Also, in the comments section of this video I saw a really good comment about car dependency and accessibility:
There’s one aspect I want to add to this because I’m ashamed at how ignorant I used to be in this regard: Driving and Disability.
For context, in 2015 I became very ill suddenly and instead of the illness going away it kept getting more and more severe. In 2018 I was medically confirmed disabled due to my worsening heart and as a result I couldn’t drive anymore. Before my disability I assumed, much like quite literally everyone I knew, that disabled people could only realistically get around by car or by being driven somewhere. The idea of getting groceries or heading to a medical appointment seemed impossible for someone non-able-bodied and as a result I made the ignorant assumption that reducing car infrastructure would be horrific to some of the most vulnerable people in our population.
Instead, becoming disabled taught me how HORRIBLE it is to be disabled in a car-infested world. First off, I live alone due to a suppressed immune system so the very act of trying to get a ride is either impossibly expensive through a ridesharing service or I’d have to beg my friends to help me get to the store when they already have enough going on in their lives. Second, despite me living remarkably close to a grocery store for an American suburb, I have to cross a major road, 2 parking lots, and 2 backstreets before getting to the store which is exhausting as someone already weak and without a simple, flat path to walk on. Third, and this is the most important part, despite being less than half a mile away from the store and in slow-speed parking lots, I have been nearly hit SO many times I can’t even count. I already can’t move nearly as fast as my able-bodied counterparts but it’s made even worse carrying heavy groceries back to my home since drivers do not care about your safety at all.
Now the immediate question I get from people all the time is: “Well, how exactly would walkable streets help you at all? You still struggle to walk to the store so wouldn’t it be better to have a personal driver or make public passes for free ridesharing?” The thing people seem to completely miss is the fact that most disabled people can walk fine. We WANT to walk more. We WANT to do low-impact exercise and experience the world around us. We WANT to be able to visit friends or go to bars or just have fun in our lives just like you. The struggles I get from walking to the store aren’t from the walking itself but the hyper-vigilancy I need to practice around drivers and the uneven, altitude-changing roadways that make going up and down a struggle. Had I just had a regular, flat path I could walk along without the worry of rushing across a street then not only would my time walking be cut dramatically but I’d actually be comfortable doing it. It’s also saying nothing about how much it would help people confined to motorized wheelchairs that are rarely able to get around rough terrain. That’s not even including the consideration of a mixed-use development where my store could literally be an elevator ride away and going to the store wouldn’t be a calculation of risking life or death to feed myself.
The only reason I can say this with any amount of confidence is because I met a fellow disabled friend across the ocean in Denmark. While Denmark is certainly far from a car-less utopia of walkability and freedom, Danish cities still blow our cities out of the water with being at least partially viable for the disabled. My friend has similar heart problems made even worse by being forced to walk with crutches. Yet, despite his clear worse health, he does FAR more walking than I ever could because his grocery store is in a mixed-use development and even if he needs to make a longer trip he can do so without ever considering that his life might end. When I told him about how badly I needed a car over here he reacted with complete shock when he heard what I had to go through just to get food to eat. It’s one of those things where I slowly realized that I’ve normalized something that’s a complete injustice to any disabled person when we’re some of the weakest in society yet we work HARDER than the average person just to survive the basic act of walking.
And the worst part about this is that I still love cars. I love the feeling of fixing things and giving a symbolic middle finger to any overpriced shop for friends and family. I love tinkering and modifying cars and watching my dreams slowly come to fruition. I love seeing everyone’s personal ride and listening to the stories of how each dent got there or the friends they’ve made along the way. I want to love all of these things but I now need to take a hard look back at everything I’ve loved and realize how much of it truly stems from horrible lobbying and marketing that made me love cars at the expense of everyone else. Like I said before, I’m ashamed it took me this long to wake up to just how bad it is to be outside of a car and how lucky I was before my illness to even be able to afford it or be around people who could. Falling into poverty and seeing the dark underbelly of something I once loved hurts so bad, but frankly I, and many others, NEED to force ourselves through it not just for my own survival but for everyone I’ve ignored (and even fought against…) throughout the years. My hope is that if I ever meet them again someday I can show my deepest regrets and just say sorry for implying that their survival came after my love for big things that go fast. I hope the first step to that is finding someone who reads this and realizes that things could be better for all of us rather than a lucky few. Walkable cities are better for everyone, including drivers, and now I may literally have to fight to the death to prove it.
Today, I test drove a used car. I was happy with it. Good mileage. Good price for what it was. Decided to buy it. Got all the paperwork taken care of. Drove it home.
Half way home, the tire pressure gague turned on. The test drive, nothing was amiss. But now the tire pressure gauge is on.
They also told me they’d just replaced the tires. So either they didn’t fill them enough or there’s something wrong with the tires or sensors.
Same issue. We’re 90% sure it’s the sensors on our car. We just ignore it now. We change the tires for winter half the year anyways so it will be on for half the year at least even if the issue was fixed.
Swap your sensors/get new ones when you get new tires. You can get packs of sensors for ~200$. They cost nothing to install when your are getting things mounted/balanced anyways.
I’ve got sensors on my summers, winters, and spare.
Was it raining when you drove it home? Used to have a car (I think '04 or '14 Alero) that was notorious for getting fucky when the wiring harness in the front tire(s) got wet. I don't remember what warning it set off, but replacing the wires was only a short-term solution because all it took was a good rain for it to get fucked up again.
My parents Subaru has a constant tire pressure warning because the tire pressure sensors batteries die long before the tires wear out and the cost to get the sensors replaced isn’t worth it. It’s just a useless bullshit feature that makes cars cost more. Check your tires occasionally with pressure checker to make sure they match the psi listed on the label in the doorjam. and if it’s low get them pumped up. I use the free pump outside my local Costco. No membership needed.
It’s just a useless bullshit feature that makes cars cost more.
It's not useless, and it doesn't increase the cost of a car by that much, either. Like, a couple hundred dollars, tops. Yes, you can very easily manually check the tire pressure, but that's not the point of these sensors. They're to give you a live notice when the tire pressure is dropping. If you're actively driving, you can't exactly check your tire pressure while you're cruising along at 65 MPH, but that's the time you're most likely to experience a drop in pressure. Having a real-time alert of a potential issue before your tire blows up on the freeway is crucial to road safety.
~50$ each, so 250$ for a set with your spare (you should put one on your spare).
They are expensive to get installed on their own, but if you’re getting new tires/a mount and balance anyways; then it is free. Maybe a small charge for programming if you don’t want to do it yourself.
I was about to add that they usually have to replace the sensors when they replace the tires, and the replacement cost isn’t typically close to the list price
I tend to notice when tire preasure drops as it tends to pull the car to one side, cause a lean, and increase the road noise. The sensors often need to be replaced several times throughout the life of the vehicle so the cost is certainly more than a few hundred dollars in total. In my area cars must pass a safety when transfered between owners, these senors must be working to pass the safety if the vehicle is equiped with it regardless if you want the feature or not.
A few hundred bucks to pay someone to replace a sensor you may not need is certainly a significant sum of money to some people, especially those buying used cars as their finances are often already fairly tight.
When I bought my most recent car I tried to get as little electronics as possible to reduce maintaince cost on bells and whistles I don’t need. I have manual windows, a manual transmission and very little bonus features like blindspot warnings and tire pressure sensors. My maintaince costs are less because I dont have to constantly replace sensors that detoriate from road salt, wide temperature ranges, and general wear.
$200 is not tops. It’s also not cheap. Every stupid little thing adds up and breaks people who aren’t lucky to win at capitalism like you apparently have.
Even our cars are getting noticeably bigger. It’s a stark difference if you see old refurbished cars from the 80s compared to their contemporary counterparts.
Ireland and the UK are headed this way, if not there already.
The pickups make everyone look like posers but the SUVs are decent enough. I drove a couple, I wouldn’t say there is more space but seeing them on the road so often makes me consider it the safer option for a family car. I don’t want to going under one of them in a crash. That said I only think that this is how their popularity explodes.
The number one selling car in Ireland has been the Tucson for the last number of years.
It used to be mondeos, S90s, corollas now it’s Kugas, Tucsons, Sorrentos, XC40s, and RAV4s.
Not to mention the absolute loser in Ford Rangers and Raptors. I can see the use in the SUVs but the Hilux and Raptors are such small dick energy. Lads in construction that don’t do work.
As an American, Tucsons and Rav4 are the small SUVs. Just wait until you have people that barely know how to drive riding around in Suburbans and Sequoias
I have driven my mother’s little Juke around the US. I, personally, find that it is a peppy little thing, though it resembles an angry frog.
I may have gotten lucky, but never had a problem with it through a couple Midwest winters.
I’m just glad she isn’t driving a big ol Jeep or Escalade, which she would choose if left to her own devices. She is a small woman and thinks a big car gives her an advantage. Over what? I don’t know. I guess boomers are gonna boom.
I remember last time I was in London (in the '00s), the streets are so narrow that the bus couldn’t get up the hill to the house where I was saying because too many cars were parked on the road and it wouldn’t fit. So I imagine SUVs in London are a nightmare.
And this wasn’t even central London, this was Harrow.
My wife has a Toyota Rav4 SUV. I don’t love SUVs, but I do admit it’s been really useful for hauling stuff and it is 4WD so it’s much safer in the winter than my smaller Prius.
Now I like tiny cars. My Prius is too big for my comfort level a lot of the time. My dream car is an electrified Nash Metropolitan. But I do have to admit having an SUV has been useful, and with a family of 3, we can still all go to my daughter’s friend’s house and pick her up and take her to breakfast without having a monster-sized pickup truck.
I don’t know if it’s still possible, but (I think) the Lowes chain of hardware stores had rentable pickup trucks. That should be more common. Maybe it would encourage fewer purchase of pickup trucks.
That’s exactly it. They are actually less safe, but feel more safe, since you sit higher up. They also make smaller cars seem less safe, so it ends up being an arms race.
It’s the same in Australia. Tax incentives given to businesses during the pandemic mixed with a large influx of yank tanks available on the market means that there are heaps of these monster trucks getting around. I honestly don’t know how they cope, the roads and parking around here aren’t designed for such large vehicles and this is out in the countryside; I can’t see them fitting in narrow city streets.
Yeah I’ve seen Trucks more often in Sweden as well as other SUVs. The most common car used to be a station wagon of some sort but it seems to be more compact suvs now too
Belgium. It was mainly about the very large difference within Italy. I don’t see fundamental differences in infrastructure (low quality almost everywhere in Italy I’ve been, mostly because non-existant), so I was wondering why for example lodi does have so many normal cyclists that do not seem to be part of those two demographics.
Interesting. We went to rural Tuscany recently and it was only the first group.
I get the feeling that Italy is very heterogenous culturally, despite appearances. It did only become a single country relatively recently in the history of Western Europe.
We were unified in 1861, which is before other Countries in WE, but the problem is more related to the fact that our economic boom in the 50’s brought a car colture that still exists right now: for the first time ever people could afford to move easily, and the infrastructure was built upon that car-centric idea. Tracking back is hard and colture is hard to change.
Not Italian, but am there frequently and have lots of friends there:
Naturally, it depends on where you are. Some places are frequented by tourists with mobile homes, and those have a higher amount of “casual riders”.
But generally speaking, Italy is… let’s say not really bike friendly…
For example: At Lake Como, the SS 36 runs along its Eastern Coast. SS stands for “Strada Statale” which is the Italian name for highway, a road where only cars are allowed.
But! At some points the SS36 is the only road since Lake Como is sitting next to mountains, and they only dug a tunnel for the highway. This in turn leads to these parts being demoted from an SS to a regular road, meaning other modes of transport are allowed.
Which of course means you’ll find people on road bikes, without any lights, riding in an old and badly illuminated tunnel with cars zooming past them at ~130 km/h 🤡
Had the opposite experience unfortunately. Tunnels on the ligurian coast are single direction, that switches with a timetable. Just 50 km/h or so, but bikes not allowed. Oh, sure, I’ll just pedal my bike over this 9km detour over a 350 meter high mountain pass instead 🤡
Cities don’t tax only based on the potential for what land could be doing, but instead include taxes on improvements to the land as well. As a result, there’s incentive to sprawl rather than pressure to densify.
Yes that’s part of it. Another part is encouraging more permissive, inclusive, mixed use zoning to better reflect the potential optimal use of the land, and switching from property taxes to land value taxes to apply pressure to reach that ideal.
The way to achieve this is with a land value tax. Undeveloped land and developed land are taxed the same, so the owner is incentivised to maximize the development to make as much money as possible to offset the LVT.
fuckcars
Active
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.