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I don't hate cyclists nor pedestrians at all, I am one at times. No ne should ever be assaulted in that manner... What perplexes me though is how hostile both b

I don't hate cyclists nor pedestrians at all, I am one at times. No ne should ever be assaulted in that manner... What perplexes me though is how hostile both bicyclists and car drivers are becoming towards each other lately, and the only thing I can imagine that is driving the ire is online partisanship or the "us versus them" ideals that the Internet creates, which in reality is really not sane. There is some kind of shadow campaign across Reddit right now ... r/fuckcars that threatens the very meaning of the right to own personal property in the world. It has also become kind of a brigade that lobbies and protests in many other online and real world places too, without any clear message or leadership. I may be wrong, but it seems like a lobby run by people who want bicycles and public transportation to be the norm for everyone worldwide. The logic seems highly unreasonable in a capitalist society at least, and as infectious disease threatens us all that these solutions could ever be imposed on a free society of people. That also being said, pedestrian, public transport, and bicyclist infrastructure is also majorly funded in part by car-related taxes, to which there is no alternate source of funding if cars completely go away, meaning that biking, public transport, and walking would all see new taxes... Just imagine having to pay a daily toll just to walk across every single bridge you use, and then another toll to be able to walk or bike through a residential neighborhood. It's very mysterious what the end game is for the r/fuckcars subreddit lobby, is it to sell bicycles? Or run by government employees that ride bicycles to work? I took some time to look into a few posters and found many of them spoke about the cars they own in other subreddits, so it's all very confusing to someone like me. Tons of money is being wasted on alternate bike, pedestrian, and public transport infrastructure that just doesn't work to improve safety and harmony on roads by cities every year, there needs to be some sort of accountability for whoever is driving those decisions. That being said, it's also quite hard to cart a newborn along with your grandparents to the hospital or to evacuate a city during crisis in snow, rain, tornadoes, and freezing cold weather on a Schwinn... I think we all need a better dose of reduced sensationalism and more rational thought in this world when it comes to public safety and transportation, without veiled political agendas pushed online for profit.

acheron 4y ago
Reminder that reddit is basically all trolls. There is no “end game” for anything going on there.
- winternett 4y ago
  Reddit and FaceBook groups are regularly cited for driving online shadow brigades and protests... I think the culture of sponsoring things like this hints at how social platforms fail us, toxic and mindless harm to political, economic, and physical stability in real life... :/
haunter 4y ago
>There is some kind of shadow campaign across Reddit right now ... r/fuckcars that threatens the very meaning of the right to own personal property in the world Reddit is incredibly hateful not just "in the deep" but on the surface too. /r/FuckYouKaren/ which is basically a "I hate white women" sub is the prime example of that with 1.5m subscribers. Constantly being on the top of /r/all but it's all ok I guess. Wonder when it will go down.
- winternett 4y ago
  Pretty wild how a site that bans people for hate speech sponsors so much covert hate. It's even encoded into many of the popular memes on the site's front pages.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
foxyv 4y ago
> That also being said, pedestrian, public transport, and bicyclist infrastructure is also majorly funded in part by car-related taxes, to which there is no alternate source of funding if cars completely go away This is unfortunately incorrect. Cars are heavily subsidized by income and property taxes. The cost to maintain and build roads far out-strip the taxes collected by gas and sales taxes for automobiles. Right now, the accounting is made to look like cars are funding these programs, however it is mostly sleight of hand. Edit: Additional info https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/ https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Moreover every American's taxes pay for roads like highways that are completely unusable if you aren't in a car.
- winternett 4y ago
  if the roads weren't built for cars to begin with, Bike lanes would cost a lot more. I did not say that car related taxes were the only way that bike infrastructure was funded, I said it was the major source of funding for alternative transportation. If you pick a city like New York or DC, maintaining public infrastructure without car-related revenue would be fiscally impossible. The Amsterdam model does not work in those cases. Amsterdam also has legalized and taxed drug and sex trade markets, which might explain how they closed their car-related funding gaps.
  - foxyv 4y ago
    > If you pick a city like New York or DC, maintaining public infrastructure without car-related revenue would be fiscally impossible. This doesn't seem right. 92.8% of New York's revenue comes from Sales and Income taxes. https://ballotpedia.org/New_York_state_budget_and_finances#:~:text=Revenues%20come%20mainly%20from%20tax,corrections%2C%20Medicaid%2C%20and%20transportation https://ballotpedia.org/New_York_state_budget_and_finances#:....
seadan83 4y ago
> What perplexes me though is how hostile both bicyclists and car drivers are becoming towards each other lately, and the only thing I can imagine that is driving the ire is online partisanship or the "us versus them" ideals that the Internet creates, which in reality is really not sane. Speaking from someone that once did a 20 mile, one way bike commute for a year (just a really notable example of a commute), it's quite something when for the third time on a commute you have someone in a car with no perspective literally almost kill you. Eventually you get a bit more aggressive with asserting road position and space in order not to have people try and squeeze around you and do other dumb and dangerous maneuvers. It's not just the internet for cyclists, just ride long enough and accumulate enough near misses on the same ride, it's difficult to stay cool. Meanwhile, drivers do tend to get naturally a bit more aggro when they drive a lot (I notice this in myself). It's hard to stay super patient every day, when spending an hour or more in a car. At that point shaving 10 minutes one way is worth a lot, it adds up. To me, that speaks to unsustainability more than anything else. > There is some kind of shadow campaign across Reddit right now ... r/fuckcars that threatens the very meaning of the right to own personal property in the world. This is an interesting commentary. Car ownership extends so far beyond just you owning your car. The majority of city space is dedicated to car owners. On-street parking, the streets themselves, the vast parking garages. So, it's not just "your personal property", but the whole structure that revolves and around that. If there were no petrol stations, no roads for cars, you could still own your private property all you wish. That is all just to say is the societal accomodation for cars is actually quite extreme. > It has also become kind of a brigade that lobbies and protests in many other online and real world places too, without any clear message or leadership. Yeah, it's reddit; and /fuckcars is about memes and is not about advocacy. > I may be wrong, but it seems like a lobby run by people who want bicycles and public transportation to be the norm for everyone worldwide. I think you are right. Why, because our current state of car travel is not sustainable. We can't make all cars be EV, and we got to this place by building infrastructure assuming that everyone would drive 10 miles (no big deal). There are many towns where zoning as pictured in the opening of Bobs Burgers is illegal. This goes back to the 40s, where the US decided to build its cities around cars and highways. Europe did the same and their cities looked really similar. Europe decided to diverge in about the 70s or so when they saw a lot of car fatalities piling up; the US has stayed the course and is still building car-centric everything. > The logic seems highly unreasonable in a capitalist society at least, and as infectious disease threatens us all that these solutions could ever be imposed on a free society of people. This again is a car-centric view where public transit is there for the poor, not for general travel. In Japan and many places in Europe, the trains are excellent and are the way to travel. Now, you can't take a car on a train, so if there were no way to travel when you get off that train, then it wouldn't be a good way to travel. I mention the above to note the hole in the logic. If mass, mass public transit were unreasonable in capitalist socieities, why is it so reasonable in so many other capitalist societies? (Just not in the US and several other select societies)? > That also being said, pedestrian, public transport, and bicyclist infrastructure is also majorly funded in part by car-related taxes, This is a common trope. Cars _do_ _not_ pay for themselves in the US. Federal slush funds & property taxes make up the large gap. Furhter, the cost of bicycle infrastructure is cheap, yet still often not funded to its proportionate due. Cyclists wind up subsidizing car drivers (if not, I'd love my property taxes back since a lot of those go to roads which I put zero wear on and do not otherwise use; and yes, those property taxes go far more into car related infrastructure than it does bike infrastructure; most bike infrastructure budgets are 0.2% of the car infrastructure budget even when the faction of cyclists far exceeds 0.2%) > to which there is no alternate source of funding if cars completely go away, meaning that biking, public transport, and walking would all see new taxes... So, this is therefore wrong since cars are being subsidized and do not pay for themselves. > I think we all need a better dose of reduced sensationalism and more rational thought in this world when it comes to public safety and transportation, without veiled political agendas pushed online for profit. I appreciate the even tone, but the points not responded to are dispersions or straw-arguments. Ever try to evacuate a city by car during a hurricane? How many cars run out of gas? Why did people fleeing wildfires have to abandon their car.. I say this to denote how invalid some of the other points are.
retzkek 4y ago
> The logic seems highly unreasonable in a capitalist society There's your answer, or at least for some substantial portion of people posting in r/fuckcars and others like r/latestagecapitalism, r/antiwork, etc - they aren't thinking in the framework of a capitalist society (merits of this aside). > without veiled political agendas pushed online for profit. Pretty funny to think that socialist agendas are being pushed for profit. Undoubtedly true in some cases, but I'd like to think some people aren't driven solely by profit, even if it's only people who don't have to think about things like paying for food and shelter.
- winternett 4y ago
  I should have also added that it's not possible in a democratic society as well. From what I can see the agenda is for profit in some way because nothing on this scale is ever promoted without profit being involved. Ride sharing companies, and plenty of technology companies stand to make a lot of money if the right to personal ownership of vehicles disappears... It's not a stretch of the imagination, these days.. Almost all online campaigns and brigades can be traced back to some sort of profit scheme or organized political power move.

acheron 4y ago

Reminder that reddit is basically all trolls. There is no “end game” for anything going on there.

winternett 4y ago
Reddit and FaceBook groups are regularly cited for driving online shadow brigades and protests... I think the culture of sponsoring things like this hints at how social platforms fail us, toxic and mindless harm to political, economic, and physical stability in real life... :/

haunter 4y ago

>There is some kind of shadow campaign across Reddit right now ... r/fuckcars that threatens the very meaning of the right to own personal property in the world Reddit is incredibly hateful not just "in the deep" but on the surface too. /r/FuckYouKaren/ which is basically a "I hate white women" sub is the prime example of that with 1.5m subscribers. Constantly being on the top of /r/all but it's all ok I guess. Wonder when it will go down.

winternett 4y ago
Pretty wild how a site that bans people for hate speech sponsors so much covert hate. It's even encoded into many of the popular memes on the site's front pages.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

foxyv 4y ago

> That also being said, pedestrian, public transport, and bicyclist infrastructure is also majorly funded in part by car-related taxes, to which there is no alternate source of funding if cars completely go away This is unfortunately incorrect. Cars are heavily subsidized by income and property taxes. The cost to maintain and build roads far out-strip the taxes collected by gas and sales taxes for automobiles. Right now, the accounting is made to look like cars are funding these programs, however it is mostly sleight of hand. Edit: Additional info https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/ https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
Moreover every American's taxes pay for roads like highways that are completely unusable if you aren't in a car.
winternett 4y ago
if the roads weren't built for cars to begin with, Bike lanes would cost a lot more. I did not say that car related taxes were the only way that bike infrastructure was funded, I said it was the major source of funding for alternative transportation. If you pick a city like New York or DC, maintaining public infrastructure without car-related revenue would be fiscally impossible. The Amsterdam model does not work in those cases. Amsterdam also has legalized and taxed drug and sex trade markets, which might explain how they closed their car-related funding gaps.
- foxyv 4y ago
  > If you pick a city like New York or DC, maintaining public infrastructure without car-related revenue would be fiscally impossible. This doesn't seem right. 92.8% of New York's revenue comes from Sales and Income taxes. https://ballotpedia.org/New_York_state_budget_and_finances#:~:text=Revenues%20come%20mainly%20from%20tax,corrections%2C%20Medicaid%2C%20and%20transportation https://ballotpedia.org/New_York_state_budget_and_finances#:....

seadan83 4y ago

> What perplexes me though is how hostile both bicyclists and car drivers are becoming towards each other lately, and the only thing I can imagine that is driving the ire is online partisanship or the "us versus them" ideals that the Internet creates, which in reality is really not sane. Speaking from someone that once did a 20 mile, one way bike commute for a year (just a really notable example of a commute), it's quite something when for the third time on a commute you have someone in a car with no perspective literally almost kill you. Eventually you get a bit more aggressive with asserting road position and space in order not to have people try and squeeze around you and do other dumb and dangerous maneuvers. It's not just the internet for cyclists, just ride long enough and accumulate enough near misses on the same ride, it's difficult to stay cool. Meanwhile, drivers do tend to get naturally a bit more aggro when they drive a lot (I notice this in myself). It's hard to stay super patient every day, when spending an hour or more in a car. At that point shaving 10 minutes one way is worth a lot, it adds up. To me, that speaks to unsustainability more than anything else. > There is some kind of shadow campaign across Reddit right now ... r/fuckcars that threatens the very meaning of the right to own personal property in the world. This is an interesting commentary. Car ownership extends so far beyond just you owning your car. The majority of city space is dedicated to car owners. On-street parking, the streets themselves, the vast parking garages. So, it's not just "your personal property", but the whole structure that revolves and around that. If there were no petrol stations, no roads for cars, you could still own your private property all you wish. That is all just to say is the societal accomodation for cars is actually quite extreme. > It has also become kind of a brigade that lobbies and protests in many other online and real world places too, without any clear message or leadership. Yeah, it's reddit; and /fuckcars is about memes and is not about advocacy. > I may be wrong, but it seems like a lobby run by people who want bicycles and public transportation to be the norm for everyone worldwide. I think you are right. Why, because our current state of car travel is not sustainable. We can't make all cars be EV, and we got to this place by building infrastructure assuming that everyone would drive 10 miles (no big deal). There are many towns where zoning as pictured in the opening of Bobs Burgers is illegal. This goes back to the 40s, where the US decided to build its cities around cars and highways. Europe did the same and their cities looked really similar. Europe decided to diverge in about the 70s or so when they saw a lot of car fatalities piling up; the US has stayed the course and is still building car-centric everything. > The logic seems highly unreasonable in a capitalist society at least, and as infectious disease threatens us all that these solutions could ever be imposed on a free society of people. This again is a car-centric view where public transit is there for the poor, not for general travel. In Japan and many places in Europe, the trains are excellent and are the way to travel. Now, you can't take a car on a train, so if there were no way to travel when you get off that train, then it wouldn't be a good way to travel. I mention the above to note the hole in the logic. If mass, mass public transit were unreasonable in capitalist socieities, why is it so reasonable in so many other capitalist societies? (Just not in the US and several other select societies)? > That also being said, pedestrian, public transport, and bicyclist infrastructure is also majorly funded in part by car-related taxes, This is a common trope. Cars _do_ _not_ pay for themselves in the US. Federal slush funds & property taxes make up the large gap. Furhter, the cost of bicycle infrastructure is cheap, yet still often not funded to its proportionate due. Cyclists wind up subsidizing car drivers (if not, I'd love my property taxes back since a lot of those go to roads which I put zero wear on and do not otherwise use; and yes, those property taxes go far more into car related infrastructure than it does bike infrastructure; most bike infrastructure budgets are 0.2% of the car infrastructure budget even when the faction of cyclists far exceeds 0.2%) > to which there is no alternate source of funding if cars completely go away, meaning that biking, public transport, and walking would all see new taxes... So, this is therefore wrong since cars are being subsidized and do not pay for themselves. > I think we all need a better dose of reduced sensationalism and more rational thought in this world when it comes to public safety and transportation, without veiled political agendas pushed online for profit. I appreciate the even tone, but the points not responded to are dispersions or straw-arguments. Ever try to evacuate a city by car during a hurricane? How many cars run out of gas? Why did people fleeing wildfires have to abandon their car.. I say this to denote how invalid some of the other points are.

retzkek 4y ago

> The logic seems highly unreasonable in a capitalist society There's your answer, or at least for some substantial portion of people posting in r/fuckcars and others like r/latestagecapitalism, r/antiwork, etc - they aren't thinking in the framework of a capitalist society (merits of this aside). > without veiled political agendas pushed online for profit. Pretty funny to think that socialist agendas are being pushed for profit. Undoubtedly true in some cases, but I'd like to think some people aren't driven solely by profit, even if it's only people who don't have to think about things like paying for food and shelter.

winternett 4y ago
I should have also added that it's not possible in a democratic society as well. From what I can see the agenda is for profit in some way because nothing on this scale is ever promoted without profit being involved. Ride sharing companies, and plenty of technology companies stand to make a lot of money if the right to personal ownership of vehicles disappears... It's not a stretch of the imagination, these days.. Almost all online campaigns and brigades can be traced back to some sort of profit scheme or organized political power move.