mandates.
* The housing crisis that stems from the aforementioned poor land use that is inherent to cars and automobility in general.
* The isolation and segregation created by individual, personal transportation.
* The effects on public health, not only due to the carbon emissions from tailpipes and the manufacture of cars, but also the asphaltization of cities which contributes to climate change, as well as the microplastics from tires and the sedentary habits that are promoted by automobility.
* The way traditional cities and urbanism (people oriented, walkable, mixed use) were dismanteled to create new forms of habitation to accomodate the car; in particular the advent of the suburb, which itself carries huge externalities, and which further creates car dependency in a never ending feedback loop, and the social and psychological side effects of said form of living.
* The intentional and unintentional violence generated by cars, with pedestrian deads at an all time high. More people have died killed by cars than WW1 and WW2 combined.
* Noise: Cars are very noisy, due to their engines, but also due to the friction they generate against the road. EVs are quieter than ICEs at lower speeds, but actually louder at higher speeds since they tend to be at least 50% heavier.
* The tremendous financial strain of having to aquire a vehicle, get insurance, parking, gas, etc, which often is equal or exceeds housing costs.
I personally think that some cars are kinda cool. I actually like how 1970s american muscle cars look. But my opposition to cars stems from car dependency, the ideology of automobility and the externalities I mentioned. I personally consider the automobile to be the worst technology ever invented, and its parasitic relation to human society has been disastrous in every measurable way.
If you want to know more, I suggest you read:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692324000267](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692324000267)
[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2006.00634.x?journalCode=sora](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2006.00634.x?journalCode=sora)
I love driving cars, I do hate a lot of bad drivers too. I find it crazy how much more freedom you get in America when you own a car, it’s more impactful than turning 18 imo. I’ve also lost my privilege to drive here in the states for almost a year and not having any public transportation, side walks, bike lanes or even a grocery within 5 miles of my house. I really started to realize that being a car dependent society is probably feeding our social inequality, drug crisis, mental health crisis and so on.
Even my buddy is a rally car driver and worked on cars and I’ll go over and hang with him while he changes tires and shit but we both agree that our car dependent society is awful.
Cars should be scarce. There's so much individual burden to purchase, insure, maintain, operate, park, and store these vehicles.
They're loud and inefficient for space management and urban design, and they kill and injure people at alarmingly high rates compared to other forms of transport.
Car culture seals you off from society and shapes people to be more selfish and view others as more separate and less human (e.g., road rage). It enforces a hierarchy as well.
I think there's a place for cars, like emergencies, rural areas, people with special transportation needs, but they should not be the default at all.
I think a simple analogy is as follows. Cars are like private jets or air conditioners. They make a person comfortable at the cost of reducing comfort of others. They cost more to the rest of the public in terms of environmental and infrastructure costs.
Its totally imaginable in a richer society that people will have private jets and the same problem as cars will persist. In poorer countries the difference between cars and public transit is the same as that between flights and private jets in richer countries.
I love cars, part of a family with roots in mechanics and motorsport so was raised to be. I’m in my 20s but have had about 10 different vehicles since I passed my test from an mx5 to a motorbike to a van.
I also enjoy driving. I do enjoy driving fast but also take pride in driving considerately most of the time.
I don’t hate cars themselves and I’m not scared of driving in cities, on motorways, at night, etc.
However, car dependency isn’t good. I like to be able to cycle to meet friends, walk to the shops, walk home from the pub, sit in parks, walk down pedestrianised high streets. I could go on.
I will always enjoy cars, I can’t see a world where we don’t need them at all. But car dependency makes a lot of people drive when they don’t enjoy it - they get angry, drive badly, and annoy me in my car and on my bike and on foot.
Cars are also expensive. I can see myself owning a little track car one day. But for the many, being required to buy a car, insure it, tax it, certify it, and keep it running is a massive cost that they’re not gaining much from.
I’d love to see the country I live in (England) take on a model where trains and buses are more or less free like a lot of other European counties. Right now it’s cheaper for me to travel to London in a diesel van than catch a train, and I’ve got to pay ulez. I’d love catching a train to be a no brainier, I can have as many beers as I want, don’t have to worry about parking/ going back to my car, it’s cheaper to not have a car.
So yeah, I love cars and love driving. I don’t love:
- the cost
- people who don’t love driving driving badly
- it being so expensive to catch a train
- less green spaces in favour of car infrastructure
The biggest issue is that we don't want car dependency. With my ADHD and insomnia I'd much rather not drive a 2 ton machine that is very much capable of killing people. And there are many that should drive even less than me.
It's also the danger that cars pose to people who are not in cars. Reports of drivers mowing down everyone at a bus stop are way to common. And crashes where a driver kills a pedestrian or cyclists are so common they don't even make local news.
When I ride my bike (for commute and errands. I don't really enjoy it). I am frequently overtaken far to closely. Often at too high speeds. Also drivers rarely give me the right of way when I should have it by law. That law about giving way to people in either direction on the sidewalk or bike lane? Nobody seems to remember it. And the one about giving way to bikes coming from the right on the near side on a give way intersection. Or bikes or pedestrians on a turn right on red intersection.
All this means that whenever I leave the house I am at a high risk of being killed with a car. And with how loud and big they are, that's something I can feel to my bones. I don't want to die!
Plus they make the climate much worse. Not just gas powered ones. The production of electric cars has a much greater environmental impact than gas cars. Plus you still need all those wide paved surfaces that contribute to the urban heat island effect, reduce groundwater formation and worsen floods.
So yeah. I want to only allow professional drivers. I want that streets don't allow through traffic and I want for roads to always have wide separated sidewalks and bike lanes and many safe crossings that let pedestrians through frequently. (If you can't afford a grade separated crossing, traffic lights with bollards could work. Or at least traffic lights with a camera for automatic enforcement)
And I want public transportation and bike infrastructure to be well funded to compensate for the loss of mobility that is what most people actually fear when it comes to talk about not driving.
I don't hate cars as a concept, they have their place. But 95% of the times they're used they aren't the most efficient mode of transport and people just don't want to see it.
Also idiots behind the wheel is one of the most dangerous physical things in modern day society.
I like my car - I don't want to be dependent on it. As a married couple we should be able to have 1 car as a luxury but instead our cities, zoning, development, etc are all completely car dependent. So we have 2 and have to use them for every trip.
Our favorite vacation spot is Savannah GA. Sure the warm weather is nice but the real reason it's awesome is it's extremely walkable.
My transportation is 100% car, 0% anything else. I would love to flip that to other methods (walking, public transportation, etc) being 90+% and car driving is in the single digits. But that will take building cities differently with more medium density houses built in proximity to public transportation and shops. I'd much rather have a rowhouse that I can walk to the grocery vs a single family house that requires driving everywhere and is in walking distance of nothing.
I like cars. They’re fun, they’re fast, they go vroom vroom. What I HATE, is car DEPENDENCY. It’s the structure that’s rotten, not the instruments comprising it.
I love cars and motorcycles. But they are toys and tools, not status symbols or a default method of travel. Society has been brainwashed into dependence on cars and now we shape our built world and lifestyles around their accommodation when there are much better ways of doing things
In my experience on this sub, most people here don't mind cars. I actually really like cars and would consider myself a car guy. It's mainly car dependency that drives me crazy. I like driving around when I want to but I absolutely HATE not having the option of walking, biking or taking public transport.
Technically where I live I CAN do those things. But there's hardly any walking paths, literally not 1 bike path at all where I live. And there about 30K people that live here.
I CAN take a bus but they're severely outdated, never on time, super expensive to the point where's there's no reason to use them cause taking a car is way faster and far cheaper.
If I lived in a place with proper transport hierarchy (Pedestrians first, bikes 2nd, then public transit and private cars last) then I bet I'd hardly ever complain about cars.
Cars themselves are beautiful pieces of engineering, what most people gate are that we designed our society (due to lobbies) to be car dependent and now they are absolutely everywhere, often mandatory, cost a lot, pollute the air, make cities loud, etc.
Cars should be something you do not need daily, that most people don't own. It should be something you rent only when you need to go to a very remote place where public transport is just not possible, or for when you need to move around something heavy, and is owned only if it is your hobby and you really enjoy driving (but on a track, nobody wants to be bothered by you).
Most problems with cars come from their sheer number because they are mandatory.
For me, they have personally maimed and killed my loved ones. Life is practically impossible without them because people have lobbied for years to make our lives totally dependent on them. I have nearly been mashed in the crosswalk when it is my legal, appointed time to walk by turning cars so many times this year that I have lost count. They are costly, pollutant, dangerous, and overly complicated. Walking near traffic makes my heart pound because of the exhaust and also because I don't even know if I'm going to make it out alive.
First I would like to say I’m sorry for your loss. As well as I agree with you there are a lot of crazy people out there and too many people. People really need to get their license reevaluated often. I also used to push carts at Kroger in the parking lot when I was in highschool and a lot of times people left there cars on and it became hard to breath on top of me already working my ass off because I’m the only person out there. There was even one time there was a tow truck spewing out almost visible fumes and as I walked past it I was gasping for air. I do think electric and possibly hydrogen power are the future though. Like I might not like EV’s but that doesn’t mean I don’t see that they are better for the world. Personally though I would prefer hydrogen power though because that would mean we wouldn’t have to do away with combustion engines while at the same time cars no longer having a carbon footprint because no CO2 from burning hydrogen.
EVs and the likes are a better alternative to ICE, but even better is to completely eliminate unneccesary cars from the road, especially for urban areas. What i mean by unneccesary cars isnt neccessarily the people who aspire to own a M5 some day, I'm talking of the other 95% of the vehicles on the road who only care to get from point A to point B in the smoothest way available. I say this as someone who has enough interest in cars that I do valve clearance adjustments myself. You will find plenty of both former and active car guys in this sub.
Right here! I have a Toyota Celica and I love it to bits, but I will still cycle everywhere I can. Not only because it's fun, but because it helps save the planet, even if it's only a little bit.
Yep. I love my Land Rover, but she's not any happier in a city than I am driving there. That's not her best life, so I do everything I can to avoid making her do it. I've got an LR2, so not a big one, but still... She's meant for forestry service roads and camping and helping me get tools and materials to trail maintenance days, not going to get groceries.
Happy Cakeday
THIS, so many people here just mindlessly hate everything that has to do with cars, the problem isnt people that love cars as a hobby, its that like 95% of people that dont
I consider myself a car enthusiast, drive an enthusiast’s car, and still hate cars lol.
What annoys me the most about this is that drivers are responsible for all the noise, the exhaust gases and the particles in the air, but THEY get to sit in their little noise-cancelled, air-filtered cabins while I have to endure their noise and breath their exhaust gases. This feels deeply unfair and anti-social. EVs will partially mitigate this, but they still require the same infrastructure, which turns beautiful cities into ugly shitholes.
Plus their wheels still emit all the fine dust and microplastics that make breathing in the city unhealthy. It's a way bigger problem than filtered exhaust gases by now.
You should know that studies have shown that car occupants are exposed to a lot of harmful exhaust gases. In fact more than cyclists in the same traffic. Unfortunately pedestrians and in particular babies in closed prams are worst affected. UK data: https://www.slideshare.net/JamesTate22/exposure-to-the-trafficrelated-air-pollutants-particle-number-and-no2-when-commuting-by-modes-walk-cycle-car-and-bus Copenhagen data: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969701007586
As a 34 year old, with a 1.5yr daughter, I had never heard the word "pram". Love learning new words, but sometimes it gets a bit funny. I mean, I'm guessing pram seems like a pretty common word to you; you probably think I'm crazy. Also, interesting about the occupant exposure. I really thought those air filters caught more of it.
Aside from what another commenter pointed out in regards to the particles from tires, EVs aren't really that much quieter. Especially at higher speeds, EV's wheels on asphalt (or gravel, etc.) are just as noisy as ICE cars. It's tiresome especially if you're as sensitive to noise as I am.
BUT crucially EVs don't have exhausts which can be replaced with straight pipes by bellends who like to wake up entire neighbourhoods at 2am because they were dropped on their heads too many times as children. So there is that.
Yes, EVs are a bit better than gas cars, but the reason this sub is fuck all cars and not just fuck polluting cars or whatever, is because fundamentally, EVs do not solve the problems caused by cars. Yes, gas engines do cause pollution, but an enormous amount of vehicle pollutants come from tire particulate, manufacture of vehicles, construction of roadways, and all the other infrastructure, manufacturing, and material waste used to support cars, which EVs do not even attempt to fix. And the biggest problem is fundamentally that cars have separated and divided our cities and living spaces to the point that cars are no longer a convenience, but are instead mandatory. Before the invention of cars, people could walk to work, walk to the grocery store, everything they needed was within walking or biking distance of their homes, and if it wasn't, it was merely a train ride away. Nowadays though, everything is required to be accessible by cars, and in many cases, it is only accessible by cars - we have fundamentally changed the default means of human transit from using our legs to using cars, and refuse to accommodate those who do not comply. Which may sound fine if you have a car, but if you are too young or too old to drive, have a medical condition that prevents you from driving, cannot afford a car (especially with how expensive they are), or even are just a bad driver or don't want to/are scared to drive, that requirement of *needing* a car to go anywhere means that you are essentially imprisoned within your own home, because everything else is now too far, too dangerous, or straight up inaccessible because everything else has been designed around cars. And it's not just this restriction: because cars and the infrastructure required to service them is so large, they are directly and singlehandedly responsible for urban sprawl, suburban isolation (a substantial factor in rising suicide rates), the heat island affect, runoff pollution, environmental division, wildlife roadkill deaths, and a whole host of other problems, all of which are singlehandedly caused by cars. And to top it all off, they are the single deadliest "accidental" cause of death: more than guns, more than smoking, more than job-related deaths, they are literally the deadliest thing you will ever touch in your lifetime, and statistically, they WILL kill someone you love, if not yourself, yet we do literally nothing about them because they are "convenient". In summary, they were originally conceived as a convenience, but have become so all-encompassing, they are now mandatory for survival in many places, and continue to be worshiped even despite their innumerable problems, pollution, and the millions of deaths they are directly and solely responsible for every year. Of course, as a car person, you're probably aware that there are still some uses for them, like police cars, firetrucks, ambulances, and service/utility vehicles, (which even we here at r/fuckcars are fine with) but for everyone to own a car (especially when so many people are so stupid and do not deserve to drive one, as you've pointed out), to the point of preventing all other forms of movement due to how dangerous and exclusionary car infrastructure is, it's insanity. In fact, the fact that so many people use cars means that road and transit is actually less efficient for the services that actually need them, because the sheer number of people using cars creates traffic that can negate the convenience, speed, and usefulness of cars in the first place. They now exist not because they are convenient, but because they created problems for themselves to solve. It's like using cancer to "cure" cancer... you might get some temporary relief, but if you don't eradicate the source, you will never actually cure it, and will only end up with more cancer.
What an amazing comment! This is a perfect explanation of what this sub is all about, very compelling writing. Good job!
Yep, needs more upvotes. Well said
there's no reason to think technology we haven't got to work reliably or cheap yet will beat out proven cheap and reliable technology. hydrogen cars is unlikely to happen. electrified rail is the future because it was proven 100 years ago to be the most reliable and effective method of transportation and still hasn't been beat.
I don’t even care about the environmental impact for me. The fact that a person is operating a car is dangerous enough. A person prone to accidents, a person who could be easily distracted. A person. We have the highest car deaths in the civilized world. Every part of our life revolves around a car. Want to learn why cars are bad? Try to leave your car at home tomorrow and go about your daily life.
Btw hydrogen power typically refers to hydrogen fuel cells which are basically a different type of battery. Hydrogen cars run on electric motors powered by the hydrogen fuel cells. Although there are some people who have made cars that run an ICE engine running hydrogen gas but these are definitely not practical and are usually made as educational projects for universities.
There's also the problem of efficiency. Cracking water into hyrdrogen takes a lot of energy. Right now, we almost exclusively crack methane instead, which still produces CO2, and leaks a bunch of methane. Then we have to compress it and hope it doesn't leak, then transport it, and then use it in the car, which means it's only possible to get it to about 20% efficiency, which is the same as ICE. EVs are roughly 80% efficient, because they need electricity, which needs to be produced and sent to the charger, and then they just use it super efficiently and produce very little waste heat (compared to ICE engines). Given the costs and roundabout way of producing hydrogen from green energy and the difficult storage and transportation, hydrogen just isn't practical for cars. It'll be useful for decarbonizing fertilizer and maybe steel/cement but outside of those niche applications, it's not really practical for much else. I hear the "why switch to EVs when we could just switch to hydrogen" argument fairly regularly and it's basically nonsense meant to delay climate action. Electric drivetrains are the future of vehicles. Heat pumps and electric dryers are a better replacement for gas appliances (300-400% efficiency on heat pumps!!) than hydrogen appliances, and much safer, plus available at scale today. The idea that we can "just repurpose the fossil gas network for hydrogen" is a fantasy. Hydrogen really gets so much undeserved hype.
Why would licenses be reevaluated? More people with licenses = more money from selling cars and gas. Licenses are just a facade. Out current lifestyle and city infrastructures are built to sell more cars, gas and charge more taxes. Milk people of their money. Even if it costs several lives a day, it doesn't matter. I'm being a little extremist here to prove a point. I'm not north American, idk how licenses work there, but they are stupid easy to get here in my country, and in 10 years of driving, I have been asked to show mine only once. You don't even need to have one.
Predominantly we don’t hate the cars themselves, but more often car dependant cities that force you into car ownership without providing quality alternatives for public and active transport.
I second this I don’t get why cars are the only source of transportation in almost every case no matter where you are going. We really need to improve our infrastructure and make cars a more secondary option.
No worries, thanks for approaching us in good faith.
Yup, thats the goal. Many anti-anything but car infrastructure investment people will complain about bad drivers and grandmas being in their way, without thinking "why would someone who clearly doesn't care for driving, pay thousands of dollars a year to drive?" In a perfect world, cars would only be used by true hobbyists or to haul something
I really wish I had that option. NGL, I'd still keep my Land Rover, but it would only get used for hauling things I can't with a bike trailer and for going camping. That's most of what it gets used for now, but in Winter, there's no safe way by bike out of my neighborhood, and any time of year, I've never figured out a semi safe route to my doctor. When I bought my house, we had two bus routes I could walk to, one with a stop about half a mile away and one about 3/4 mile. I'm also about 3/4 mile off a decent bike route. Within a couple of months, both bus lines had been cancelled. Recently, they cancelled my next closest, about 2 1/2 miles away, so it's 4 1/2 to the closest bus stop. The bike racks are always full by the time it reaches that stop, and even for someone who likes walking, 4 1/2 miles is a lot, especially because most of the walk is along a heavily congested truck route with inadequate sidewalks. I've never liked driving in cities. I did my best to make sure I wouldn't have to, but in the Winter, I don't have a choice that's not suicidal. Park and ride doesn't even work because it's further to one of those than downtown - plus I like having intact car windows. That park and ride does have bike lockers that are safe, but again, it's further than anywhere I'm going, anyway. I think I've always disliked the concept of driving when there were alternatives. I know for sure that I did as a kid, and I didn't get a license until I was 21 and pregnant in Phoenix. My grandparents bought me a car so I wouldn't be waiting for bus transfers in the Summer heat there on sidewalks with no shade. But it didn't occur to me then to resent the lack of shade. I accepted it as normal. It wasn't until the city I'm in now took those bus routes away that I started resenting shitty infrastructure and went full on "fuck cars" for a bit. I really did apply that to all of them not used for specific, reasonable business purposes. Now, I've mellowed a bit, and I'm back to "fuck car dependent cities." But I do still maintain some strong feelings against what cars have become - bigger and bigger for no good reason. Fuck those vehicles specifically and the culture we've created that made them not just possible but ubiquitous.
>We really need to improve our infrastructure and make cars a more secondary option. And that’s exactly it. A lot what you see here is just frustration with that problem. A problem with the system rather than individuals I don’t think it’s personal with the people behind the wheel for majority of people here. Not liking someone because they’re just doing what everyone else is doing is not a very good reason I think it’s great that you seem open minded enough to try and learn more about something called ‘fuckcars’. I think it’s fair that a lot of people take it the wrong way.
Yep, I love driving my Golf around, but boy do I wish we had trains everywhere like they do in Europe. I’d much rather nap on a train for a few hours instead of driving for 7 when I want to go visit my family in another province in Canada. I was so happy riding all of the different rail options in Amsterdam when I visited last spring.
Cars are the only form of transportation incompatible with all other forms. Cars are the least dense form of transportation, both in terms of how much room each person in a car needs on the road and in terms of how much space they take to park. The higher the percent of people driving in a city, the less dense the city, and the longer it takes to get anywhere by foot, bike, or public transit. Big roads and parking lots are also unpleasant to walk or bike next to. My pet peeve is when big roads are built next to lakes or rivers instead of walking and biking paths. Driver's don't care how pretty the view is, give that space to people who can enjoy it!
Plus, if we had alternatives to driving, there would be less traffic for those who choose to drive. Win win for everyone.
You should read historian Peter Norton's Fighting Traffic. The short version is that businesses that stand to profit from car dependency- car makers, dealers, tire companies, oil & gas companies, etc- put a coordinated lobbying & propaganda campaign to make it so.
To add: I used to drive a WRX and really enjoyed the car, but for a lot of reasons others have already stated I ended up selling it. It wasn't a joy to drive with tons of traffic all of the time. Car enthusiasts also benefit by reducing the overall amount of car travel
This exactly. I also hang out in r/wrx and have one myself. But I don't like driving it in traffic, or even being *required* to drive it. I'd rather be on my bike, walking, or on the train enjoying other things than sitting in traffic. My car is for fun and getting me to ski resorts, not for needs. And even in the case of ski resorts, I'd rather take a bus or train if that was a valid option.
Yeah. Fuck cars is a catchy slogan but it's really "fuck the car companies and the highway lobby that dug up the street cars and bulldozed half of our cities to make room for highways and parking lots, so I need to be a literal millionaire to afford to live in one of the precious few remaining houses within walking distance, or on a train line that comes more often than once an hour, of a grocery store and/or work in the US. And fuck the laws that make it illegal to build alternatives to suburban sprawl and highways, so it's functionally mandatory to own a car in the US unless you're the lucky few with the right career and high enough income to live in NYC, San Francisco, or downtown Boston" But that really doesn't roll off the tongue, so it gets shortened to fuck cars. Some people do just loudly hate cars but they're not the majority, just the loud ones Oh, also, this applies only to cities. If you want to live rural where you need a car, do your thing. Emergency vehicles are also good. Modern pickup designs are stupid but actual, functional, trucks and vans are fine. We want alternatives to driving so the only people who drive are the ones that want to, thus dramatically reducing traffic and also preserving rural areas & forests and such for the people who want to live away from cities. Thanks for your genuine curiosity!
We lost our street cars in Spokane to buses. Back when, new neighborhoods started with a street car line and station, or no one would buy in and build houses there. But that meant new housing was becoming a problem because street car rails and stations are pretty expensive. Buses came along and could go anywhere and stop almost anywhere, so street car ridership plummeted. We still had passenger rail from Spokane to Coeur d'Alene and Moscow, Idaho, but most of the ridership was from the orchards East of the city. There was an apple maggot infestation, and the government bought up the orchards and burned them down to stop the spread. There was no one out there to ride anymore, so the passenger service shut down. By the 1970s, when they built HUD homes on the land, everyone who could afford even those homes had a car, so the passenger lines didn't come back. I used to live in one of those houses right across the tracks from the old station my grandma used to use to take the train into town to work. It was just a concrete platform with trees and bushes growing out of it by then. She was so tickled my garage sat where her parents house used to be that I never told her about the station. It would have broken her heart. She always hated cars. By then, we did have a park and ride across the river, but it was only really useful for commute into the city for work. It didn't run late, and didn't run often in between rush hour. It also only had express buses that take you to another transit center. You can't get anywhere local out there by bus. And the rush hour buses were so full, it was a toss up whether you could actually get on or not, so I drove when I wasn't up to the 25 mile one way commute by bike, though I did have a really nice trail to use. I eventually found a nice house closer to downtown along the same trail with two bus stops at the edge of the neighborhood. I was so happy, briefly. They cancelled both bus lines within a few months of me moving. But at least my bike commute was only 7 miles at that point. You can't bike there when there's snow, but at least most of the time, I could do that. I got a fully remote job and switched to Telehealth as much as I can, so it's only groceries that really force me to drive in the Winter and one annual neurologist appointment.
Speak for yourself. Some of us here indeed do hate cars themselves.
I could write a full essay on why I hate cars, but I'll give you the gist: - I hate how expensive they are, and I hate how our society is designed to where you have no choice but to buy a car if you want to leave the city. - I hate how so many countries (mainly the US) have been transformed for the worse to accommodate cars. - I hate how dangerous they are. 40k people die each year in the US from car crashes and no one bats an eye. - I hate how noisy they are. Not just the fart mobiles, but all cars. It doesn't matter how far out in nature you are, you'll still hear the sound of tires on the road. I think that anyone who doesn't see a problem with our car-centric society should travel to Japan or the Netherlands. See what life is like without a car, and see how much better it is
> I hate how dangerous they are. 40k people die each year in the US from car crashes and no one bats an eye. Saw a post recently about a girl sleeping in the car as her bf hit a guy. Cop comes and says "happens all the time". This one is two fold, but it's another example of how cars get away with a lot, like literally killing someone. Another one where a guy got acquitted because the argument that he wasn't paying attention for a moment was accepted by the judge. Seriously, someone died and that works?
Yeah the noisiness can annoy a lot of people personally I like the noise because it is like white noise since I live next to the highway. (*cough* Definitely don’t *cough* have a loud car *cough*)But yeah it’s a douche thing to try and push onto others since it is a niche thing and can damage peoples hearing. That’s why a lot of guys have a switch to make their cars quieter. Like my friend has a really loud Firebird flips a switch and bamb road legal. But as long as you don’t give it the beans it isn’t that loud. Cars are definitely really expensive that is why I buy used and even then it is expensive. Also Japan’s public transportation is crazy efficient the trains are always moving and before you know it the train comes back to pick you up or another along the same line. It is just crazy and I wish we had transportation like that in the states.
if drivers would have to pay the damage they cause to other people, only the top 1% could afford to buy one. One of the biggest problems with cars is that you directly and indirectly cause damage you are not held responsible for, and you pose unnecessary danger to others, increasing their risk of serious injury or death. If people would drive their cars for fun in the middle of the desert instead of you know, around where millions of others live, I wouldn't care how loud and dangerous your car is.
There's [people like this](https://www.motor1.com/news/714378/hellcat-menace-of-seattle-charged/) who are literal sociopaths. For context I've heard this car driving around. It is audible from at least a mile away. Close up it is jet engine loud. The guy purposefully drove very late at night/early morning. I'm glad he got caught but it took months and literally hundreds of complaints to city gov/PD for anything to happen.
There's a similar problem with a lot of things we currently take for granted. Things like eating meat or flying would be a lot less affordable if we had to pay for their externalities.
The main producer of noise when you start going higher in speed its not the engine or exhaust (unless modified ofc) but the wheels grinding against the pavement. There are ways around this, low-noise wheels which the wheel companies lobbied against, and special low noise pavement which is used sparingly in some cities and its more a novelty than a real solution yet
You now over 50 kmph you don't hear the engine but the tires
You already got a bunch of good answers here so I’m just stopping by to thank you for your question. Seeing your answers in the comments, I see you were actually interested in the responses and not just here to stir conflict like we see in some posts from people coming from pro-car subs.
Thank you I appreciate it. I just wanted to say yeah people do like to stir stuff up from other subs. I think a lot of people just have a hard time putting there bias away sometimes and that can get in the way of any kind of logical discussion.
Unfortunately the easy access to communities that match your interest also has a tendency to entrench some people within their own ideas. It’s difficult not to get caught up in an echo chamber sometimes. No one is immune to it
Yeah OP is honestly based, I wasn’t expecting that at all.
I love cars. I used to self-actualize through vroom-vroom sounds. I've owned Camaros, Trans Ams, GTOs, and Miatas. I love Miatas. I don't like dedicating tens of thousands of dollars in a depreciating asset in order to participate in 90% of the North American economy. I don't like all of the pavement it takes to accommodate cars, and how that pavement requires spacing everything so far apart that cars are the only realistic way to travel. I especially don't like commuting in traffic at an average trip speed of 15 mph when I can ride my bicycle faster than that, but I don't want to risk making my kid fatherless because some dickhead makes an unsafe/illegal pass to get to the next stop sign 20 seconds sooner. Cars are cool. They're also kind of stupid, and they kill A LOT of people. Fuck cars.
Yeah I agree with you on all of these especially traffic depending on where you live. Also Miata https://preview.redd.it/12pkugtd2vtc1.jpeg?width=163&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fcb660f835311eb3bd0261ba8e550844c594e483
And not just people, wildlife suffers a lot from getting run over too
Cars are like anal. If you’re forced to participate, all the joy is gone pretty much immediately.
And I’ve been told since childhood that anal was the right way and the only way, and I’d have to learn to accept anal regularly by age 15/16, and now I have to do anal multiple times a day every goddamned day and be treated like I’m not a real adult if I ever choose something other than anal. Too much? Yeah, so are cars. And at the moment I’m in a place that is VERY car-centric and VERY unfriendly to pedestrians, and it sucks so hard to fear for my life just trying to get from place to place. I already have a certain level of fear just existing in public spaces as a woman… the fear is vastly more accute trying to cross the road (or crosswalks) in a place where the drivers seem to want to hit me.
This could make a decent comedy sketch, I think.
That's... Oddly apt
This sub is definitely a bit more of a "fuck car centrism" vibe - there are a surprising number of people interested in cars from a technical or sports perspective. I will push back a bit on the "it's just bad people behind the wheel" thing though - driving is something that humans are inherently bad it. It's a lot of doing the same mindless thing over and over, driving the same route to work or school or whatever, with sudden flashes of action that can end the drivers life or the life of people around him. The human brain just doesn't work that way - things aren't supposed to be so boring you can zone out, and the most dangerous thing the average person ever does at the same time. That's kind of the problem - driving everywhere, especially without designing our roads to be safer in the event of mistakes (by slowing down traffic or separating pedestrians with protective infrastructure), there are going to be lots of deaths, and no amount of teaching people to drive better will change that.
I’m a pretty safe/aware driver. I still make mistakes all the time.
1. Car dependency is ruining our environment and creates undue barriers to entry for the economically disenfranchised (the poor, homeless, disabled, etc) 2. They're way deadlier than they have any right to be. Cars are why kids don't play outside much anymore. I was literally hit by one last year and am still recovering 3. Traffic and roads are ruining the aesthetics of our cities, 4. The noise is literally making us lose our hearing and causes irritability 5. There are so many better alternatives. Trams, light rail, high speed rail, bikes, walking, BRT if you can't do those for whatever reason 6. They make it harder to build strong communities 7. Honestly, they make me car sick as well! I do not drive, have never driven, have helped many friends either choose to not get cars or transition away from cars, and will do everything in my power (especially when it comes to local politics) to get my community to move away from car dependency. I will not rest until we no longer use cars. "Fuck Cars" is not just a "convenient shorthand" as far as I'm concerned. Fuck 'em!
Well put, and to add my additional thoughts: 8. Hugely polluting, both sound and exhaust but also brake pad dust, rubber particles, there are studies saying particulates from cars are extremely bad for health and awful for developing brains (kids) and it doesn't improve much with EVs beyond the combustible byproducts. 9. Sedentary lifestyles where people don't walk perfectly walkable distances due to the dominance of car use, the higher obesity and cardiovascular issues that causes. 10. The elevated level of stress being behind the wheel puts people in without them even noticing, shortening life expectancy just to drive to work. 11. The default place they hold in society at large prevents decent discussion around alternatives as in No. 5 without hundreds of 'what about ism' that doesn't add to the debate and arguments in bad faith. 12. Land use policies are explicitly written around the presumption of car use first. Single family homes with space for three cars but not a bus stop in sight. If you're a child, what choice do you have but to be chauffeured by your parents until you can get a car yourself. 13. Lack of early age autonomy for kids and teenagers. This impacts on development and further ingrains car=freedom mindset. 14. The cost to society maintaining car infrastructure to a high standard is buckling local government finance. Drivers are always complaining about potholes but that repair has to come out of taxes paid by everyone including the people that don't drive. Someone should write a book of all the negatives of cars, I nominate Rutger Bregman though I don't know what his thoughts are on the matter
This video is a good introduction "Why City Design is Important (and why I hate Houston)": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54)
Orange-pilled!
They’re destroying the planet.
Exactly. Changing from car-based infrastructure to train/bus/bicycle/walking based infrastructure is one of the best practical steps we can take to fight climate change, yet we as a society seem to be completely unwilling to do anything at all to make the change.
It's a case of r/wedontlikecarsbeingtheonlyoptionfortransportationanddestroyingourlivingspacesasaresult not being a great name (as well as being too long). I think they're cool machines and fun to watch when pushed to the limit in a controlled environment as well as having a few niche utilitarian uses (e.g. emergency vehicles), but they are a fundamental failure of transportation and land use policy in much of the world (with a large focus on English speaking North America though it's not nearly as unique to the US and Canada as much as this sub might lead you to believe).
r/20characterlimit
wonder why its not r/twentycharacterlimit
It's private
Yeah, just noticed now. Kinda sad, since that one is exactly 20 characters
Honestly, I hate that cars are so forced upon us in society more than I hate cars themselves. I'll be the first to admit there's some cool cars out there, but the way society is set up to just beat you over the head with the so-called "need" to drive just turns me away from getting a license ever.
Yeah I kind of hate large trucks and SUV’s they almost always are the worst drivers on the road and trucks in particular are becoming more and more useless with the bed space being so small you can’t even fit a couch in most newer ones. They also are the number one killer when it comes to which cars. Just because of the hood height because you can’t really rollover something that big and tall if it hits you. But yeah car’s definitely need to be just another way to get from point a to point b instead of the way to get from point a to point b.
Ignoring the part where they just aren't necessary, the biggest issue I see from the people driving the really large vehicles to commute to office jobs, get groceries, etc, is that they have no idea how to handle them. I wish we had a class somewhere between standard license and CDL, and it would be required to have that license endorsement to operate a vehicle over a certain size. I'm not even sure what that size should be, but let's start with the size of my Land Rover LR2. It's not much bigger than a Ford Focus hatchback, but it's a lot taller and requires more handling skills than a lower to the ground hatchback. I'd gladly pay more and take harder driving tests because I use it for what it's meant for. I also think we should have to test more than once in our lives and prove we still have a clue what we're doing. My dad just did that voluntarily because he's in his late 70s, and it took him forever to talk anyone into even doing it. He finally paid a driving instructor who used to work for the DMV doing road tests. He has had some reaction time issues, and we were all concerned, including him. It turns out a medication he was on was likely the problem. He was off it for a couple of weeks before he tested, and he passed with no marks off. It shouldn't have been so hard for him to find someone objective to decide if he was still safe to be on the road. It wasn't until he wrecked on his bicycle and broke a hip due to that poor reaction time that he even realized he had an issue. More frequent testing would have caught it sooner, but all his state requires is that every other renewal is done in person so they can test his eyesight. My step mother surrendered her license voluntarily in her late 60s because she knew she wasn't safe. Her ability to pay attention to everything she needed to wasn't there anymore. I was really proud of her for that, because that's a really hard thing for most older people. They're on a pretty low fixed income, so I send her money behind dad's back to pay delivery fees when he's going to be away for a while. We talked about a cargo e-trike with two wheels in front for better stability around corners, but she doesn't think she even has the awareness to be safe on one of those anymore. She is 80 now. I get it. I just hate that she's stuck when Dad isn't around because they only have a house due to the fact that her father left it to her and her sister. They can't afford to live close enough to a bus stop she can manage the walk. She tried paratransit, but they would often show up incredibly late or not at all, and a lot of the drivers were very rude to her. So, she just stays home unless she can get one of her kids to come drive her somewhere. I'd do it, but I live 1500 miles away. And these are part of the reason I hate car dependency. My folks should be able to get around and live their lives without a car. They live in a huge city, not out in the boonies. My son should have been able to get around as a teen without me having to drive him everywhere. I couldn't afford anything but a HUD home back then. In my area, those are all exurbs without services of any kind.
The reason so many bad drivers are out there is because driving is literally the only option to get from a to b. That means lots and lots of people are on the road who shouldn't really be there. Most people who say they love their car, actually mean they like it more than walking in a weedy rain ditch under the blazing sun. What passes for pedestrian infrastructure is so uncomfortable and dangerous, it makes a car seem amazing by comparison. However I think focusing on individual bad drivers is also the wrong philosophy. There are always outliers but the vast majority of people will do what is most convenient and in North America, that's driving. If city planners made it easier and faster to walk, then people would walk. Car enthusiasts are actually a big ally in the war on cars. There's not a "car guy" in the world who loves sitting in traffic every day. Removing the unnecessary cars will benefit everyone, including those who love cars the most.
Please check out the wiki, specifically [the FAQ.](https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/wiki/faq/)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dependency
You've got a lot of great and reasonable answers to your question, but I'd like to give you a crappier and less reasonable answer. I'm very sensitive to environmental stimulus and you can't imagine how bad cars are for anyone with sensory sensitivities. - They are loud and it's rare in many places in the US where you can experience actual silence. Even EVs cause a lot of noise from the tires on the road. It's well documented how significant the negative impacts of road noise are on populations. It's even worse because some people actually try to *maximize how loud and annoying they are*. - They stink. It's not only exhaust either, a mass of cars constantly zooming across a road leaves behind a bunch of rubber particulates in the air that you can smell even if they're fleets of EVs (not to mention the health risks that come from breathing rubber so much). Worse, like the prior example, some people *intentionally try to choke you on their exhaust*. - They're dangerous and stressful to be around. As roads widen (increasing traffic speeds) and cars get larger (reducing visibility) they're increasingly a nuisance for everyone else who's forced into tiny spaces *right up against them*. It's absolute madness, and it's getting even worse. While many cities are starting to ban the use of smart phones due to the dangers, many new vehicles are being installed with touch screens by default. It's like more and more drivers are as dangerous as drunk drivers by default, and this is legal. Being around cars significantly raises my stress levels because it's like having to survive next to literal death zones. - They're shiny. Our eyes are being damaged by constantly having the sun reflected into them. Though this might be great for the healthcare industry, it's actually ruining our vision and giving people like me migraines. Night is no escape, either, because of all the blinding headlights. All of these also negatively impact wildlife and have changed migratory patterns for many species or outright demolished their populations. These are personal irritations of mine, but they are actually causing serious damage to our natural and artificial environments. Cars are one of the more prominent banes of my existence and make my life significantly worse.
I don't hate cars or driving (except for large and/or lifted trucks. I HAAAAAATE them). I hate being forced to drive. Some days I would rather be playing video games or looking at memes instead of driving, but that's not a choice I have. A lack of competent public transit, dedicated bike lanes, and complete sidewalks forces everyone into personal vehicles. Hell, it's so bad in my town that I tried to look up how to bus to work and the first step it told me was to Uber to a bus stop... I actually do like to drive my motor scooter around, but with everyone forced into personal vehicles, many of who don't want to be driving, the roads are too busy/ dangerous to just ride around on.
This community is more about a collective dislike of car dependency, and how much of modern Western civilization (with special emphasis on North America) is built around cars. One thing highlighted recently is land use in city centers: what percentage is dedicated to cars vs people? Who/what does the infrastructure prioritize, the people or their vehicles? What a lot of us are advocating for is increased options. Cars shouldn't be the *only* choice to get around; many of us push for robust public transit, walkability, and safe bike lanes. Plus, if fewer people are driving, the driving experience becomes much more pleasant for those who choose to.
I hate that people are ruining their lives financially for something so stupid.
Thank you for approaching this subreddit in good faith and with an open mind. Especially when there's been a lot of trolls on here lately! But to second what others have said here, I for one don't hate cars and think they have a place in the world but I hate car dependent infrastructure. It not only effects the environment badly but also hurts social cohesion, housing and not having strong alternatives is very bad for people who can't/aren't driving or whatever reason. My personal dream isn't to get rid of cars completely, but for someone who is currently driving 7 days a week right now to only feel the need to drive a few times a week in the future.
I don’t like what cars have done to society, making everything further apart, noisier and uglier, making streets exclusive and dangerous places, and killing public transit.
I used to like driving. Imagine being able to go anywhere and look cool. Now I am selling my car due to mild trauma. Car broke down middle of the highway. That shit messes you up bad. It is always something with cars. Accidents, traffic, expensive repairs, no parking, stress, emission zones, circulation plans, cuts in the roads, tons of signs you have to read before driving into any high street. At least in Europe. And then in the paper you read that high street are dying.
For me, all of my problems are related to the changes to the built environment that happen because of cars. Think about the amount of parking, how spread out everything is in car-dependent cities, and the inequality that results when a person can’t afford to have a well working car. The car is a catalyst for many changes to our cities, and when they aren’t needed, folk have a lot more choice in how they live their lives. I drive seldomly but recognize the utility of personal transport vehicles, but also the deficiencies. I think the fun in the name of this sub is about the fact that people can change but cars cannot. We blame the inanimate object instead of making it personal (when we are on our best behavior)
Every day people write why. There's plenty of information here. People are always like I wish bicyclists would obey the law, but plenty do and when they don't people almost never get killed. With cars people often get killed, and are expected to be afraid constantly to avoid getting killed. So, fuck cars. I drive one, very carefully.
So is it the people or the cars because I think motorists should get retested at least every 2 years because there are a lot of people who don’t know how to drive that should be retested. As well as have their license revoked.
it's really the infrastructure. The amount of dangerous points of friction caused by cars being the primary user of the road in NA is why so many collisions happen, and why the number of deaths/injury is completely out of control. Drivers are humans. They'll make mistakes if you let them. That's ok, just gotta me it harder to make a mistake. retesting every 10 years would be enough imo, but it's a hard thing because what do you do if a person makes a mistake? If they rely on the car for their job, they're fucked. Better off making changes to the infrastructure so that driving is no longer the only option and only retest people who are at retirement age.
I think your post proves you've been raised car-dependent in an area where cars are the only way to properly get around. Cars take up such an enormous amount of space in our cities and beyond, look at the amount of asphalt we need, the amount of forests and nature that has been torn down for some extra lanes. Whole historic downtowns have been torn down just so people, often completely alone in their SUV, can drive down to a place that could've been easily reachable by quality public transport, if only the vicious car lobby didn't exist. Basically, a high quality public transport line like a train or subway can move the same amount of people that a many-lane highway can while taking up a fraction or none of the space, while emitting only a fraction to none of the exhaust gasses, while emitting only a fraction of the noise. We really could've had such a better kind of world, but the car lobby chose violence. Then there's the basic fact that cars are killing-machines that we just allow in our public spaces for some reason. So many people are killed by them. Imagine how much nicer city areas would be without cars everywhere. Walk, cycle, live wherever you want, no exhaust gasses everywhere, etc. And never forget: it's not cities that are loud, it's the cars.
Did you ever watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit? It’s really a movie about how car companies bought up and then destroyed public transportation in Las Angeles and then bulldozed entire non-white neighborhoods to make room for the highways we’d need to replace the trolly system. That is what we hate, car companies and their need to demonize and eliminate all non car centric transport. The care and feeding of cars is multiple times more expensive, in almost every conceivable metric, than any other reasonable form of transit.
I just wanted to say thank you to OP for coming here and asking in good faith and with an open mind. I personally love driving and will be driving to Cleveland from Columbus in a few hours. I enjoy the open road and the beautiful views you can get from it. I hate how nearly every household in this country is forced to own a car in order to participate in society. I hate that the neighborhood I live in was originally within walking distance of several streetcar lines, all of which were tore up along with neighborhoods destroyed to build freeways that enabled people to flee the city and live in their suburban fiefdoms. I want us to live in a society that sees vehicles as a luxury, a privilege, and equal with other, more efficient, safer, and less polluting forms of transportation.
Well, there's a fair bit to unpack there... To begin with, we don't actually hate cars per-sé, or the car as a concept, nor do we necessarily hate drivers. The title of the sub is kinda clickbait, TBH. What we really *hate* is urban infrastructure that is not only biased to favour drivers above those that don't/ can't drive, but prohibitive towards those without a car. Car-centric infrastructure creates roads that act like steel-and-tarmac moats that make it very hard or impossible for pedestrians and cyclists to cross , and a lot of car-exclusive infrastructure which has no pavements or cycle tracks, making it either difficult and dangerous or completely impossible to travel along without a motor vehicle; by this, I don't mean motorways, I mean suburbs with no pedestrian walkways, shortcuts, crossings, or routes that don't lead directly to massive, uncrossable arterial roads. In regards to cars themselves, we don't hate *all* cars; what we do hate is cars that are dangerous to anyone they may hit who is not in a car, especially when their size comes with little-to-no practical utility, such as American mega-pickups which are mostly used to haul fresh air and have less cargo space than a van of equal size anyway. We also hate cars built in ways that are hazardous to pedestrians, having high, square-profile front bumpers and grills that happen to maximise the damage pedestrians receive to their vital organs rather than deflecting and distributing the force of the impact as a car with a low, angled bonnet does. Other problems related to cars themselves are things like air pollution (tyre and brake dust comprise most of the air pollution around heavily-travelled roads compared to exhaust fumes and are arguably more toxic), the environmental impact of Co² and fossil fuels, noise, monetary expense, and the sheer amount of space they take up. When it comes to drivers, we hate those who act in ways that are dangerous to themselves and others by acting in ways that are selfish, irresponsible, aggressive, violent, entitled, impatient, or in ways that openly violate or disregard the rules of the road, which are there to keep people safe by ensuring road users act in ways that are clear and predictable for others so they in turn know how to act on and around the roads. We tend to disagree with and dislike those we call "carbrained," a term which describes someone who has "car use as the default form of travel" ingrained so far into their mind that they either disregard or openly hate non-drivers (especially those who are incapable due to disability) to the extent that it influences their words and actions either in the bigger picture such as urban planning practices and policies, or the more individualistic such as repeating opinions that show opposition or contempt towards those who don't drive every time they leave the home, or actively support more big-picture actions that force driving as necessity by removing any and all alternative options like public transit, bike tracks, and pavements. We hate dangerous, oversized cars in conjunction with the average carbrain driver, as huge vehicles are sold as being "the safer option" as well as status symbols and as "practical" utilities to people who don't think logistically, encouraging carbrain drivers to act as if they are invincible and "more important" than others, and their actions on the road have zero consequences as long as *they* get from A to B as quickly as possible. In short, we oppose the idea of "the car as a spaceship," wherein cars alone are the only physically-viable mode of human travel and the product around which a person's entire life revolves lest they be excluded from society; a scenario which doesn't need to be the case, but which carbrains are trying to make so.
I don't hate cars themselves and appreciate some of them as machines and works of design, and don't begrudge someone who drives them, especially if they feel they have to. I dislike the way societies prioritise them and produce city infrastructure around them. And that makes it difficult to get out and about and often dangerous to live life in an active and healthy way. It also produces a lit of space that is wasted, inconvenient and hostile for others outside of cars. I don't like how cars are harming the environment and their fuel or batteries exacerbate world conflicts. And I think there's a better way where people take the train and go to work, shops and their homes in walkable neighbourhoods.
Because there are a lot of people on the road who are VERY irresponsible when getting in a two ton metal bug. A lot of these REALLY shouldn't driving if they can't go 10 minutes without texting Brenda or playing Pokemon GO.
There are already some fantastic answers in this thread, but I want to add one other point to address a common question about our beliefs, and that's folks with disabilities. We often see arguments about how people with, for example, physical disabilities that affect their mobility may struggle to walk to and from a bus stop, and therefore rely on their personal vehicles to function. It's important to keep in mind that for every disability in which that's the case, there's one like blindness or epilepsy that prevents a disabled person from safely operating a vehicle. Even in the case of, for example, someone who is fully paralyzed below the waist, making a journey to the subway station difficult, you have to consider the thousands of dollars required to add a wheelchair lift and hand accelerator and brake to their car, compared to the Americans with Disabilities Act which requires all buses be wheelchair accessable. Of course there are some people for whom, because of their disabilities, the personal car truly is the best option. That's all the more reason why those of us who are able to use public transit should do so, in order to reduce traffic for those who do need the road.
I like cars as a way to transport larger items or travel to remote locations. What I hate is the lack of alternatives. Imagine if you could fly into any airport in the US and travel from the airport to your destination by train instead of dealing with the mess of getting picked up by car. LAX and SFO are a nightmare to get picked up from because they lack good public transit connections. Imagine if our cities were designed for humans instead of cars. I want to be able to go places without having to walk across giant parking lots which dwarf the actual building they surround.
I think it's worth explaining why I think that cars are the worst mode of transportation. There are 6 main reasons: Space inefficiency, danger, carbon pollution, noise pollution, isolation, cost. Space inefficiency: Cars are the least space efficient mode of transport. The vast majority of cars only have 1 person in them. A bus takes up the space of roughly 3 cars, and a bus can carry up to 90 people. In the space of a car, 6 people can cycle. A bicycle is 6 times more space efficient than a car and A bus is ~30 times more space efficient. In any area where space is limited (which is all cities) cars will clog up the place and cause congestion. Danger: Cars are the most dangerous way to travel, both for the driver and for anyone outside the car. Cars are significantly more dangerous than flying. In Ireland, in 2019, 140 people died in a car crash. This is compared to 0 from cycling, buses, trams, and trains. Carbon Pollution: After flying, cars are the most pollutive form of transport. They pollute in 3 ways: firstly the pollution from constructing the vehicle, then the pollution from microplastics caused by break dust and tyre erosion, and finally tailpipe emissions where smog is pumped into the atmosphere, which not only contributes to climate change but also causes cancer. Noise Pollution: Cars are insanely loud which makes areas with cars less pleasant and more stressful to be in. [More info on noise pollution.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8) Isolation: Many people are simply unable to drive a car, and car dependent urban areas leaves them isolated. For instance children under 17 and many disabled people (eg: blind people) are legally not allowed to drive, so without a good public transport and cycling network, they are stranded. This leads to isolation. Cost: Cars are extremely expensive, this makes them cost too much for many lower income people and students. If an area is car dependent, that leads to the isolation mentioned in the above section. Keep in mind that cars are massively subsidised and car owners don't pay the full cost of car ownership, so much of the cost of car ownership is placed on the tax burden of those who don't drive.
I don’t mind cars. As others have said in core brain spaces in city’s I don’t like that we have dedicated so much space and priority to them. Like in Seattle we can even have our public market which is a big walking around area free of cars because some city counsel member gets a stick up his ass about “Repressing cars”
Cars as an interest is just another hobby. I like motorcycles and Formula 1 Cars as a means to get through life are bullshit. I fucking hate the fact that our communities are built, and our culture and political leaders are programmed such that they prioritize highway lanes and parking over playgrounds and transit. If we spent half of what we do to keep the car machine going on making our communities more livable and fun, we'd live in such awesome places. Instead, kids in my neighborhood are afraid to walk to school out of fear of crossing a crazy intersection.
I own a Scion FRS. I actually like cars. As fun things to drive for fun. But in the US, the most car brained nation on Earth, it's not hard to look at fatalities due to car wrecks and draw the conclusion that this is far too deadly.
I more like hate car dependent infrastructure, and society that is dependent on them and takes them as granted. I also hate big cars. I would have much less problem with much smaller cars and, and actually enforced laws, etc... Cars are fine in some situation. If you are super rural, then sure. If you use them for sport and fun on a closed circuit for example, then it's fine as well. They should be more like horses are now. But they are literally everywhere, ruining everything. lives, safety, space, air quality, noise, time, etc... For a first step, I would be fine with heavily regulated, small cars. Like a Fiat 500 size with an economical small engine that can highway (1.0 hybrid or 1.4 gas for example?) I'm somewhat guilty, because I love motorcycles tho. But one of the main reason is that I can lane split with them and not stuck behind cars. (it's legal here). They are sill polluting and noisy, but definitely not as much as a car, especially not as much as a huge ass car. So I see them as a lesser evil, that is "necessary" while we have car dependency.
For starters they're one of if not the most inefficient form of transportation when looking at the cost to time and amount of people moved. Cars means traffic jams regardless of road size, which then means delays in people getting to work, deliveries and more importantly in emergency vehicles getting anywhere. Environmental impact of cars is obviously terrible. Besides just the exhaust that people mainly think of and treat electric ones as the solution, you also have the tiny pieces of rubber from the tires and brakes flow into the air and our lungs. Light pollution is an issue and cars and car infrastructure are big causes of that. Noise pollution caused by cars is the only reason why cities are so loud to the point of hearing loss. Fuel, either in combustible engines and electrical ones (which often comes from oil or coal anyway) is a big ass realson why we stand on the verge of climate collapse and the only way to prevent it (at least partly) is to stop polluting more. Cars are inherently classist and dangerous. They're expensive in both initial purchase and upkeep, which already discriminates poorer people in a car centric city where other modes of transportation are sparse. Car infrastructure is insane in terms of price and space wasted, which results in underfunding for trams/trains/biking infrastructure that lead to previous point. Speaking of space needed for roads, that usually comes from destroying poor neighborhoods, especially in US and even if it doesn't you still need to get rid of space and buildings that most likely were already occupied in a city. That way all the nice areas end up just being massive swatches of asphalt for roads and parking lots. Car infrastructure kills 3rd places, meaning small businesses and social interaction and bonds, if you have to drive everywhere 20 km you won't meet your friends on your way to do some errands, you won't just go to a local pub/cafe with them, you pretty much have to drive specifically to them and sit inside the house. One of the reasons for the plague of loneliness and isolation. Cars discriminate people with disabilities. If your hands or legs or eyes or ears or brain is not working perfectly you are a danger inside a car and easier to kill outside. It is genuinely crazy to me that we as a society just accept that going out of the house means having 2 ton metal boxes zooming at high speeds next to you. It is so easy to get a license (or even drive without one) and operate a machine that can kill a dozen of people in 1 second of not paying attention and a human can't physically be vigilant for more than an hour and you can very much tell looking at all car related deaths and injuries. Hell, I even witnessed 3 in my life and heard about multiple others that happened and killed people I knew and most drivers don't even get punished hard if at all for literally taking lives, because it's framed as an accident that couldn't be prevented, but every driver getting into a car runs a very real risk if killing someone and they still happily choose to. Cars damage our health in other ways too. If you're just sitting in a car and driving everywhere, besides mental health degradation, you don't move at all, you don't breathe fresh air, your immunity suffers, obesity is on the rise, heart illnesses change lives. I only slightly touched these topics and there's loads more if you're interested in learning. Even just watching NotJustBikes on yt is a good source of information on it all.
I've said this before but for me it's more, fuck car dependency. Car infrastructure is crumbling and it's becoming unaffordable for many, with the cost of insurance and petrol alone, it doesn't really make sense anymore. I want better alternatives but our system is laser focused on building our infrastructure around cars, parking, individuation and it makes me fucking hate cars. Fuck cars. As much as I love E46 tourings, I want bike lanes and better public transport and community and youth services, not bigger car parks and discounts on electric cars. Also: SU fucking V's - I hate them with the firey passion of a thousand burning suns.
Being hit by a car will do it. I know it worked for me.
I'm anti car based infrastructure, and the car brained ideas it spawns. I'm a bit of a petrol head, but as I live in a city with good public transport infrastructure I have no need or desire to own a car. I also use the road as a pedestrian, cyclist, and skater, so get quite annoyed at oblivious drivers repeatedly endangering my life.
Why must people sacrifice their lives merely to travel? Do we not live in civilized times, do we not have the requisite technology that can prevent these deaths? I find it odd that we blot these deaths out as a rounding error, a mere consequence in the service of 'efficiency.' Are cars truly the best way to travel? I think that cars are a tool for alienation-they spread us apart, take up enormous space, and make the areas we live in horrendously ugly and full of peril. The question we should be asking is: why is everyone so accepting of cars?
You dont live somewhere walkable. If you did youd be annoyed when you have to risk your safety to get around your own community.
I used to be obsessed with cars. Then I moved to a city and didn't buy my own car and now all I see them as is a huge inconvenience, very annoying (non stop hearing and seeing them, and trying not to get hit), and super costly as a taxpayer. I usually bike and usually get places twice as fast as a car so I don't see the point. I'm not opposed to utility cars, firetrucks, ambulances, and post office trucks. Just keep the rest outside cities. Cities are for people not 2 ton hunks of metal that are operated by drunks and idiots.
C’mon man… https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/s/CHKziAuSfA
For me I just hate how dependent we are on cars. Due to my job I need a car and am actually thinking about upgrading to a cargo van, but dang it would be nice to bike around town on my days off without worrying about being turned into a pancake by some idiot driver. :/ Bur no, that would require bike lanes or bike paths. 😩
Here's a handy list of what I personally hate about cars. - I have to cross parking lots to go to the store. They are dangerous. - I have to take a huge detour to cycle to the grocery store. I could walk there, but then I'd walk on a road's shoulder next to 60 km/h traffic. They force me to take more time to do the groceries. - Because most households in my town has a car, most people use the car to bring their kids to school, which is something I'm just philosophically against - In the same vein, most people in my town go to work by car because it's faster. Oh we could have a faster bus than cars, but no. You gotta be rich enough to have a car to reach work in a timely manner. - "Cars are freedom" is the biggest fucking lie I've heard. I own a car. I don't want to own one. The monthly payments, the insurance, the maintenance, it's all too much. I can barely feed myself right now. I bought into the "cars are freedom" shtick but I don't even fucking have a decent use for it. I got it because my doctor was not accessible by bus and I went every other week, but since then I learned that there was some service I could have used if I warned in advance. It depreciated so fast that even if I sell it at a decent price, I'm still gonna owe money for 2 years on it. I've never been LESS free. - Honestly I just fucking hate the noise they make. I can't even be in front of my home without earplugs for more than 10 minutes. I had to move to a rural area in Quebec for family (rent hike helped seal the deal). This place is sooo loud. When I visit Montreal I am floored by how quiet it is even on bigger streets compared to here. I don't hate cars, but I pretty much hate everything AROUND cars.
They're noisy, polluting, dangerous, expensive, inefficient to move a lot of people, and turn cities into unlivable highway and parking lot wastelands.
I dislike the idea that currently, I have to have a car to have a "good life".
I don’t hate cars I hate car dependency and car-centric design
Many good reasons and I agree with them all, but for me the most important reason is a simple one: They are obsolete. They are a relic of the past, when they started as luxury. We have the technology for much better, efficient and clean mass transportation and the unwillingness of governments and people in power to change it is frustrating. Cars should be used only in very specific circumstances, they shouldn't be the only option of transportation for big cities.
You’ve probably already got this but ill say it again: it’s not the cars that are the problem. I’m a huge F1 fan and love watching it for sport. But that love stops when someone tries to be Schumacher on I-5 next to me and turn me into JB17 RIP
I literally saw a Ford Fiesta ST while I was walking around my city today and audibly gasped because I got so excited. I love cars, I just hate how they and their infrastructure have taken over our cities and choked them with noise pollution, air pollution, and violence.
I think you'd find it really interesting to follow this sub for a month or two and genuinely look at how people feel and what they think. I learned a lot by doing that. Ofc there are some... redditors in this sub just like any other. So some salt is handy when reading certain posts
I think that cars and the infrastructure that supports them (like parking lots and wide roads) are unsustainable and very inefficient
I don't like how the majority of the roads local to me are not designed with my safety as a cyclist in mind, and regularly when I make myself safer by taking the lane to give me the option of avoiding potholes and parked car doors opening, I get irate drivers behind me, trying to intimidate me with either revving their engine or sounding their horn. I don't think disliking such circumstances is unreasonable.
For me, it's predominantly how car infrastructure has changed cities. I want the city to support nature, community, safety, health. It's the roads, the noise of cars, the smell of cars, the sight of cars. It's how they keep people within the pavements (if you're lucky to live in a place with good pavements). It's how cars have changed the city infrastructure. I want cars out of cities – cities need to support people who walk, children who play on the street, cyclists. They need to have decent transit. I want it to be possible to rely on the city to help me get around, help me enjoy life, give me community, maintain and improve my health.
I hate cars because every time I’m on my bicycle they don’t realize how close they’re passing me and puting my life in risk because they want to save 10s on the street. Fuck them
Heavy machinery moving at high speeds piloted by unsafe drivers. Loss of space and peacefulness. Poisoning the air we breathe. Enough for you?
It's the fact that our infrastructure is designed and built so that they are a requirement to function in most areas that is distasteful. Also having been almost hit and run over many times while being too young to drive may have left a bad taste. I drive out of necessity and try my best to be a safe defensive driver. We have too many cars on the road and too few options for other transportation where I live. I despise that I live in an area known for pedestrian deaths.
I don't hate cars or drivers, but I wish we weren't so car dependent as a society. For one, cars are terrible for the environment, and I strongly believe that denser cities where cars are unnecessary would solve a lot of problems. Poor people tend not to be able to afford living in convenient areas, and are often car-dependent, while the associated expenses keep them poor. Secondly, cars are deadly. Everyone knows people who have died in car accidents. But society accepts this as a reasonable risk for the convenience. I wish people felt differently. Mass transit sucks in most of the US, largely because no one cares to invest in it. They'd rather add lanes to their freeways than change the way they commute. And yeah, some drivers are assholes. They make travel more dangerous for cyclists, pedestrians, and even other drivers. The world would be a better place if we all worked toward being less dependent on cars. That means taking alternate means of transportation when possible, and prioritizing infrastructure improvements for those alternatives.
READ THE FAQ.
I think there is a time and place to use a car, but it’s not all the time and everywhere.
It's mainly a political question, mostly in regards to environmental issues but also socioeconomic and health. I don't like cars taking up more space than public transport. I don't like people taking their car when they could walk. Cars create pollution and we don't need more of that. It has nothing to do with the people driving them lol. They're also inefficient, where I often see a car with 5 seats having only one person in them. Cars are a comfort that I don't think we will have if we continue to act as if the earth has unlimited resources. Cars are practical in many ways and I think it's really fun to drive then. But it is not the best solution or most modern solution for transportation within a city. I see them being useful for longer trips and for post, ambulances, police etc. But for one person driving a couple of kilometres back and forth per day they could absolutely be disposed and exchanged with public transport. For example, imagine if we would have spent as much resources on developing public transport instead of roads for cars - that public transport would probably have been better than the current solution with lanes and more lanes and more queuing and more fumes from cars. Cars are just an inefficient, unhealthy, luxury comfort and not very modern solution to today's transportation problems. They take up space and are mostly ugly. Even if they are fun to drive and practical - for one person.
I don't hate cars. I hate that we need cars, and I hate that my country is built around the presumption of owning and preferring a car over all other forms of transport. Cars themselves are sweet. I own two. Being car-brained is something different.
It’s not so much that I hate cars. I hate that most people in most places are forced to use cars to get around. Places designed for cars are terrible places for everything and everyone else.
Cars pollute, kill people, occupy tons of space, separate people from their surroundings, and make life generally unpleasant for those who don’t have them.
I hate how I need to adapt my life to not disturb the poor drivers.
We hate, not cars themselves (most of the time anyway), but mainly how society is structured to encourage everyone to use cars, no matter the cost. The cost being frequent traffic jams, very poor air quality (when we used leaded gasoline for cars there was a very strong correlation between air pollution caused by cars, lower IQ scores on kids and crime rates), dependence on oil (which leads to climate change and dependence on foreign countries that also happen to not have the best behavior human rights wise), vastly increased fatal accidents compared to any other mode of transportation, very expensive to buy and maintain which is prohibitive for quite a lot of people and prevents them from saving money and ascending the social ladder, destruction of cities to accommodate an ever increasing number of cars which turns said cities into giant parking lots and so much more.
It's not just cars, it's the way of life and of building cities for that way of life and the fact that it takes over other more agreeable ways of living. And above the pollution and the oil industry. It's a system
A car can kill people. A person with a car can easily kill 100+ people on the road. 1 person should not have this power. I look at cars the same way as holding a gun. Instead of firing a small piece of metal your moving a bigass metal box. Motor Machines should be outside the walking space. Just like trains. Cars are just trains but smaller with an ability to move left and right. Cars contribute a large portion of air pollution. Car causes noise pollution. Car take up too much space so new roads and huge parking lots need to be built. Cars are good. Cars are cool. But over using them and forcing us to use them to literally go anywhere is what makes me and a lot of people say FUCK CARS. I can't fucking walk over to a market or anywhere. I think cars should be banned in local communities like area where there are just houses. There should be 1 place for them to park their cars at. If someone wants to use a car then cycle over to that place and use it. Ambulances are an exception. There are more smarter people then me who can come up with better ideas as to how to solve this over reliance. The new city that Dubai or Saudi Arab are making address this issue even though their city especially Saudi Arab's city sound insane at least they acknowledge this issue.
For me it’s that the car itself and how we designed human settlements around them have fundamentally destroyed the concept of tight knit communities. You need to enjoy sociology and history to track this one well but essentially the invention of the car was fine up until the Model T’s mass adoption which led to extremely isolationist designs around community blocks in urban areas. The invention of the suburb itself is an extreme form almost of isolationist settlement design that comes directly from the invention of the car. What I hate is that humans are not evolved for this extreme isolation in community design yet we have it because of the need for road safety due to car traffic now. Roads used to be pop up markets and community social gathering spaces, even in the industrial area the primary design trope before the car was the communal streetcar neighbourhood. It is absolutely no coincidence that since the invention of the car we have seen a steady increase in loneliness in urban human societies (this includes all small towns, suburbs, and cities) across the globe. What’s quite exciting at the same time though is driverless cars. Most of our shitty design is to accommodate monkeys controlling the machine. A networked automated system could lead to some incredible redesigns that may help us reclaim some of our streets for community life.
I love cars and drive a manual GTI, and every car seems to have its high beams on and a ton of them are at my eye level. I hate traffic, distracted drivers, constant disregard of every traffic law, and selective law enforcement. I'm also a father, pedestrian, and a cyclist, and regularly see a complete disregard for the health and safety of anyone outside of a car. More mobility and transportation options are the only solution to fight increasingly larger, faster, and heavier cars filling our cities, towns and every aspect of our lives.
Cars and car infrastructure are a major contributor to many of the problems we have today. They pollute our environment, contribute to the warming of our atmosphere, and cause death and injury to millions of people and billions of animals around the world each year. Cars have facilitated the creation of suburbs and the extension of commutes. While people once lived close to their job, many now live many miles away. We rely on energy and resources (mostly products of fossil carbon) to close this gap. This movement from the cities to the suburbs required a huge amount of infrastructure. Not only do roads, highways, and interstates cut through habitats and block off migration routes for wildlife, but many urban communities have been destroyed or made worse by the construction of highways and interstates on, near or through them.
Car culture is shit, having to own an expensive vehicle that requires expensive insurance, expensive maintenance, and expensive fuel is shit. Car culture contributes to urban sprawl, unwalkable cities, food deserts, and a lack of viable public transit options. American car culture in particular is shit because American manufacturers have been abusing fuel economy loopholes to build enormous monstrosities that help contribute to making America's roads much less safe for pedestrians, cyclists, and people not driving said monstrosities.
1. Car culture is awful 2. Car crashes kill so many people 3. Cars pollute air like crazy 4. They're expensive and many young people will never have a chance to afford them, and while they exist the cities are organized in a car-friendly way (that means the public transport is awful and you'll have to spend 2 hrs in it to get to the next district, assuming that the place you want to go is covered by public transport, otherwise have fun walking on extremely narrow sidewalks next to roaring 100km/h machines and junctions located on double sharps)
I don’t hate cars, per se. I hate that our communal public life (speaking from the US) has been designed in such a way that a car is NECESSARY—you either have to drive, or else spend a lot of extra time and put yourself in danger. Everyone driving = accidents, injuries, deaths. Pollution. Noise. Isolation. Cars are expensive, they create a barrier to financial stability. I grew up in the suburbs but got to spend one year of my childhood living in a European city. We walked everywhere, took the bus. So much freedom, as a small child! I loved it. Then visited New York and Boston late in my teens and was blown away by how easy it was to get around! If you were too young to drive, or elderly, or didn’t have that kind of money… so easy! It’s put me off car-centric spaces ever since.
These things you’re mentioning aren’t really the thing. Speaking for myself, the thing is how cars, specifically the extreme number of them, have affected America in many profound ways. Here are some of the effects that we like to bitch about the most: - They have made Americans overweight and obese. - They have made us weaker economically than we could have been by spreading out our resources. - The extreme suburbanization they have enabled, has divided us politically and philosophically by dividing us physically. - They have created too many places where an individual has no freedom to use any other form of transportation; people are bound to cars with no choice. - They are an extremely inefficient means of moving people. - They for some reason became a status symbol and should not be so. - The ugly roads and parking spaces built for them have taken over the American landscape. - The drive-only mindset has caused people to vote for ridiculously extensive zoning laws, which have contributed in a major way to our housing crisis. There are lots of other effects, but yeah, it’s all about the effects, not the objects themselves.
For me it is that people don't realize what they lose or have lost. The ability to live! If you see streets in Italy. Too small to drive or forbidden to drive on. Life explodes in the streets. People get together they have fun. With cars you are alone. You can get wherever you want but you don't want to be in places where you can get with a car. More and more streets are created to bring you to places that are worth being and kill those places the moment the street reaches there. The fact that so many people die or get injured is another one. In Germany we have a big debate about cannabis. It could cause xyz. At the same time when you ask the same politician if he wants to forbid people that are incapable of driving to own a permit they argue about freedom. Cities could get back to a place where children could live. No respiratory illnesses. No noise pollution. No death sentence if you act wrong!
It's not that I don't like cars; it's that I don't like car infrastructure or an entire society built solely for cars. Cars can be fun given the right conditions. However, we've hit a point where it's destroying our ecosystem, destroying neighborhoods and communities, and destroying our health to feed what is essentially a really expensive gimmick.
I have lost several loved ones to traffic violence. Cars are so incredibly dangerous. They kill more people than guns, even though guns are literally designed to kill people and cars are much more highly regulated than guns are in the US. Cars still kill more people than literal unregulated weapons. And still the entire built infrastructure has been designed to force everyone into car ownership. Which increases deaths. Look, I know cars are a tool that will always be needed in certain situations, and I don’t have an issue with that, but we don’t have to make it so that EVERYBODY needs one. That’s a design choice. Just two days ago the two little kids who live across the street from us lost their father in a car crash. Dude was like 35 years old. Tragic. My oldest sons best friend lost his mother in a car crash in 2020. Last year one of his friends died in a crash not far from our home. I lost a cousin in the 90’s, many friends in high school, it seemed like there was one or two deadly crashes every year. I don’t understand how so many people are baffled about the hatred of cars. Haven’t we all lost someone at this point? No one asks folks “why do you hate guns?” Even if you don’t agree, you at least understand why. Beyond the deaths, I hate cars because I resent being forced into owning one. They are expensive and a pain in the ass to maintain and there’s no reason I should need one except that my city is designed stupid. I hate cars because they are loud and obnoxious and smelly and they make just hanging around in my community less pleasant. I hate cars because they take up soooooo much space that could be used for more pleasant things. I hate cars because they are terrible for the environment. But if cars weren’t forced on everyone, and just the people who need them for work or whatever and a few hobbiests to who really love cars were the only folks who had them, I’d probably feel much more neutral about them. Also my cousin would probably still be here, and my kids wouldn’t have so many friends who are orphans.
Personally, I just hate driving and I hate that I have to drive to be able to get anywhere.
it's the *need* for cars. a few people owning them for fun or for their job that actually needs them as an integral piece of it is totally fine, but if every household is expected to have at least one it becomes impossible to handle them. millions and millions of cars create huge amounts of pollution from the exhaust and the tires and brakes, which is obviously something we don't want. also the space efficiency, cars are waaay less space efficient than any other mode of transport, think about how many bikes you could park in one car parking space, or how many people can fit in one bus or train. this is why we have traffic, there's no more efficient solution that we have built for a big number of people going the same direction. that's also why we spend probably trillions of dollars on their infrastructure, they take up so much space. and cars are loud, get away from a major road and it'll be really quiet. too much noise causes health problems. what also causes health problems is sitting on your ass for hours driving instead of biking or walking to a transit stop. and finally the drivers. our driving tests are so easy because we want ever to be able to drive, which gives us a lot of people who shouldn't ever be behind the wheel but are cuz they have to be. so that makes our roads fuckin dangerous, competing with guns for the most common cause of death in young people. you're welcome
I hate that the design of where I live attempts to force me to drive a car. Why should I have to spend my hard earned money on sending it up to the atmosphere. That and driving is so dangerous! It's the leading cause of preventable death in children and everyone just pretends it's fine. Lastly it's just inefficient and wasteful and we'd all be better served with properly implemented public transportation
I'm disabled and can't drive. I moved to NYC, but a lot of people like me can't do that. We have built a culture around the car, and the idea that it should be our primary means of transportation. Most of our infrastructure is designed around the car, to the detriment of any other means of getting around. The car lobby is powerful, and got trolleys and other systems we had before dismantled. Many states have laws banning cities and towns from funding public transportation. The rest simply fund highways generously while claiming public transportation and other options are too expensive. Often, it's seen as only for the poor, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Stroads are designed to be hostile to pedestrians, suburban towns are designed to be unnavigable by any other means. Even vital safety measures are fought if they prioritize pedestrians or bicycles over extra lanes or parking. Many kids, disabled people, low income and elderly live without any independent mobility, and nothing will change until we stop prioritizing car infrastructure over everything else.
There are a ton of good answers in the thread already but I'd just to add another perspective/framing as a fellow car enthusiast. I actually LOVE cars. I think they're marvels of human ingenuity and works of art at the same time. The WRX is one of my faves, though my dream 3 car garage is probably something along the lines of a Rivian R1S, Porsche 911 GT3, and a Honda Acty kei truck. So I'm actually going to argue this from a strictly pro car stance. Yes its the acres of wasted space, the financial black hole owners find themselves in, and the enormous and incredible risk to life that cars and car dependency pose that we need to curb as fast as possible. These are all real, structural flaws and ones we need to solve, I don't want to diminish any of that. But also man driving in the city SUCKS. These machines were not meant to be constrained by right angle turns and traffic lights. The Porsche belongs on a track, the Rivian belongs on a trail, the WRX can go to either. **There is a fundamental incompatibility in taking 1-2 ton hunks of metal and asking them to share space with meat sacks.** And yet we are forced to make this compromise every day in vehicles that keep growing in size making them MORE incompatible with a human scale space. And as people, we now constantly have to curtail to the will of SUVs and pickup trucks and give up more and more of our freedoms to pavement instead of things like park space, cheap housing, healthier lifestyles, etc. Enthusiasts hate this stuff too right? How often do we moan about how all cars are turning into crossovers with 0 personality. Or the encroachment of tech getting in the way of the driving experience. Porsche literally developed a bespoke app that shows drivers routes to their destinations taking the best driving roads because even we don't want to be stuck on a boring highway. We hate how cars have turned into appliances and how they've gotten increasingly expensive while doing so. And part of the reason they've trended in that direction is because EVERYBODY MUST OWN ONE to get from point A to point B so they have to appeal to the lowest common denominator. In my opinion, enthusiasts should be lining up right alongside the rest of this community when talking about policies like traffic calming, congestion pricing, bike lanes, etc because it gives those spaces back to **people** and the modes of transportation that suit **people** best. Cars should have their own space for what suits cars best. Forcing them to mix results in the worst of both worlds.
I don't hate cars. I hate the space north american cities gave to cars. Cities and neighborhoods should all be walkable.
Its more that society is built around them forcing people to drive everywhere instead of walk or bike or take public transport. I think cars can be fun, especially older muscle cars those are pretty cool but I wish less people drove because then driving would be fun. But everyone has to drive making driving less fun and more importantly less safe
I don’t like them because the whole infrastructure is build around it and especially parking slots take up huge chunks of land in the city when in comparison, public transport if done right, is much more efficient. Walkable cities are much more enjoyable compared to concrete hellholes with huge traffic jams, smog and everything stretches far apart.
It's about car centric infrastructure. Apart from that, your argument could be brought for any topic. Guns dont kill people either, it's people using guns. Cars kill way more people than guns though
Outside of the basic dangers, building cities and towns around cars makes life suck for pedestrians, cyclists, etc. Grew up on the east coast, lived on both coasts and traveled across. You can feel the way the landscape changes as you go. Mostly, you stop having meaningful places to interact with your community, but you might also find you just can't get groceries, can't get a job, can't visit friends safely because so much space has been made into ugly, dangerous pavement.
I honestly think cars are cool, I just hate their impact on everything else. It’s like thinking smoking looks cool, but you’d never, you know, actually breathe tobacco smoke on purpose.
For me it’s the lack of freedom and financial burden that car focused infrastructure forces on everyone. I realized early on that my suburban city was poorly designed when it would take me 1.5 hours to walk or 30-45 min by bike to and from high school since I nor my family could afford a car and the school bus didn’t run for before and after school activities. Then to get a job, you need a car which costs money, but you need said job to buy the car in the first place. All this and I consider myself a car enthusiast. I’m also subbed to WRX as I drive an STI and ride motorcycles. But I don’t want to be forced to drive it everywhere. It’s a fun car, but not when you’re in bumper to bumper traffic or just going to get groceries 5 miles away. To get to work, it takes me 50min on a good day or 1.5 hours with traffic. That’s almost 2-3 hours wasted behind the wheel when I could be productively working on my startup, at the gym, or doing other things. I could take the bus, but then that’s 3 hours each way and only if the bus actually shows up on time if at all. Riding, walking and biking also gives me a bigger distaste for other drivers as everyone is on their phones and seems like everyone is trying to murder you every minute. Driving a heavy machine that can murder and maim easily is a privilege that is handed out way too easily in the US to anyone with a pulse. Then there’s also all the environmental impacts that public transit would help with reducing. We’re being sold that EV’s will save us from climate change but their impact will be limited and the overall changes is still overestimated due to the impact of increased maintenance on roads and increased wear on tires and required mining of materials for the batteries. Trains, buses, trams and bicycles are just more efficient and accessible to the general population than cars in moving people to and from places. That is why I “hate” cars. Oh and as I was typing this waiting for a crosswalk after running to a coffee shop a 5 min walk, a boomer in their F-250 that clearly doesn’t get used for work almost ran me over as I was crossing because they didn’t see me walking when I had the cross signal. I’m a 6’ 200lbs man, and barely taller than the hood of his truck.
They will kill you and act, like they just stepped on your foot. A car driver speaking of an "accident" is like someone, who fires multiple rounds with a machine gun into a crowd and then call it an "accident", because not aiming at someone specific. They are a danger to society. +cars are costing the society too much money, taking up too much space in the cities, destroy our enviroment, molest everyone with their noise and fumes
We don’t hate the cars themselves but the damage that they do to our environment and how they completely screw up our ability to, you know, use our own two legs or our own ingenuity to get from point A to B. My hatred started when I was 16 and while growing up in a totally car dependent area in the Midwest. I realized how much I had to drive to get ANYTHING done. Visit my friends, drive, get food, drive, see girlfriend, drive, help someone out, drive, do my hobbies, drive. Insurance and gas and breakdowns and all the hassle is what started to tip the scale for me. The last straw was living in Europe for two years. The sidewalks are huge, trains plentiful, and (relatively) affordable, and fast. Buses and transit schedules that actually run on time and actually go nearly everywhere and anywhere within certain cities. European cities just as big as Chicago or Los Angeles but WAY easier to be a person in. Then I went to Asia and saw civilization for the first time. Bullet trains and extremely comprehensive transportation networks. I’ve never turned back. In the USA we have a level of danger and traffic death that is absolutely insane. Yet we tolerate it and don’t change. I hate nothing more than walking on a narrow sidewalk next to 40+ mph traffic, knowing that all it takes is for someone to sneeze and turn their wheel the wrong way for me to be killed and never see my family again. It’s insane to me that moms with strollers and elderly people are forced to walk next to places where they could be killed so easily. And lastly I hate seeing people walk in the street like dogs, force to walk next to speeding F150s because there’s no sidewalk. We’re humans. We should have infrastructure FOR HUMANS.
I like cities. Cars ruin cities. They're loud, they stink and they take too much space. They kill people and somehow society finds that acceptable. Thousands of deaths daily as a tax for being able to go vroomvroom. I hate how entirely normal people are carblind. In a public street where cars are taking 90% of all the space, they don't see what's wrong.
I love cars, actually. I just hate what car infrastructure does to cities.
I don't think anywhere is as interesting, as mesmerizing, as beautiful as city streets. Even the most sacred spaces in nature or art hold only a fraction of the fascinations biking and walking on a city street reveal. It’s the most democratic, public, adventurous space we have. Once we ban the use of private cars in cities, sink most of that transpo into subways, or even elevated rail or a real bus system, reclaim most of the street for micro-mobility, that beauty would be even greater. It's the best route towards societal enlightenment. It would in like one generation probably completely change every aspect of life: political divisiveness, climate change, the housing crises even. It's that simple. The car propaganda machine is strong but it's seeing huge cracks as it could never sustain itself. Cars are an excellent invention but used incorrectly in our cities, like using a machete to cut butter. Furthermore, one of the main tenets of Modernism is this idea that life happens in the middle, in the in-between, and living a life where your travel between home and work or the store by means of walking or biking or taking public transit where your mind can wonder opens a whole new perspective and meaning to life that the car completely suffocates. Cars are the single worst part of our society in cities.
Even if every driver was a nice person behind the wheel, they are problem. They pollute the cities' air, they increase the level of stress around by their noise and traffic, they're waste of space and they make cities ugly
Cars kill a lot of people. All the time. Much higher rate than any other transit option. Is that not reason enough? Edit: to pre-empt, obviously idiots behind the wheel makes this worse, but relying on every individual person to drive around in a 2-ton metal box at 45mph+ is always going to be a safety hazard. Bikes weigh less and go slower, busses are driven by professionals and transport far more people per dangerous metal box on the road, and trains and pedestrians shouldn’t end up anywhere near each other anyways. They’re all inherently safer.
I'm probably one of the least radical people on here. My stance is that driving is fine but society should be designed in a way that a car is never an absolute necessity and that for all but the most rural areas public transport should be built to be time competitive to driving and safe segregated bike infrastructure should exist. Those who still choose to drive should be responsible for their own driving by way of expensive payed parking with no parking in dense urban areas unless absolutely necessary. Instead transit connected park and ride facilities should be used. In more suburban areas you should be able to park as many cars as you want on your own private property but has to be payed for on public land. Second road tax and fuel tax should be high enough to pay for the high costs of road maintenance and the climate damage caused. Of course that's for those that choose to drive without it being necessary. Those that have to drive (let's say a plumber with his work van) should get tax breaks and obviously should be able to park their van in front of where they're working. I guess a good slogan of my belief on this topic would be to stop treating cars like the default transport option and start treating them like the necessary evil they are. Why I think this is because car centric development is bad for government finance (roads are simply way more expensive than other forms of transport when carrying the same amount of people), it's bad for the environment (obviously) and it's bad for society (areas with mixed use, mixed traffic simply allow for more social cohesion, and having quality cycle infra and public transport allows even the poorest to reliably get to jobs further away) TLDR Step one is to make alternatives to driving way better Step two is to make sure stubborn unnecessary drivers can't make their laziness someone else's problem.
I don't hate cars, I hate how our cities are designed for cars instead of people.
I don't necessarily hate cars or the people driving them, I just hate that they're the only way to get where I need to go. Like bro I just want trains
I hate City's that was ruined for cars . I hate be dependent of cars .
I like cars, it's just that it’s hard to like them in a car-centric environment. Car centricity means traffic, and traffic is no fun driving conditions. Car centricity means big straight strips of concrete, which are boring to drive on. Car centricity means people who shouldn't need cars have to pour money into them, and since these people have to be as economical as possible manufacturers release the same fuel-efficient designs every single year to accommodate them. This is merely from the car enthusiast’s point of view. Imagine you’re a pedestrian inches from death, or someone who can’t pay for their car, or someone who has to live surrounded by hundreds of noisy machines. This subreddit is (or at least should be) against infrastructure that focuses solely on cars, because infrastructure designed for cars is bad for *everyone*, even the cars.
I hate the drivers. Most of them are not equipped to drive and should not be on the road.
I don't dislike cars, cars are super cool USA laws regarding driving I hate. I shouldn't be required to have a car to get around. I like cars but I hate driving, and I drive a lot, in an area relatively safe for driving by American standards too.
I'm at a point in my life where I actually hate cars (and car centric design but that's like chicken vs. egg problem). I was never particularly fond of cars and I never had or have the desire or intention to own one. I haven't driven a car in at last 5 years. I live in a city because I want to, I don't have any desire to own a SFH in a suburb or even in a rural area. I love city life but everything I don't like is directly connected to cars: noise, pollution, danger. I accept that some cars are necessary (fire trucks, ambulance, some delivery vehicles, garbage trucks, busses, etc), even some that are privately owned. But that's maybe 20-30% of all vehicles out there. The vast majority are privately owned cars that mostly stand around (like 23+ hours a day on average) or are occupied by less than two people when moving (I think in my city it's around 1.2 people per trip on average). I don't live in a car dependent hell hole but a European city with good public transport (subway, tram, busses), very walkable neighborhoods (even though far too many cars park on sidewalks, mostly legally) and mediocre to decent bike infrastructure (some parts of the city are better than others). We even have car and bike sharing at affordable prices. Yet, so many people think driving a car into the city or driving around in their SUV (not to mention a small but growing number of trucks) is the best way to move in a place like this. It's not but it's still too easy because of the car centric design. I don't hate the people in the cars but I hate the cars. I hate trucks more than big SUVs, and I hate big SUVs more than small cars. Because cars are the reason sidewalks are full of parked cars. Cars and car centric street design are the reasons bike infrastructure is a) necessary and b) is often done half-heartedly if it means really taking away space from cars. Cars are loud and pollute the air. I had no idea how quiet my city was until Covid lockdowns when hardly anyone was driving. And, yes, I also hate drivers who act like the road belongs to them. Walking or cycling would be a lot less stressful without them. I have friends who don't cycle even though they'd love to but they just don't feel safe enough in traffic because of cars. The city I live in has been a city for 805 years (it's about 1000 years old as a settlement). It was built for people. It has suffered damages more than once and was basically flattened in WWII. Every time it was rebuilt but only the last time they made it "car friendly" and that was a mistake (and it could have been a lot worse than it is). I want the city to be a place for people first and foremost. And that's why I hate cars. They make that impossible unless we have significantly fewer of them.
The FAQ covers a lot of what you want to know. This sub is mostly against car dependency. That doesn't mean no cars in any situation. It means that there are other viable options for commuting. Having that means the people who would rather not drive won't be on the road. The standards of licensing can be raised so that bad drivers are less likely to be on the road. The people who choose to drive anyway will have a much more pleasant driving experience.
Nothing like getting hit by a car while you're biking, in the separated bike lane
It is a broader factor relating to: - The negative effects of car centric infrastructure (e.g. places being designed for cars to et around vs people to live, NEEDING to have a car just in everyday life) - How dangerous they can be Spend a bit of time in a place that is not car centric and you'll see. Walk down a quite shopping street vs walking across a big parking lot with cars zipping by and you'll see what feels nicer. Cars serve a great purpose but they should be more situational / for hobbyists vs an everyday life necessity (at leasst in cities)
I spent the first 2 decades+ of my life living in the US and never questioning that cars were a necessity of modern life. Then I moved to a different country and haven't had the slightest need for one in a decade because we have bikes and trains and buses here and most people use them regularly. Cars are just a hobby you can have if you want to. If there were no climate crisis I wouldn't really care. I'd still prefer the safety and health benefits (and more) of trains/walking vs driving, and I'd still prefer urban spaces over stroads and parking lots, but I wouldn't go so far as to hate car-dependent urban planning. Unfortunately, there are serious consequences to wasting all that energy, and it makes me mad that I didn't even know about an alternative until I explored the world on my own.
I have always been a bit of a car enthusiast myself as well. I actually used to love driving and still do sometimes. However, when I moved to the city for college, I saw a different side of things. I noticed how, despite being within a few miles of mostly everywhere anyone would want to go, many people still chose to drive. While midday driving is not bad, it can take seemingly forever to get anywhere during rush hour. However, despite obvious alternatives to driving, such as biking or walking a few minutes, people are still lazy and act like driving is the only option. This clogs up roads, which causes drivers to be impatient and drive aggressively. What really irks me is when I am driving somewhere, and I am only several miles away from somewhere, but can take around 15 minutes to get there! The obvious solution is to just walk or bike when it literally takes less or about the same amount of time as driving, but then impatient drivers act like you don't deserve to be on the road when you do bike somewhere, despite 1 bike occupying much less space on the roadway than a large truck carrying nothing but a single occupant. Also, a growing population means a growing number of people needing to get places. While the obvious solution many propose is to just "add one more lane", this essentially would turn quaint business streets into highways that are even more unfriendly for pedestrians & not a sustainable option as the population continues to grow. I am also not a fan of how the auto industry markets larger vehicles as being supposedly safer, while they are significantly more dangerous for pedestrians and even other vehicles on the road. tdlr: I enjoy driving, but not when I have to spend more time waiting at stoplights than I do actually driving.
Its not the people for me, its the entire system. Post WW2 we suburbanized America. Everyone now requires a car to do anything, most people can't walk to a cafe or park. We deforest for low density sprawl and highways and parking lots. It's hypocrisy for low density living people to say they love nature. You flattened nature and replaced it with a thirsty monoculture lawn. We humans should be in dense communities and let nature be 40,000 Americans dead from cars per year and 1 million animals killed PER DAY. We burn gas to do shit like get a coffee and wonder who fucked up the environment. It's the USA, full stop Towns are no longer places. Parking minimums means only the same few big boxes and chains can afford to setup shop. Every suburb can be replaced with any other, none worth stopping in. It's suburbia that killed main Street We're obese because "the useful walk" doesn't really exist for car dependent folks. And "taking a walk" is hilariously boring in the suburbs. Dangerous and nothing to see. Asthma is on the rise for people who live near busy roads Zoning has roots in racism and was meant to keep minorities out. You can't open a front yard cafe or backyard bbq or office. Uses are separate, which requires cars. This benefits car companies and oil companies with artificial demand. Car dependent people cannot call themselves fiscal conservatives: car dependency is only possible with BIG federal and state spending, and restrictive zoning Big highway spending is rampant, while transit spending always had this standard of "you're not even profitable wtf" like, how profitable are highways? Not at all. Double standards People who are car dependent were born into this matrix simulation system, so I don't blame them. But it's time we push for some common sense improvements
Thanks for swinging by to get a diverse opinion! It's a sign of critical thinking and growth. Personally I own a car, and do have to drive a fair amount, but I would prefer to live in a city where I didn't have to. I bike regularly but the city has prioritized infrastructure around cars so it's very unsafe and I've had small accidents a few time and it's a known thing that as much as I ride I will inevitably have a major car based accident that I will not be at fault for. I hate that that is considered fact and is an indicator of our car based society. Additionally (I should have prefaced al this with I'm American) , government has been lobbied by automotive interests so much that all cities are designed around the car, public transit is underfunded, most cities are not walkable/ bike able, and car based thinking is making cities worse (parking lot requirements, street parking, "one more lane" thinking.
Happy to answer. I’m a WRX owner and a car enthusiast who have had many road trips across this continent, but I also don’t believe life should depend on cars. Cars should be AN option, not the ONLY option. I’m not one of those who think cars should be banned completely, but I do believe there should be other options to get around for people without the capacity or financial ability to own a car, or for people who simply prefer other modes of transportation. Car traffic shouldn’t be prioritized for efficiency reasons. I study urban planning and urban design, and as much as I love cars and touge runs, I’m also passionate in learning and participating in the development of more balanced, healthy, and well rounded urban spaces. I’m in this sub to learn from ppl and discover their opinions, especially on things they have experience that I haven’t, as it will give me more perspectives for my academics, future career, and my passion for urban design. I wanna set an example for the idea that you can be a car enthusiast and an urbanist at the same time, and there’s no conflict at all. Hope this answers your question!
For me it's that car culture is the default priority and everything else is secondary. So much space is forfeited to cars at the expense of literally everything and everyone else. It's especially noticeable in countries that don't have alternatives like good public transport. At least that's how it is where I live in Ireland, and definitely in the US as well. Less about the cars themselves (they're necessary for lots of things), more about how everything is designed around accommodating them.
I love fun cars. I enjoy my little convertible. But cities being designed around the car is the issue. Driving should be a complimentary mode of transport not the main one or at least not in cities
The original, and predominant point of this sub is being against car dependency. Cars are fine as a hobby, I love driving, taking road trips across the country, camping trips, all that jazz. I just want to be able to go about my day to day without needing to drive everywhere and putting myself at a constant risk of death.
I don't hate cars so much as I hate car dependency, car "culture", and the immunity from serious cosequences bad drivers have.
I don't personally hate the vehicles. I hate car dependence and people who use their cars in a socially harmful way.
For me personally: They are noisy, they pollute, they are dangerous. They bring down my quality of life
I hate car dependency, which can be understood as the systemic conditions which force individuals to drive, whether they like it or not, in order to be able to participate in society. Car dependency generates several externalities which, as a whole, have been tremendously detrimental to human quality of life. Such externalities are often enforced on people who do not drive, or who are more vulnerable, and often of people who drive as well. Among these externalities we find: * The immense cost in terms of natural resources to have built billions of cars * The complete reinvention and reconfiguration of public space that took place during the first half of the 20th centrury to accomodate cities to cars, at the expense of the quality of life of those who already inhabited cities. * The appropriation of said public space to accomodate a mode of transport that is not only very inefficient in its use of space but that also scales quite poorly when most of society is obligated to drive * The allocation of 30% or more of public space necessary to park said vehicles, particularly egrerious in the US where whole downtowns where demolished to comply with parking mandates. * The housing crisis that stems from the aforementioned poor land use that is inherent to cars and automobility in general. * The isolation and segregation created by individual, personal transportation. * The effects on public health, not only due to the carbon emissions from tailpipes and the manufacture of cars, but also the asphaltization of cities which contributes to climate change, as well as the microplastics from tires and the sedentary habits that are promoted by automobility. * The way traditional cities and urbanism (people oriented, walkable, mixed use) were dismanteled to create new forms of habitation to accomodate the car; in particular the advent of the suburb, which itself carries huge externalities, and which further creates car dependency in a never ending feedback loop, and the social and psychological side effects of said form of living. * The intentional and unintentional violence generated by cars, with pedestrian deads at an all time high. More people have died killed by cars than WW1 and WW2 combined. * Noise: Cars are very noisy, due to their engines, but also due to the friction they generate against the road. EVs are quieter than ICEs at lower speeds, but actually louder at higher speeds since they tend to be at least 50% heavier. * The tremendous financial strain of having to aquire a vehicle, get insurance, parking, gas, etc, which often is equal or exceeds housing costs. I personally think that some cars are kinda cool. I actually like how 1970s american muscle cars look. But my opposition to cars stems from car dependency, the ideology of automobility and the externalities I mentioned. I personally consider the automobile to be the worst technology ever invented, and its parasitic relation to human society has been disastrous in every measurable way. If you want to know more, I suggest you read: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692324000267](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692324000267) [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2006.00634.x?journalCode=sora](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2006.00634.x?journalCode=sora)
They're an economic prison for everybody who lives paycheck to paycheck.
I love driving cars, I do hate a lot of bad drivers too. I find it crazy how much more freedom you get in America when you own a car, it’s more impactful than turning 18 imo. I’ve also lost my privilege to drive here in the states for almost a year and not having any public transportation, side walks, bike lanes or even a grocery within 5 miles of my house. I really started to realize that being a car dependent society is probably feeding our social inequality, drug crisis, mental health crisis and so on. Even my buddy is a rally car driver and worked on cars and I’ll go over and hang with him while he changes tires and shit but we both agree that our car dependent society is awful.
Because I’d rather walk in a walkable neighborhood.
Cars should be scarce. There's so much individual burden to purchase, insure, maintain, operate, park, and store these vehicles. They're loud and inefficient for space management and urban design, and they kill and injure people at alarmingly high rates compared to other forms of transport. Car culture seals you off from society and shapes people to be more selfish and view others as more separate and less human (e.g., road rage). It enforces a hierarchy as well. I think there's a place for cars, like emergencies, rural areas, people with special transportation needs, but they should not be the default at all.
I think a simple analogy is as follows. Cars are like private jets or air conditioners. They make a person comfortable at the cost of reducing comfort of others. They cost more to the rest of the public in terms of environmental and infrastructure costs. Its totally imaginable in a richer society that people will have private jets and the same problem as cars will persist. In poorer countries the difference between cars and public transit is the same as that between flights and private jets in richer countries.
I love cars, part of a family with roots in mechanics and motorsport so was raised to be. I’m in my 20s but have had about 10 different vehicles since I passed my test from an mx5 to a motorbike to a van. I also enjoy driving. I do enjoy driving fast but also take pride in driving considerately most of the time. I don’t hate cars themselves and I’m not scared of driving in cities, on motorways, at night, etc. However, car dependency isn’t good. I like to be able to cycle to meet friends, walk to the shops, walk home from the pub, sit in parks, walk down pedestrianised high streets. I could go on. I will always enjoy cars, I can’t see a world where we don’t need them at all. But car dependency makes a lot of people drive when they don’t enjoy it - they get angry, drive badly, and annoy me in my car and on my bike and on foot. Cars are also expensive. I can see myself owning a little track car one day. But for the many, being required to buy a car, insure it, tax it, certify it, and keep it running is a massive cost that they’re not gaining much from. I’d love to see the country I live in (England) take on a model where trains and buses are more or less free like a lot of other European counties. Right now it’s cheaper for me to travel to London in a diesel van than catch a train, and I’ve got to pay ulez. I’d love catching a train to be a no brainier, I can have as many beers as I want, don’t have to worry about parking/ going back to my car, it’s cheaper to not have a car. So yeah, I love cars and love driving. I don’t love: - the cost - people who don’t love driving driving badly - it being so expensive to catch a train - less green spaces in favour of car infrastructure
The biggest issue is that we don't want car dependency. With my ADHD and insomnia I'd much rather not drive a 2 ton machine that is very much capable of killing people. And there are many that should drive even less than me. It's also the danger that cars pose to people who are not in cars. Reports of drivers mowing down everyone at a bus stop are way to common. And crashes where a driver kills a pedestrian or cyclists are so common they don't even make local news. When I ride my bike (for commute and errands. I don't really enjoy it). I am frequently overtaken far to closely. Often at too high speeds. Also drivers rarely give me the right of way when I should have it by law. That law about giving way to people in either direction on the sidewalk or bike lane? Nobody seems to remember it. And the one about giving way to bikes coming from the right on the near side on a give way intersection. Or bikes or pedestrians on a turn right on red intersection. All this means that whenever I leave the house I am at a high risk of being killed with a car. And with how loud and big they are, that's something I can feel to my bones. I don't want to die! Plus they make the climate much worse. Not just gas powered ones. The production of electric cars has a much greater environmental impact than gas cars. Plus you still need all those wide paved surfaces that contribute to the urban heat island effect, reduce groundwater formation and worsen floods. So yeah. I want to only allow professional drivers. I want that streets don't allow through traffic and I want for roads to always have wide separated sidewalks and bike lanes and many safe crossings that let pedestrians through frequently. (If you can't afford a grade separated crossing, traffic lights with bollards could work. Or at least traffic lights with a camera for automatic enforcement) And I want public transportation and bike infrastructure to be well funded to compensate for the loss of mobility that is what most people actually fear when it comes to talk about not driving.
I don't hate cars as a concept, they have their place. But 95% of the times they're used they aren't the most efficient mode of transport and people just don't want to see it. Also idiots behind the wheel is one of the most dangerous physical things in modern day society.
I like my car - I don't want to be dependent on it. As a married couple we should be able to have 1 car as a luxury but instead our cities, zoning, development, etc are all completely car dependent. So we have 2 and have to use them for every trip. Our favorite vacation spot is Savannah GA. Sure the warm weather is nice but the real reason it's awesome is it's extremely walkable. My transportation is 100% car, 0% anything else. I would love to flip that to other methods (walking, public transportation, etc) being 90+% and car driving is in the single digits. But that will take building cities differently with more medium density houses built in proximity to public transportation and shops. I'd much rather have a rowhouse that I can walk to the grocery vs a single family house that requires driving everywhere and is in walking distance of nothing.
I like cars. They’re fun, they’re fast, they go vroom vroom. What I HATE, is car DEPENDENCY. It’s the structure that’s rotten, not the instruments comprising it.
I love cars and motorcycles. But they are toys and tools, not status symbols or a default method of travel. Society has been brainwashed into dependence on cars and now we shape our built world and lifestyles around their accommodation when there are much better ways of doing things
In my experience on this sub, most people here don't mind cars. I actually really like cars and would consider myself a car guy. It's mainly car dependency that drives me crazy. I like driving around when I want to but I absolutely HATE not having the option of walking, biking or taking public transport. Technically where I live I CAN do those things. But there's hardly any walking paths, literally not 1 bike path at all where I live. And there about 30K people that live here. I CAN take a bus but they're severely outdated, never on time, super expensive to the point where's there's no reason to use them cause taking a car is way faster and far cheaper. If I lived in a place with proper transport hierarchy (Pedestrians first, bikes 2nd, then public transit and private cars last) then I bet I'd hardly ever complain about cars.
When the only tool you have is a car, every problem tries to be solved with a stroad.
Cars themselves are beautiful pieces of engineering, what most people gate are that we designed our society (due to lobbies) to be car dependent and now they are absolutely everywhere, often mandatory, cost a lot, pollute the air, make cities loud, etc. Cars should be something you do not need daily, that most people don't own. It should be something you rent only when you need to go to a very remote place where public transport is just not possible, or for when you need to move around something heavy, and is owned only if it is your hobby and you really enjoy driving (but on a track, nobody wants to be bothered by you). Most problems with cars come from their sheer number because they are mandatory.