this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025

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Fuck Cars

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735

"Cars and Independence" (Art by Sylvia Odhner) (pawb.social)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

115 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://pawb.social/post/23351353

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

I grew up with great public transit, and having access to a bicycle, (NYC.) In my 20s I realized that attempting to own and maintain a car would be so expensive that I would not be able to save money for the future. I ride my bike everywhere. If I want to go somewhere more than 50 miles away, or where transit doesn't go, I rent a car. I rent a car maybe 2x a year tops. Depending on how long I'm renting the car I probably spend $400 a year on rentals + insurance. My last bike I had for 20 years. Cost me $1400 brand new, spread that cost out over 20 years, owning the bike cost me $70 a year. It was easy to repair myself, and the tools to repair it were inexpensive to purchase. Fuck cars indeed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Also, people younger than the legal age for driving are unable to get around safely and independently if they live somewhere car-dependent. I know this from personal experience (although where I live car dependency is not the only problem of course)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

@callyral @grue don't forget disabled people. Cars are always touted as the solution for disability but there are *many* disabilities which completely remove driving as a possibility (blindness, epilepsy, many learning disabilities, many physical disabilities ... And generally being elderly, if we're honest) and car dependence leaves you entirely reliant on a chauffeur of some kind for any and every time you want to leave the house.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (2 children)

true but America hates public transportation

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (4 children)

...i have slight beef with that.

We made cars more complicated than they need to be due to electronic systems and all that. I don't say that we should simply go back, that's dumb. But I cannot help but wonder if a line of simple, less advanced ICE cars promoted on their ease of maintenance wouldn't get popular with, for example, rural folks. After all, being able to fix the beast yourself would lover your costs a lot.
Walkable cities are great, I know cause I live in one. My city (or town?) has around 7 km length (at least the parts that matter). Distance an average person can go in ~70, maybe 80 minutes by foot. But if I wanted to hit the relatively nearby lake or beach, getting there by foot is another story. And yeah, bikes exists and make it easier but if I need to hit another city that is 60km from here...yeah.
Author also forgot that these companies won't fail, because these are not "one and only" of each in the world. Each contry, hell, each county has multiple of them. It's highly unrealistic for them to all fail at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago (2 children)

We didn't make cars more complicated because "of the electronics" or "because we had to".

Car companies make cars more complicated because they make huge amounts of money from warranties, maintenance that you can't do yourself for some reason, and of course the leases.

Cars being as complicated and impossible to work on as they are today is because line must go up. Everything else is propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

maintenance that you can’t do yourself for some reason

Also helps hide shoddy low quality parts.

The condensers on 2017-2021 Honda Civics are basically guaranteed to fail. There’s a warranty, but the only people who can open up the AC are the dealerships, who have been trained to find some speck of dust to justify denying the warranty.

It really fucking sucks - I’d love the option of being able to make some money on doordash, but the “reliable” Honda Civic I bought gets up to 100+ F with the air on full blast.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

That's...effectively what they said. The added electronics make it infeasible for normal people to maintain their own vehicles. They never speculated on why the electronics were added.

The way you came at them makes it seem like they're provided a scapegoat when they didn't.

Edit: I regret stepping into an arena against a pedant with an axe to grind.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Also implied that other methods of transportation are devoid of failure points.

Sure wish I lived in a walkable city though 😢

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (6 children)

Isn't anyone else disturbed by the concept of independence being a problem for this person?

I'd like more public transportation in America, but I'm not really interested in anything else they have to say.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

No, because your premise is incorrect. This person is completely in support of the concept of independence, but simply rejects the notion that car-dependency provides it. Real independence is achieved by removing the dependency on cars.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

You didn't read the second line?

"Now the whole idea of independence is a messy social construct with a bunch of issues that I won't get into right now."

I don't see how anyone could interpret that as anything other than a blanket statement about independence.

I searched up the artist to find more evidence and saw that I wasn't the only one who thought that, because they posted a follow-up attempting to clarify that specific line. The clarification just reiterates the point of the original comic and doesn't try to explain why that phrasing was used or what it could have meant.

So maybe they just phrased it poorly, but I'm not the only one who took issue with it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

How is claiming that independence is a complicated, nuanced concept problematic?

It sounds like you are interpreting it as if they are saying it doesn't exist or something similar which is not at all what they said.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (5 children)

Acknowledging that a concept is complicated is different from being opposed to it. You deciding to interpret the statement the latter way instead of the former is your own problem, not theirs.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The concept of independence can be a problem because it tends to manifest in a "I'm a lone ranger that doesn't need anyone" mentality.

If you're someone who generally just wants to live alone off-grid in a cabin in the woods and interact with people once a year that's fine.

If you're massively dependent on your neighbors and international trade and are in a self-destructive anger spiral about it because the realities of living in society damage your sense of self-worth, which has been tied to the fiction that everyone is an island, it's an issue.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

So if you value independence over community and you're an asshole, then that's a problem.

On the other hand, if you value community over independence and you're an asshole: also a problem.

We can extrapolate further and say that if you drink water and are an asshole: also not good. I don't think drinking water is the problem in that case.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Can confirm.

My car has been "on loan" to my parents for a year. I'm lucky to live in an area with decent public trans, but my sense of freedom is definitely vastly diminished.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Buy a bike, and often that sense of freedom comes back.

Still getting around, still able to use public transit at its best, but also able to fill in the other parts of trips with a form of low-stress exercise.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I get the feeling you're not from the US. In the vast majority of US cities, bike infrastructure is either non-existent, or so limited/unprotected that it's still dangerous to use.

Let me try to give a good comparison. Telling people to switch to biking in US cities is like telling someone to switch to biking on the Autobahn. It's impractical, it's dangerous, and often it's even illegal. You might think that's hyperbole, but I promise it's not. For many major cities, 40 MPH (65 KPH) is considered a low speed, found on side-streets and other non-major roads; in neighborhoods, where kids play, it drops down to 30 MPH. On highways, you're looking at 50 MPH minimum, sometimes up to 75 MPH, and these are inner-city highways.

Americans don't choose not to bike out of laziness, but because, in most places, biking as a form of transportation will get you killed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I am American, but I’m lucky enough to live in a city where bikes are relatively practical.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You have public trans? Can you just like rent them for a while or how does it work?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

In my city you can just use your library card. Pretty convenient

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 days ago (2 children)

One addition to this is also winter upkeep, which is very relevant in Finland.

People like to talk about "winter cycling", because it's somehow so much different from "every other season cycling". Mainly it comes down to winter upkeep; snow plowing and such. Then some people complain how nobody rides in the winter and they shouldn't use too much budget for it.

It would be fun to see people talk about "winter driving". How much we actually spend making driving possible during the winter.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

It's not just spending money. In my city, we're poisoning the groundwater with road salt to support winter driving. One well near me has sodium levels in the water high enough that the water utility has issued a no-drink advisory for people with hypertension.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago

Where I live in the US that’s in the millions, hundreds of millions even. Also, if that budget dries up then they don’t plow shit. They’ll usually get an emergency fund but it takes a few days, while it’s snowing…

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (5 children)

How do I get to and then around Michigan’s Upper Peninsula? I don’t want to go be in cities like at all? What’s the plan for that?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 days ago

You use a car.

Do not mistake cars being appropriate for the 20% of population that's rural for them being appropriate for the 80% of population that's urban, 'cause they're not.

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