cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26368144
Anons argue in comments
I don’t know about inexpensive. The bike I want is approaching a grand and my last car was $5500. I would be crushed losing that amount.
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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Merely owning a car has cost me an average of $2000 a year. Insurance, tires, oil and other maintenance costs brings that up to $3000. Just to own the car, that doesn't include gas to actually use it
What car costs you $2000 a year to sit in the driveway doing nothing? That's $167/mo before any expenses? Sounds like a really cheap car payment.
I mean, bikes are great for a lot of things and cities should definitely have the infrastructure to support their usage, but let's not pretend that they can easily replace cars in every use case.
Cars are faster, cover long distances which are just infeasible for bikes, are more comfortable, can be used in bad weather, and are needed for people with disabilities. Granted, all of those use cases should be covered by a good public transport system, but that's exactly why cars are considered to be the symbol of freedom - not depending on the bus/train schedules, weather, distance etc.
Most jurisdictions don't require a licence plate and therefore is harder to track.
Also, is Green Mario's most faithful companion
To create a pedestrian first world I think we need to legitimately understand what advantages a car has. A car is a true source of empowerment.
Sure, I can ride a bike, but I could never ride a bike 300 miles for a weekend trip to any arbitrary destination. I can take a bus but not at any moment, and not the middle of the night. I can take public transit, but not to the place I need to go.
A car is a portable personal space. I can eat lunch in my car, I can take a nap.
A car is a space protected from the elements - I'm not getting rained on. Protection from wind, snow, sun.
Its locked doors are a barrier between me and potential (and sometimes imagined) threats.
I don't need to list out for this community all the negative things associated with cars. I just list these pros to highlight it's a challenging task to displace cars. It's a list of benefits to replicate.
Yeah, the main advantage of cars is that they do a lot of things (kinda badly.) We need to do a lot of work to replace cars, and that work definitely doesn't start with ignoring why cars are so prevalent. We need to empower people through other avenues a lot before most people will switch over.
This comment made me sad, because it's a reminder of just how bad a shithole most of the United States is: You need a car to go 300 miles at a whim because transit is bad or non-existent, and driving sucks. I know people who refuse to do that distance in one day. You need a car to go longer distances to bars, stores, restaurants, because ~~racism~~ zoning makes everything far away and a pain and a half to access.
You need a secluded, personal space to eat lunch or take a quick nap because the U.S. hates homeless people so much that there's nowhere to do either of those things in public, and you'll get abused by the police if you try. A car is a less-than-ideal spot to do either of those things comfortably; a picnic table or a park shelter would be better.
The best protection from threats is crowds, the "eyes on the street" principle. In fact, a lot of assaults happen in parking lots because there's nobody around to intervene. But Americans are scared shitless of each other for no reason, and our society is collapsing because of it.
Oh, also, a car isn't even a good place to eat or nap if you're poor. The cops will hassle you to no end if you look like you don't belong. (Hence, the prevalence of setting up a van for stealth camping.) It's not a source of empowerment, if you're poor. I would never have dreamed of jumping in my car and driving 300 miles on a whim when I worked retail. If the car broke down, or got damaged, I would've been supremely fucked, unable to pay to repair it, and without access to any alternative transportation.
But, frankly, I think that's the point: Car dependency is supposed to hurt poor people, by physically excluding them, and providing a social marker of affluence so the not-quite-so-poor can feel good about themselves. (Why else bro dozers?)
You're right there are a lot of negative things about the U.S. And even if it became a biking/public transit utopia, it would still suck to be homeless. We'd still need to address wealth inequality.
I'm addressing the last line of the OP image, why do we hold up cars as a symbol of freedom? It's because they do provide personal empowerment. They provide specific benefits.
It's possible for a situation to have terrible outcomes without it being a conspiracy. Some people, like Robert Moses, did design certain places to be accessible by car but not by bus. But I'd argue the main reason the car is dominant in the U.S. is because individuals who saw benefit from their own car use pushed and bought into that system.
Imagine we're playing chess, we have to understand the pieces on the board, what their abilities are. I get it's a fun thought experiment to list all the ways a bike is great. I'm just saying it's useful to understand what people see in a car if we want to create an alternative.
Well, let me tell you...
Just kidding. I agree with all of that. What I'm pointing out is how some of those advantages of cars are actually just masking larger issues.
You need a secluded, personal space to eat lunch or take a quick nap because the U.S. hates homeless people so much that there's nowhere to do either of those things in public,
Ok that's a leap. We do, in fact, have parks with benches.
Instead of going on an in-depth exploration of where those parks are located, I'll say that if need a car to have a spot on the landscape where you're allowed to do basic, human things like eat and nap, then that's not an advantage of cars.
but I could never ride a bike 300 miles for a weekend trip to any arbitrary destination.
Work out. You can do it if you simply get thighs of steel.
You need to be introduced to cargo bikes and rain tents on bikes
You don't know about my thighs!
Jokes aside, it's one thing to say it's possible to recreate some aspect of car ownership with a bike. But it's making the individual responsible for something that requires a societal solution.
Suggesting impractical alternatives to what are easy benefits with cars isn't a serious alternative. And we won't fully replicate everything a car does. But understanding where the trade-offs are is essential to approaching the problem.
Por que no los dos?
You don't need to fully replace cars to have a positive impact. I'm sure many people in the US could commute via bike if the infrastructure was there. Even if not every day, just sometimes. Also the public transit comment is definitely true in the US, and is not true many other places.
I see the benefits, and don't disagree at all! Just saying that not all boxes need to be checked to offset some car use
You're right, not every box has to be checked before it starts making sense for some people to switch to bike. I just commented because the original post was saying "why do we say cars are the ultimate symbol of freedom?" If someone can't see why people like cars, they may have a hard time creating an environment where people move away from them.
Because our previous generation of 1% wealth leaders had a vision to make an entire economy built for, and dependant on, gasoline and oil. This new generation of wealth leaders don't have as strong of a vision. They just see some weird techno-feudalism fantasies where they rule us all because of social media and AI or some shit.
I thought thier vision was to abandon earth and move to mars or something... But I guess they abandoned that and now just want to hoard and protect as much wealth as possible until they die.
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In my area, bikes are considered motor vehicles and have to adhere to the same rules and regulations as bikes.
Which is stupid because there's no infrastructure for bikes, and it's illegal to ride them on the nearly completely unused sidewalks.
My FIL got me an e-bike that I can't use for anything other than riding around the neighborhood because I have to get on the highway to get to town.
Uhhh…wow, bikes have to adhere to the same regulations as bikes?
Very unusual.
I thought that at first but sarcasm aside they meant that cycles have to adhere to motor bikes rules and regulations
Absolutely would be nice. I used to ride everywhere before I got priced out of where I was living and had to move. Now, my job is an hour away even by car... It wouldn't need to be if things weren't entirely designed around car travel here
I lasted 4 years of full time bike life and around 150k miles on the bike for 7 cars hitting me in 6 crashes where two were bad and the anomalous numbers are the last one that left me physically disabled after a broken neck and back. You will find a class of parallel parked cars making u-turns that is impossible to predict and avoid regardless of your skill, caution, and self awareness. Automobile safety is the anti Darwinian logic of disproportionately allowing stupidity to terrorize everyone.
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Greatly used in Montreal too for instance, but problem is winter, riding in a foot of snow while it's -20, not easy...
So the thing for me isn’t the temperature nor the depth of the snow. It’s sharing space with cars and contending with the very real possibility of falling and getting my head crushed like a grape.
I quite liked using my fat bike in the park through the snow. But on a road with cars on ice? There’s a reason I sold it.
Also, I would literally sweat going downhill on that thing.
Cars perform even worse in snow.
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