I think your article just radicalized the fuck out of me, which is saying something

I'm disabled and can't drive safely, which means I can't really go anywhere. I rely on friends to drive me or my local paratransit program (both of which have a lot of problems), or I use my electric wheelchair on the sidewalks... where there are sidewalks. Using the bike lane is fucking terrifying! And somehow it's never occurred to me that this isn't a problem with me (ie I need to figure out how to be able to drive safely, or get rich enough to afford Uber) and is actually a problem with my city. Cause yeah, if it wasn't for the goddamn cars threatening my life, I'd have been able to "walk" all kinds of places for years.

Hell, if not for cars, I'd be able to ride an e-bike to get places, because I wouldn't have to worry about being hit by a fuckin car. Forget going down the road for groceries, I could go almost anywhere. I could take myself to my own doctor's appointments. What the fuck.

I have even more thoughts that came into my head as I was reading this but my big question is this - what can we do? What can I do to get rid of cars? I can't safely ride a bike on the same road as cars thanks to my disability, so that one's out. How do we do this? I wanna do this!!

Oh man, this author didn't even cover one of the major ways that cars are racist, but did hint at it in other sections. The car-dependent design of suburbia that we have today was explicitly racist in intent. After the US Supreme Court ruled that housing discrimination was unconstitutional, local leaders had to figure out a different approach to enforce segregation, and they did it by using wealth as a proxy. Under the new zoning and building codes, they made minimum lot sizes big enough, and maximum occupancy low enough, that poor people couldn't afford houses in the new subdivisions. The need for a car to get around further added to the cost. Then, they offered subsidies (like the GI Bill) to poor white people, and not to poor Black people. Voilà! "Natural" segregation.

The handful of Black families that managed to amass enough wealth to move in anyway could be dealt with by more direct tactics.

This article was good.

Americans are shocked and terrified by the idea, I'm sure. “But they could be kidnaped.” That's kind of a car thing. When cars dominate the world, there are fewer people walking and cycling. Streets are empty except for drivers. There are fewer eyes on the street. With fewer eyes, fewer people together, it becomes more dangerous for vulnerable people.

Jane Jacobs wrote about that in like the 1960s. It's really infuriating how unsafe car-centered spaces is, and how people erroneously think it makes them safer.

You're much safer on a street busy with a mixed crowd of pedestrians.

But, again, racism can't have that.

cities skylines taught me more lanes isnt the answer, even if you want cars

What the hell do you even do if your car breaks down? I see no shoulder. Also, best of luck if you are in a serious accident and need an ambulance to reach the scene.

“The bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created. Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon.”

• Bill Strickland

Nice

everyone wants cheap oil

Uh, no.

One of the best things Trump did was increase the price of oil.

And by cutting off oil to Cuba, he's making them one of the least oil dependent nations in America.

We want oil prices to go up so high that it effectively becomes unavailable.

Electric cars need to be charged for long periods of time, leaving more vulnerable people trapped and isolated in predictable and low security locations. It would take a man to not see the problem here.

I dont own a car either, but my understanding is that >90% of the time, usually that charging happens when the car is parked overnight while you sleep.

Their kids bike home on their own. By 12, kids are expected to generally handle their own travel
...
Americans are shocked and terrified by the idea

Depends where you are in America.

I used to take the bus to school most days, because it was just faster. But on days where I woke up early enough and the weather was good, I loved the freedom to ride my bicycle to elementary school in the US.

Unfortunately the middle and high schools were too far away to do this, but people weren't worried about kids being kidnapped in the 90s in the US, and I'm sure that's not an issue in dozens of cities in the US today.

I'm just going to trust AAA on that, rather than launching into a rant about how they destroyed mass transit. The premise of Who Framed Roger Rabbit came from something real that actually happened. I'm just gonna leave that as homework

Guess I have to watch that movie again

Mods, we want more content like this.

And no more fucking memes, for the love of god. Ban posters of low effort crap, so that we can maintain a minimum level of quality for authors like OP.

every time I get my partner oat milk.

You're amazing

Any freedom that comes at the expense of someone else's freedom is just a from of oppression

I don't know if I agree with that

places that are less car dominated, like the Netherlands, have bike lanes. Mobility devices like electric wheelchairs and scooters can use those bike lanes.

That doesn't seem safe. Do sidewalks not have curb cuts? Seems safer for both the wheelchair users and the cyclists if the wheelchair users are with pedestrian traffic

This alleged overproduction drove down the price of oil, which Iraq called “economic warfare.”

Woah, didn't Hegseth use this term to describe Iran recently?

I thought it was crazy, because it's literally describing the opposite of war: sanctions are not warfare. They're diplomacy.

You don't need stop lights or signs at an bicycle intersection

What?!?

I find it hilarious for a cyclist to be an anarchist. What do they think would happen without bike lanes and laws against hit-and-runs? Chaos and death.