Image transcript:
The “what if you wanted to go to heaven, but god said ____” meme template, but here it says, “What if you wanted to walk to get groceries, but city planners said DRIVE”. The last panel is an image of a massive freeway full of cars.
I see the carbrains have found this post
I don’t even follow this community, but it was top in top-6 hour
I cant imagine feeling the need to get angry over people wishing for a car free life.
A car free life is great for some, but there’s no need to call people names if they enjoy driving. I’m sure I could come up with a bike/pedestrian/public transit version of carbrain, but someone has to stop the hate.
From my side of the fence, you identified the “angry” position as the one responding to an insult. That’s trump-onomics 101: preemptively demean your adversary by name calling.
Yawn
You’re commenting on a post in a community literally called “fuckcars”. I don’t think “stopping the hate” will be effective if you are saying that “the hate” is being given a name of “carbrain.”
That’s like being upset that I call every gun rights advocate a gun-nut. Guns and cars are tools. Cars are for transportation, not an identity. Guns are for killing things, also not an identity.
I like Fried_out_kombi’s post https://lemmy.world/comment/4875407 about the fuckcars community. This isn’t a community of hate and anger, but of development, ideals, and dreams. There is a balance to be had.
There are actually things I like about alternative transportation and close knit downtown city design. I visit those places frequently.
I live here on the outskirts in less dense residental areas and practicality means a car. I like light rail, I like trains, I like ferries, and I think cars are getting too heavy and big.
But I am a car person. I love the freedom; the control, the exploration, and act of driving; being one with a machine and working together.
I was brought to this community because Fuckcars is shitting outside the box into other communities to the determent of lemmy; you guys brought me here.
But I didn’t bring hate with me; that’s not why I’m here. But I do bring real world experience and I will speak my mind in this echo chamber if there glairing logical fallacies.
Or am I mistaken and this is a community of hate?
I don’t know jack shit about this community, I don’t sub to it, as mentioned in my first comment.
Also, you are not a car person, you enjoy cars/ or are a car enthusiast.
I am not a video game person, I am not a gunpla person, I am not a miniature painting person, I am not a computer person, or a sweets person. These are not identities. It’s very dangerous to attribute something like that to an identity.
For instance, think about if you had your driver’s license taken away from you because of safety concerns by the government or health care providers. how would that impact you?
This what I never understood.
Where I lived, in high school (age 15-16) everyone was expected to get a license and car ASAP. I was like, why? To get to your job. For what? To earn money to pay for the car, gas, insurance, etc.
So you want me to work a job I don’t need to pay for the gas for a car I don’t want, so I can be miserable in school?!
And if you looked at the driving records of my peers who had cars… Not pretty. A lot of totalled sports cars.
I get you. I used to go to school with bike. Its a 30-40 min journey in one way. That was the best time in my life. I liked to see the sunrise, fell the wind, goig anywhere I want. I don’t want a car too much stuff.
they probably had a lot more fun than you did tho
Fun isn’t subjective at all /s
Believe it or not working at McDonalds in your “spare” time when you’re already school full time and an athlete, isnt a whole lotta fun xD
And when there was something going in, they would ask if we needed a ride, bc plenty of us didn’t have cars. Our idea of fun was like DnD or Risk on the weekends…
What I do wish is that I had found some kind of summer internship or something that could build my skills, because I was quite into coding as a hobby.
Hello, interested in life without cars but not knowledgeable. How do you transport groceries? I buy in bulk and sometimes have boxes of things, not sure how I’d get that stuff home without a moving trunk
A few ideas, which may or may not work out for any given situation:
- Bike with panniers/baskets/trailer or a fully fledged cargo bike - these can pack a surprising amount of stuff
- Order your groceries delivered
- Skip buying in bulk - it’s not necessary in a context where the nearest grocery store is within walking distance.
For reference, I live in a country with decently well designed urban environments, and my nearest grocery store is less than 200m away by foot. I could just do all of my shopping there, but it’s a bit more expensive, so I bike to a cheaper store that is 3.5km away, taking me less than 10 minutes. There I fill up a basket and maybe a pannier, which gets us enough groceries to last for a week or so.
If I need to transport anything larger, I primarily look to have it delivered, or as a last resort, I rent a car. Renting a car is almost never necessary, though.
Public transport, cargo bike, walk/public transit to go & taxi to come back, buy smaller quantities more often…
It really depends on where you live, the infrastructure and transit available to you, and any other circumstantial factors.
First off, a big part of what !fuckcars@lemmy.world wants to fix is the problem that many communities are simply designed with the assumption that everyone will drive everywhere, which often means most people aren’t within walking distance of shops (because it’s literally illegal to build grocery stores in many residential areas). It also often means very shoddy pedestrian infrastructure, sketchy (if even existing at all) bike infrastructure, and little to no public transit.
If you live within walking distance of a grocery store, you’re in luck! Something like a granny cart (pictured below) can allow you take pretty heavy loads of groceries on foot.
If it’s too far to walk but you have decent bike lanes or paths that you feel comfortable riding on, you can attach pannier bags and/or crates to a bike (an e-bike makes it even easier) to carry pretty big grocery hauls home.
If neither walking nor biking are options but public transit is, you can take a granny cart on the bus or train easily as well. Of course, a limitation is none of these three options can take nearly as big a haul in one trip as a car can, but the idea is you can make smaller, more frequent trips. For example, I live a 5-minute walk from the nearest grocery store, so I can pop on over a couple times a week to get a few items, which is light enough to carry. Of course, if you need to feed multiple people and it’s a kind of long, onerous journey to get groceries by foot/bike/transit, this might no longer be feasible, unfortunately.
If none of those are feasible, there’s no shame in having to use a car. The villain here is the system that forces people to drive even if they’d prefer not to, not the people being force by circumstance to drive.
The thing with walkable urbanized area is that you don’t have to buy in bulk for groceries, because a grocery stores are just minutes away from home. I myself shop in a traditional market which is only 5 minutes bicycle ride away from home. Plus there are many convenience stores within 1km radius.
When the store is walkable, your bulk buying turns into one bulk item that you walk to and get.
Basically its the same way you get something bulk from your trunk into your house. Which is probably your hands and arms.
I used to take the subway to work, and usually walked past a grocery store or two - one downtown, and one a block from my apartment.
Because the overhead of shopping was lower (it was at most thirty seconds out of the way, on foot), I’d stop in a couple times a week, and picked up a bag or two of groceries that I’d just carry home by hand. It made it easier to be spontaneous.
For bigger trips, you could use a cargo bike or panniers. But I rarely felt the need. Buying in bulk was much less convenient than just buying an amount I could carry by hand, because it requires a special, deliberate trip.
If i want to buy something. The closest shop is around 10 minute from my house. If I buy in bulk put everithing into my bicicle and walk home. Its just me not everyone want this I understand, but if we didnt have cars we just solve it in other ways
For trips like that, I have a fold up cart and a strap backpack thing that lets me carry the folded up cart on my back. The second part is optional. You could just pull the cart both ways.
I haven’t seen this option mentioned yet but you can also order your groceries online, and have them delivered. That’s what I do at the moment, because I live outside the city and my nearest grocery store is 2 km away. I could bike or hop on a bus, and I do sometimes, but ordering online is just really convenient.
I like the convenience too. It’s almost “back to the roots” to the times when your local grocer/trader would deliver the goods to the local citizens, since he was the one with the car, though today this dude is replaced by a faceless webshop. And even though this option includes cars, it reduces the number on the road, since one delivery vehicle will (potentially, though not necessarily) replace one car for every household it’s delivering to. This vehicle (theoretically, at least) drives the most time/fuel-efficient route, instead of every household driving to the store(s) and back again. Funny how this is moving traffic of the roads and turning it into digital internet traffic!
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Think how awesome your drive would be if everyone else walked!
Yeah, walking definitely isn’t suitable for everyone. What we need is dense communities with layered and diverse transit options. High walkability, abundant protected bike infrastructure, and accessible mass and local transit.
so do you want the earth to magically shrink to be walkable or were u thinking ice age level migration style walking
Walkability is a matter of urban design. Only 20% of the US lives somewhere rural; 80% live in a city, suburb, or small town. We’re taking about how the 80% shops.
Walkability is about lot size, density in general, mixed use development (putting houses near restaurants and shops), parking minimums, that sort of thing.
Walkable areas tend to be connected by public transit. Look at Amsterdam - to get to work, you might bike to the train station, take a train, then walk or bike to the office. You don’t have to walk clear across the city; public transit connects walkable spaces.
Compare that with American suburban design, where shops are put far from houses, on ugly-ass loud dangerous stroads with comically oversized parking lots. You don’t walk anywhere because anywhere you’d want to walk to is incredibly unpleasant to exist in. People will literally drive in their car to a walking path or a gym treadmill.
Just curious: what about a normal bike? Is the distance too big or does it also hurt?
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Maybe you’d have been in a better shaped if the infrastructure around you were better, but who the hell knows.
Or maybe I’m disabled, lol. Who knows? It’s not like it’s my life or anything. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I hate the way people drive here but I am at least able to walk to the grocery store. It’s right across the street.
Lucky you. My closest grocery store is a 90 min walk, 54 min bus ride, or 12 min drive round trip. (According to google maps)
I actually did that loop once! Got a couple of the basic staples, a quick munch, and hiked home. My fingers were ready to fall off haha!
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ohhhh, now I finally understand why people complain in Germany each time the gov plans to build a highway
It also gives a convenient excuse for needing ID on you at all times.
I walk
The only people who force me to walk are physical therapist. I’m looking at you, Maryann!
HACKENPORSCHE!
Welcome to lemmy everyone. In this comment section you’ll find:
- people missing the point
- people jumping to conclusions
- people getting angry at something they made up
And more! Have fun
It isn’t a proper lemmy comment section yet, there has yet to be someone blaming the issue on capitalism
Also missing someone talking about Linux
Here, now it’s a proper lemmy thread:
See, there’s alot of major inconveniences with rejecting getting a car or other road legal motor vehicle. Not everyone lives in the city, therefore trying to walk or bike to places while living in a rural or even sub-urban area is not necessary ideal (if even practically possible). Having a car or bike or whatever to get you on the road efficiently lets anyone go wherever they need to go with practically and ease. Now yes I know public transport exist, but one: you are one their schedule and two: not many areas other than mainstream and urban and areas have full access to public transport.
You can have both. You can have a car and still be able to walk or bike to do small daily groceries, go to the pharmacy, get bread etc. I mean, not rural middle of the fields, but small rural villages where I lived in Germany were like that.
Only in the USA do you have to pick. The suburban sparwl with strict zoning is an abomination. All for the sake of property values.
As usual this has become yet another tribal issue where you either defend the car or defend walking and biking.
You can do both without your head exploding. I know. Shocker.
I mean it looks like you’re already in the city so it looks like you don’t have to walk far to get groceries
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If you can push a shopping cart around in a gigantic supermarket and parking lot you can walk to the nearest grocery store in any well designed city.
Laughs in groceries delivered
Nice if you can afford it.
It’s free where I am. I could probably get cheaper grocieries in discount supermarkets, but including time and energy to get there it’s a no brainer.
![[meme] Being forced to drive isn't freedom — it's a government-mandated lifetime subscription to oil](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/13b1a771-76a5-4af4-b41f-4c22fc9165a4.webp){kind=link}