I often see people in the comments acting like having a fast or loud car immediately makes your dick smaller or that you have ED. And people talk about owning a car as if they’ve never gone above 40 MPH and are terrified to do so.
For context I live in a city with actually ok mass transit, don’t own a car, and prefer to bike/take the train whenever possible. Trains, trolleys, bikes, and feet are the best forms of transportation imo.
That being said, body shaming or making fun of people with physical or mental issues (that may be no fault of their own) is just shitty. It makes this community look shitty. I hate reading comments about “loud car small dick this” or “fast car ED that”. It’s unnecessary. You can shit on asshole drivers without having to stoop that low. Secondly, some women enjoy cars as well; be more creative.
Finally, don’t act like cars can’t be fun. I’m all for phasing out the automobile and revolutionizing transport by returning to the ways of olde, but cars are fun. I understand some of you are grandparents and don’t like someone revving their straight pipes mustang down your block on a Saturday morning. That’s completely reasonable. But my god does this community act like you can’t have fun in a car. I absolutely enjoy loud and fast and powerful cars, because that’s an incredible work of engineering and it simply can be fun. Going fast can be fun. Being in a car that purrs like a lion can be fun. Going offroading or drifting or racing or anything in a car can be fun.
We won’t convince people to see our side by shitting on the things they enjoy. We convince people to try and see things from our point of view by actually looking through their perspective first, and acknowledging that while cars can be fun they are not sustainable.
ETA: Some people seem to think I think public roads should still be for cars. Never did I say that. I think the appropriate place for cars is the track. I would love to convert all the roads in my city to a mixture of bike and pedestrian lanes with trolleys running down the median. But cars can be fun and a track day can absolutely be a great time.
I mean, look, I come in here and argue with these guys all the time, but the sub ain’t called “I politely disagree with cars”.
Having a loud car is literally one of the most asshole things you can do.
If we replace “small dicks” with “sociopathic tendencies and pitiful personalities”, will you still complain?
Thesaurus raises the quality of your argument, yes it does
I somewhat agree with you but whenever I stand next to one of those guys in a Lambo with a hot young girl who need to accelerate full BBRRAAAAAAAAAHHH until the next traffic light 30 meters down the road, I’ll still assume you have a tiny penis and are trying to make up for it. It’s not the tiny penis I care about, its the “I’m so insecure that i need a Lambo and a hot chick to feel like i matter” that irks me.
For me, it is the complete disregard for the safety of others that disgusts. Speeding or driving a tank sized vehicle is like playing Russian roulette with the lives of others. It is deeply anti-social and unhinged from my perspective
TL;DR: I agree with your point and I’m supporting it with an argument that comes at it from the other direction. You’re arguing that big/fast/fun cars aren’t worse, while I’m about to argue that small/slow/economy cars aren’t better.
The main point of this community is to spread the word about how cars ruin cities. The reason they do that is, in large part, a matter of simple geometry: it’s because they take up so much space, both on roads and especially while parked. Specifically:
- Big trucks take up one parking space each
- Fast sporty cars take up one parking space each.
- Electric cars take up one parking space each.
- Small economy cars take up – say it with me – one parking space each.
All cars take up the same amount of space, so all cars ruin cities equally. All of them contribute to traffic. All of them beget zoning with mandatory minimum parking requirements, which forces parking lots to be inserted between destinations and ruins walkability. All of them incentivize sprawl-y, low-density development, with things like drive-thrus and big-box stores. All of them insist on being catered to in terms of infrastructure and policy, contributing to drivers’ sense of entitlement and privilege.
Substituting small cars for big ones does not solve the problems cars cause. Substituting electric cars for gasoline ones does not solve most of the problems cars cause. The only thing that solves the problems cars cause is substituting them with other transport methods entirely.
Folks, you do not get ‘credit’ for driving a small car instead of a big one or a fast one. What all the people here acting holier-than-thou about the evils of big trucks specifically are actually trying to accomplish is to absolve themselves of their responsibility for the problem as drivers, by scapegoating another subset of drivers. You are not entitled to do that! If you drive, no matter what you drive, you are part of the problem. End of!
Frankly, I consider everybody in here who rails about trucks (or some other scapegoated subset) instead of all cars to be a borderline reactionary concern troll.
I used to think like you, but this summer I visited Europe where a Volkswagen golf was a very average sized car. The parking spots were smaller, the road lanes were 9ft wide instead of 12 to 20ft wide, pedestrian crossings were often only 16ft long (vs trying to cross an 8 lane stroad 100ft wide). The country in question was very car dependant, and yet they had an automotive fatality rate that was less than 10% of my state’s average. It blew my mind how much of a difference that made. For the first time in years I could relax and walk around cars without fearing for my life.
That trip taught me that car size does matter. Big cars kill people at higher rates and they force all the roads and parking spots to become bigger in turn. It also creates an arms race where people buy bigger and bigger vehicles to be safe from the other oversized vehicles. Larger cars also waste more fuel and cause more damage to our roads.
Also, the part about all cars each taking up 1 parking spot isn’t true. cars are so big these days they often take up two parking spots because the vehicles are too big for the drivers to consistently park within their lines or if you park too close to a gaint SUV / pickup then the owner will wait for you and scream in your face (this has happened to me more than once so now I don’t park next to tank sized pickups anymore because I don’t want to be assaulted or shot)
So I fully and strongly reject the idea that small cars are in any way just as harmful to cities as tank sized pickups and SUVs.
I challenge you to post the name of the city in Europe you visited, and then look up its population density and transportation mode share.
Reykjavík. Population density is 451 people per km2 and transportation mode share is only 5% public transit. It has around the same population density of the US city I live in and yet only 10% of the traffic fatalities. Cars are still a problem there, undeniably, but it is proof that car dependency doesn’t have to be as dystopian and hellish as it has become in the US. The size of cars matters. The price of gas matters. The way we design roads and the size of each lane matters.
Reykjavik – and Iceland in general – is tiny in terms of population: less than 250k in the entire metro area. Of course cars are going to work less-bad there than in any place with a decently-big population! It’s not comparable.
In terms of American metro areas, it would be all the way down at 196th on the list – right below Prescott, AZ.
Wake me up when you can credibly claim that some European city that’s actually big can be car-dependent and magically somehow work because everybody’s driving VW Golfs or whatever.
the road lanes were 9ft wide instead of 12 to 20ft wide,
As a trained traffic engineer, I will inform you that that just isn’t true. In reality, lanes in the US are typically 9-12 feet wide, and NACTO recommends against anything greater than 11.
The only places you’re going to plausibly find widths greater than 12 feet are 1-lane freeway ramps and streets with unmarked on-street parking (which means it’s really two lanes, not one).
pedestrian crossings were never more than 20ft long (rather than 100ft wide for our 8 lane stroads)
This is a function of the number of lanes – i.e., the number of cars, not the size of the cars.
Finally, cars are so big these days they often take up two parking spots because the vehicles are too big for the drivers to consistently park within their lines or if you park next to a gaint SUV / pickup then the owner will wait for you and scream in your face (this has happened to me more than once.)
No, they do not “often” take up two parking spots. You can go look at any random parking lot to see how nonsense that claim is. Alternating patterns of filled and empty spaces are just not a thing that happens anywhere.
Usually I get shit for pointing out that US urban areas continue to be built as if everyone is expected to drive their own car, and automotive lobbyists still discourage public transit projects and reducing parking requirements.
And this continuation of policies that maximize car dependency not only exacerbates the climate crisis, but the tires spread microplastics everywhere, usually with single people driving Canyonero style vehicles.
Some people in this community really, really like their cars.
End small-dick hatred. Body shaming isn’t okay no matter what.
For every lifted coal roller, there is a small-dicked, eco conscious bicyclist.
Agree with the body shaming, plenty of shit drivers across the spectrum. Don’t care so much about cars being fun as a means to justify their prevalence. But to acknowledge the counter argument of the culture we seek to criticize does have its merits in effective debate.
That argument wasn’t to justify their prevalence, but moreso that refusing to acknowledge it won’t get us anywhere. See edit for more info
I don’t go for making fun of people’s imagined dicks or sexual performance. Seems immature and bundled with problematic paradigms.
People can have fun with cars, true. People can have fun with anything. The problem is cars are everywhere and not limited to fun places. like if people had a “cover yourself in honey” fetish and just went everywhere covered in honey, demanded honey dispensers everywhere, got everything sticky, and started wars over honeybees. I don’t care how much fun they’re having , they’re making everything worse for everyone else.
See the edit to the post. I’m not advocating for cars everywhere. But people in this community seem to believe that cars simply shouldn’t exist.
Twinkies are horrible for you and evidence of the sin of capitalism, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t tasty and nice as an occasional treat. If capitalism didn’t exist they probably wouldn’t exist, but I’d still make Twinkies if we had star trek replicators.
But people in this community seem to believe that cars simply shouldn’t exist.
I don’t think most people genuinely believe cars should exist for no one. I think some posts here are hyperbolic, like when you say “I’m going to kill my brother for stealing my Pokemon cards”, you don’t really mean it. It’s an emotional outlet.
Most people I’ve seen recognize that lowering car usage makes it easier for when you do need to drive (for accessibility or moving or whatever, not so much for fun)
I’ve had people on fuckcars argue that delivery trucks shouldn’t exist at all, that it should just be handled by a fleet of people on cargo bicycles. I can’t understand how people don’t understand the scale of the economy and the distances and weight of deliveries.
Delivering a couch from a warehouse in NJ to an apartment in Queens via bike sounds challenging.
I’m glad most food delivery here is by bike and not car, though.
My favorite posts on here are ones that address the underlying causes that make us want to say “fuck cars.”
As a resident of northern Utah, I see all the time the negative results of the intersection of car-centric city planning, religious idiocy, and “small government” conservatism.
I like cars. I don’t like the political system that allowed car companies to circumvent environmental standards and push ugly ass trucks and SUVs.
I love going for long drives to see new places. I hate that so many interstates were built to destroy “undesirable” neighborhoods.
For example, the I-190 from Buffalo to Niagara Falls ruins public access. The Robert Moses Parkway that runs along the Niagara River to the Falls does the same. There isn’t the political will to fix these things.
That pisses me off
I love driving. I don’t like drivers who have received minimal training because the state thinks having a drivers licence is more of a right than a privilege.
I think everyone should have to pass a more rigorous road test every 5 years. I think anyone who buys an RV should have a Class B CDL.
I don’t like roads that make it dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists, scooter riders, etc.
I want there to be better public transportation. I want high speed rail.
Are there drivers who are absolute assholes and drive unsafely or intentionally cause excessive air/noise pollution? Yeah. They should be shamed for their behavior.
However, not all bicyclists obey the rules of the road. I rode an electric scooter for almost 18 months as my primary mode of transportation. I had more close calls with cyclists and other scooter riders going the wrong way or ignoring traffic devices than with cars.
Good on you to call out body shaming when you see it.
Body shaming is still far too accepted and pervasive in our society and it should be called out every time we encounter it.
Thank you for this post. Keep fighting the good fight.
I choose to believe that men with small dicks don’t inheritently need to over compensate. It’s possible that they are considerate and able to satisfy their partners. And it’s equally possible that men with larger penises are selfish lovers, and feel insecure, needing fast/loud cars.
I happen to think there are some awesome cars for sale in an aesthetic sense as well as a practical one, the only thing I hate is the existence of the obligation to own one.
You may be vastly underestimating how many car enthusiasts would like there to be less traffic.
So you’re trying to say that we can’t blame and piss around about stupid loud and disrespectful cars and car drivers in a community named “Fuck cars”?
C’mon… We’re here cause we’re pissed off with cars and cars-centric cities that are driving us insane. We’re not here to convince anyone, or else the community couldn’t be named “Fuck cars”.
This comment is a great illustration of what’s wrong with social media. All communities eventually become echo chambers where no one really cares about respectful discussion, criticism or facts.
