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.
The only people who force me to walk are physical therapist. I’m looking at you, Maryann!
Counterpoint: having a working car makes a human being have vastly more freedom to travel than not having a car.
Having a car means you can drive to anywhere that roads on your continent lead to, and even to places that don’t have roads if your car is off-road capable. Without a car, you have to hire transport to get to anywhere you can’t get to by your human body power.
I would never live without a car unless it was physically impossible. Law banning cars would not stop me, I would build my own fucking car if I had to.
*had a car to drive anywhere*
*drives to the same 3 spots 99% of the time*
Explain that.
Not hard to explain at all. I am lazy and I enjoy the cool stuff I have at home more than I enjoy traveling frequently. But in my case it would be driving to the same 5 to 10 spots most of the time. I go to different cities to visit people or a dispensary with a better selection, etc.
It’s pretty cool to have the option to do any of the above anytime I want.
You’re arguing for having a car in a thread about needing a car
It’s not about banning cars, it’s about designing places to make them not necessary
Where I live you can walk to the local shops
Loads of people drive, but you don’t have to. This is good.
Exactly. There’s a pattern I’ve noticed of people interpreting “car dependency reduces freedom” as “car ownership reduces freedom”. But the point you, I, and many others are trying to make is that building our cities in such a way that no one has a choice but to drive everywhere is counter to the idea of freedom.
Freedom is the freedom to choose how you want to get about your city and not be coerced into owning and maintaining a (rather expensive) vehicle just to get groceries. People want choices.
People interpret it that way because the community is called “fuck cars” and some users are very toxic and don’t present the nuances very well.
A lot of people support better public transportation. But nobody is being won over to the movement with antagonism and name calling.
There’s some good discussions too, I get it, but it’s no surprise that misunderstanding occurs.
I see the carbrains have found this post
Yea sure, i want to walk to get groceries in January. Totally wouldn’t want to sit in a nice warm car and just drive there
You will spend more time warming up your car, than walking two minutes for your groceries. Why waste time?
I’d have to walk 2 miles in the snow to get to a grocery store. I can start my car before I leave my house ans have it nice and warm
The point isn’t to force people to walk to get groceries. Rather, the point is that many cities have made it essentially impossible to get groceries on foot, even for those who want to. For example, Euclidean zoning in the US and Canada makes it literally illegal to build grocery stores (or any other commercial spaces) in residential areas, meaning grocery stores will be way too far from where most people live to be practical to walk to. Similarly, parking minimums mandate each store have a large, arbitrary amount of parking out front, even if the store owner doesn’t think they need anywhere that much parking. The effect of this is to needlessly spread out cities, yet again making it harder for people to walk to the store if they wish.
If you live in a place where it’s practical, where local laws don’t literally forbid it, walking to the grocery store in January genuinely isn’t bad in the slightest. I live in Montreal, which gets pretty frickin cold in January, and yet everybody and their grandmas walk to the grocery store in my neighborhood. Why? It’s a reasonably dense, walkable neighborhood with several grocery stores within a 5- to 10-minute walk of tons of people. I myself live a 5-minute walk from two grocery stores. For me, scraping ice and snow off a car just to get groceries would be 1000x more annoying than just popping on over to the store on foot.
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.
![[meme] Being forced to drive isn't freedom — it's a government-mandated lifetime subscription to oil(lemmy.world)](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/13b1a771-76a5-4af4-b41f-4c22fc9165a4.webp){kind=link}