Fuck Cars
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
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Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
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No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.
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Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.
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No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.
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No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.
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No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.
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No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.
Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.
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This is the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about or admit. Even in large environmental groups, if you bring this subject up at a meeting no one will say a word as everyone drives to the meetings.
There are things that can be done though to reduce this until an alternative to the materials used in tires is found.
For example, buy local as much as possible, and opt for purchasing items within walking distance on your local street or within quick hop of your local tram/street car/subway network. (This second part may not be possible in a car centric north american city/suburban neighborhood). Opt to use a bicycle over a car to reduce your footprint in tire use (it's still the same rubber but two less tires). Biking has the added benefit of no exhaust.
Advocate for dedicated and protected cycle lanes on roads and streets so our children and community can cycle without fear of being hit by a car, as well as push your towns and cities for bicycle corridors/trails. Bicycle corridors are cycling trails that are not on a street and far from any car traffic and are more enjoyable for larger distances.
Other larger scale items that you can advocate for include urging shipping companies to prioritize rail over trailers for long distances, and opting to use small delivery vans for the last mile delivery inside town as opposed to 50 footer trailers. This has the added benefit of smaller streets and more vibrant and livable city centers. Also allowing customers to pickup deliveries in person using public transit such as trams/street cars/subway. There should not be a reason pickup centers should be located in areas that individuals can only reach by driving.
Vote and urge your towns and cities to implement more rail and subway systems. Use public transportation as much as possible and urge your cities and municipalities to implement more frequent and dedicated transportation routes. Each car lane and car parking lot removed or converted in your city is a step in the right direction (though it may not feel like it at first), for overall health and wellbeing for your neighbors and yourself.
@NarrativeBear @ajsadauskas What environmentalists really don’t want to talk about is that sustainability means slowing down, traveling less, more manual effort, fewer chemical conveniences. B/c it seems politically impossible.
And it goes against "sustained economic growth", though I always found infinite growth is both unsustainable and environmentally detrimental.
@NarrativeBear @ajsadauskas Meanwhile there’s an over-abundance of shovel-ready jobs cleaning up human impacts & restoring nature, just waiting for us to prioritize it over billionaires’ & $100M-aires’ insatiable greed & lust for power
@Simplicator @NarrativeBear Our whole economy is geared towards disposable consumerism.
Yeah, we could make sturdy wooden chairs like the ones your grandma had at her dining table for 50-odd years.
Or we could get new plastic chairs every five years or so from IKEA.
The way things are set up, making 10 disposable chairs that last five years is far better for the economy than making one chair that lasts 50.
There are plenty of things that could be user serviceable, repairable, repurposable or upgradable that aren't because our economy is geared towards disposable consumerism.
Even look at the economic measuring stick we use: GDP.
If using economic activity as the measure of the health of your economy, then it's far better to manufacture 10 chairs instead of one.
But what if we were to use a different set of economic measurements? For example, the utility we gain from our goods, and many natural resources it takes to achieve that level of utility?
By that measurement, manufacturing 10 chairs over 50 years instead of one for the same utility (sitting down during dinner) is a monumental waste.
Absolutely, and not only do bicycles have two less tires, the tires are way smaller and have less road contact and overall wear. The difference is huge. I would love to see the numbers on average car tire microplastics pollution vs bicycles.
Car tires ARE made of the alternative materials.
Pneumatic tires were originally all natural rubber until synthetics were added due to war shortages.
Just a small aside, your points are all spot on.
Pneumatic tires have always been made of vulcanised rubber though. Natural rubber is way too soft to hold up in this application.
Vulcanised rubber is a bio-based plastic, but being bio-sourced has nothing do with it being biodegradable. And vulcanised rubber isn't.
There are bio-based-plastics that aren't biodegradable, and fossil-based plastics that are biodegradable.