As someone who drives a car in the UK, I’d like to point out that this is a load of old bollocks designed to drum up votes from Boomers ahead of what’s looking to be an absolute embarrassment of an election for the Tories in the next year or so.
Almost none of these promises have any actual substance to them, and are largely just meaningless slogans designed to rile up the Boomers* who have spent their lives being taught that public transport and bikes are what poor lefties do.
If Labour have been quiet on these issues, it’s because they know that their best election strategy at this point is to just let the Tories flap on, doling out enough rope with which to hang themselves.
*not all Boomers, obviously, but they really are the majority of Tory voters
Well I’m not a UK driver but all of those ideas sound good to me, because cars give people freedom to go wherever they want and help the economy keep going. Tons of people don’t have access to public transit and they do have cars, and they need them to get to work and the rest of the places they go to live their lives.
Sure, build more public transit to help out too, and create incentives for pollution reduction and all that. But if you want the regular people on your side you will have to stop trying to take their freedom to drive away.
I don’t care, I’m just scrolling the Lemmy World feed for entertainment and this one came up. Now you get to hear my “boomer” thoughts on the matter haha.
I mean, all power to you for having your opinions, and what you say about public transport is absolutely correct.
But here’s the thing; no one is taking people’s “freedom to drive” anywhere. At the very, very worst, some councils are making it more expensive to drive within their jurisdiction, because they want to insert a moment of friction to make people wonder whether the car journey they “have” to take could be taken with public transport instead. I drive places (much less than I used to), and I see that as a Good Thing. We had the same grumbles back when Ken Livingston’s council introduced the original scheme 20 years ago, but people very quickly adapted and got over it.
As for the 20mph zones; they just make sense in built up areas. As I said elsewhere in this thread, I live in an area that has 30mph limits in residential areas, but I’ve taken to traveling at 20mph anyway, because there are kids who live near me who have a tendency to run around without paying enough attention. Sure, I’d be legally in the clear if I hit one at 30 and seriously injured them, but that wouldn’t help my conscience one bit.
You’re a very typical US citizen that has bought into the “mah free dumbs” lie. There are 8 billion people on the planet and regulations are about those people (or some subset thereof) having a way to get along without buggering up someone else’s freedom. It’s all very well driving a car, but the asthma you cause in someone else necessitate regulation for many other people’s freedom. USA is one of the very few places on the planet that has Jay walking laws, because most countries recognise people’s freedom to walk in the street, ffs, it’s not rocket science, it’s a very basic freedom.
Nope, I’m far from typical. I’m a well educated successful American with a Zen-like level of contentment. I have the true freedom to do whatever I want in the USA, whether you believe it or not.
Oh dear god, that’s sad. You are the definition of typical. I’ve spent years working and travelling in the US, and you speak exactly like virtually everyone else over there. My dear friend, you don’t have control over anything. You don’t even have control over your own bowels, they will drive you to obey them. Everyone thinks they are free and in control, and you, like everyone else, control virtual nothing in your life. This is not some great conspiracy, its just the law of nature. So enjoy your free dumb, you poor fool, but try very hard not to fuck up someone else’s freedom in the process 😉 or accept that there is no such thing and go with the flow instead. You are soo American, it would be funny it it wasn’t so sad. Sorry.
Well everything you just wrote is absolutely wrong. Why don’t you go ahead and list anything that you think I don’t have the freedom to do? Put some substance into your hyperbole for a change.
I tell you what, I’ll go one better, that I hope illustrates my point. I told this to every American I ever met and, so far, only 1 learnt from it.
It’s OK to be hungry.
You have the “freedom to eat whenever you want, whereveryou want it”, but you can eat so much that you die. You can eat as little as you like, so little that you also die. Your freedom you eat whatever you want, whenever you want is an illusion, driven by outrageous commercialism.
You do not have the freedom to eat whatever you want, whenever you want. You think you do.
Edited for autocorrect, I don’t even have the freedom to type ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Way to dodge the question with a philosophical yarn. You probably just don’t have a real answer.
Everybody knows about the vices of excess consumption. That is not a useful metaphor relevant to individual freedom. Living a free life doing what you want does not require or even imply consuming an excess of anything.
Doesn’t hurt to bring a perspective from outside the bubble, does it? Otherwise communities are a circlejerk at best and consist mainly of “I do not understand why these reasonable goals can’t simply be implemented and accepted by everyone”-posts
Let me tell you how “dumb” I am so you can gloat over it some more, you bright shining ray of sunshine. I’m so dumb that I have 2 college degrees, a great career doing high-tech stuff for lots of money, and I own my own house and land where I have an offgrid solar panel system and a sweet garden.
I’m so dumb that my life is great and you made me so sad about it.
There’s a small YouTube channel I watch of a this dude longboard around London. It’s amazing how pedestrian and skate friendly it is. They’d be doing some proper long term damage if this kind of thinking gets through. With Brexit the Brits might be in for a decade more of rolling back civilisation.
This is so obvious and dumb populism it reminds me of Trump because just like most of Trumps statements, it reads like bad satire. If this guy wouldn´t be in a position of power it would be quite funny to read … !fuckcars
It is endlessly frustrating to see the tories have any kind of traction with a narrative of opposing an oppressive or overreaching government direction. They ARE the government, they HAVE BEEN the government since 2010, and before the Blair years they were the government since 1979
this is the most important comment in this whole thread. Sunak – who absorbed the party leadership role as the “continuity candidate” – is trying to pitch his own party as the radical opposition when they’ve been running the country for 30 of the 43 years he’s been alive, and have been more or less electorally unopposed for the entirety of his political career. the amount of unironic opportunitistic populist bullshit he’s got blowing his sails along would be funny if it wasn’t so viscerally horrible
Brits will do this to themselves and then in 10-20 years complain about how they have no friends or significant other because it’s hard to meet people. All while continuing to vote for people like this.
Labour are shooting themselves in the foot. Instead of proposing a tax on the ultra wealthy to try and subsidize buying less polluting cars. They are forcing the poor to buy cars they can’t afford in cities where public transport is both not complete and expensive. They have lost touch with the working class. Alienating them against climate action. And driving them to the arms of the Tories.
Labour could literally anything and the Tories would react in as far the opposite way as possible. That says nothing about Labour, and everything about the Tories entire platform being “The Opposite Of Labour”, despite literally being the party in power of government, able to make whatever decisions they want, but being completely devoid of any useful ideas that aren’t just ‘Tax breaks for rich cunts’.
As someone forced to drive for their commute, who has frequently been made late by cyclists forcing emergency stopz, and who hates the way things are currently going on the roads, this isn’t going to win my vote.
The issue is that I’m forced to drive due to public transport being too expensive, unreliable, and, let me be frank, unsafe in some areas if you’re transporting a laptop after dark. Ever tried to move a box of teaching supplies around on a bike, ye god’s never again!
I don’t want freed up bus lanes, I want more buses with a guard on then after dark. The roadworks fines, I think everyone wants that sorted out because it hits buses really hard. As for parking - definitely - better parking for bikes outside local shops, and safe storage for people travelling on public transport with luggage or heavy loads.
Less popular but definitely needed - insurance for bike users and mandatory licenses (sorry but some folks out there are accidents waiting to happen on a bike).
Insurance and licencing for cyclists is a really terrible idea. Everywhere that has tried mandatory insurance has given up on it because it just isn’t worth the cost. If you want to do licenses how to you administer the tests? What age do you have to be to take it? And therefore how many children are you banning from cycling? The issues disappear once you have decent infrastructure for cyclists, which is a much better solution for both sides.
So in Germany for example, cyclists over the age of 13 (I believe) are required by law to use the road. And using the road, they should know the rules of the road.
In most places, some form of cycling classes is an integral part of the curriculum, with an actual exam in fourth grade. Though it’s all voluntary, no child is legally required to participate.
So the license kids get from that is not an official document and more symbolic than anything, but I think it’s quite nice for them to have actual classes and an exam they can take for it.
Education is great, but adding more barriers to entry isn’t. It’s the cars that cause the danger and we should be doing as much as possible to get people out of them.
Oh yeah, I just wanted to give some thoughts on it. That system as it is in Germany isn’t really a barrier, it’s just an optional thing kids can do, and I for one think that’s good.
But then again, I’d rather have bike lanes that are completely separate to reduce possible danger, instead of telling cyclists to share the road with some of those lunatics I’m encountering daily
Cyclist insurance is primarily so expensive (here) because cyclists here are fucking morons with no affinity for personal safety and responsibility.
I understand their plight as a motorcyclist (as well as other vulnerable travel methods) However, in my experience acting like shit and expecting everyone else to ensure YOUR safety is not a very appropriate way to stay safe.
I actively behave on the roads as if being targeted by a bit squad. I have had one accident in my entire driving life that could be considered my fault. Yet, when speaking with cyclists etc. All they have to talk about is their latest near fatality that most certainly wasn’t their fault! No sir they had absolutely no hand in it!
I agree, good luck getting it past even the most progressive government in my country. Nobody wants to pay their fair share of tax (and votes accordingly) and yet all expect the investment in infrastructure that comes with it.
When I bike here (Somewhere in Sweden) I barely ever have to interact with any cars because the car roads and bike lanes are entirely separate.
In the middle of the city you could make a case about lanes with pedestrians and bike lanes that often are only separated by a painted line.
The crossings have separate buttons for pedestrians and bikes. Traffic is very rarely ambiguous, at least in urban areas. It’s easy to bike “the right way”.
There are rules for biking, and some assholes break them, but that goes for everything.
Basically, I agree with the other commenter. Infrastructure is the answer.
I appreciate your comment and sentiment, could you come over and inform my country on how to build a city? As it stands, it’s more convenient, planned for, and infrastructure installed for cars. The only thing keeping me from using one of my smaller transportation methods to commute, remains safety. Safety of myself, but also safety of my ride.
I certainly don’t have enough good ideas to remedy this, but I sure hope someone else does.
I understand, while I live in Sweden, I didn’t grow up here. I wish I could convince people back in my home country that reducing cars is a worthwhile goal, and certainly better people than me have tried. I’m not arguing for you to simply bike and take the risks, I didn’t and I wouldn’t.
Reducing car reliance would be a big project even if everyone agreed. I don’t take it for granted here. Even in Sweden we’re also facing risks of reduced public transportation and favoring cars, and that worries me. It’s like finding a little piece of a well working system and watching it become underappreciated and potentially destroyed.
I both drive and cycle for commuting, and having experience with both it’s hard to imagine what practical use mandatory insurance would be for cyclists, given that only third-party insurance is mandatory for drivers, and it’s largely to cover the huge amount of physical damage someone can create with a 2-tonne block of metal propelled by an engine, something that really isn’t comparable to ~10kg powered only by one person’s legs.
and yeah sure hypothetically a cyclist could make a mistake that indirectly causes a car to cause an accident but this relatively very rare compared to the hundreds of accidents directly caused by drivers every day, and even rarer that the accident would be solely the fault of one party (ie. if a cyclist in front of a driver did a bad maneuver and the driver had to do an emergency stop, the driver was probably far too close to the cyclist)
at the end of the day, calls for cyclists to have insurance or licence plates usually come from people who are less invested in whether or not these are practical solutions, and more from car drivers who irrationally just want cyclists to suffer from the same inconveniences they have to deal with
As someone whose aunt was hospitalised because a young (early 20s) cyclist hit her on the pavement and sped off, I disagree.
Never caught, she ended up with a fractured hip. While it’s easy to believe “all cyclists are good people like me”, the reality is that every group of transit users has its problem members.
I do agree, cars can cause a lot more damage (and injuries are almost always MUCH more serious), which is why you’d set a lower premium rate for cyclists. They’re covered, so you are covered.
If I am ever in a position to cycle in to work, I’d feel a lot more comfortable knowing that if someone hits me and damages my bike, I won’t be relying on their goodwill or just footing the bill.
Sure, that’s why I qualified that harmful accidents do happen, though relatively rarely compared to car accidents, and relatively rarely anywhere near as harmful as a similar incident if it was caused by a car.
Similar anecdotal incident - I know someone who was hospitalised and got multiple fractures while riding his bike on a cycle path because someone was walking their dog without a lead and the dog ran in front of his bike. These things can and do happen, they’re not unusual - but it’s also a weak argument for, say, mandating that all dog owners get liability insurance for their pets.
You’re not campaigning to increase the number of dogs on the road, you are aiming to increase the number of cyclists.
At the moment, the main worry is car/cycle interactions and car/person; however let us say all cars vanish and everyone who drove now cycles. You’re now going to have a LOT more cycle/cycle and cycle/person interactions. Indeed, without the requirements of formal road training (I.e. a license) you’re going to see injuries from cycle incidents in every city daily. It’s a matter of probability, more so an increasing one.
Then again, “dog causes 50 person pile up” might well mandate stronger laws for dog owners, with cyclists pushing for it. So perhaps it isn’t so much apples Vs oranges and more failing to appreciate scale - that the issue isn’t the apples and oranges, but the sheer number of them!
You’re really hitting the nail on the head with this analogy. If you replaced all the cars with cyclists then yes you’d increase the number of cycle accidents, but no one of those cyclists would be capable of causing anywhere even remotely near the level of carnage one car driver can cause. In fact, the amount of damage a single cyclist can cause would decrease with fewer cars on the road, given that at present the worst damage a cyclist can cause is by indirectly causing a car driver to crash.
We’d see more minor injuries (remember, all commuters are tired cyclists, so they’re more likely to have minor bumps), but many less majore ones (at least among young cyclists, older ones in collisions I do not know enough about to comment reliably).
Let’s not forget, pedestrians exist as well, and are just as unobservant as cyclists (pedestrians usually have right of way, though no cyclist I know respects that!).
What do you mean? I am sure he will put in place some shitty measures that will make traffic worse then he can blame Labour for it. They can even use their much loved “since the previous Labour government…” line. And it won’t be over a decade ago they are talking about! Yay!
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