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How people around the world get around.
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
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Fuck Cars
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People who say driving is freedom have never lived within walking distance of the amenities they need. You think driving to Costco/Walmart is convenient? I've left the house 5 minutes before the grocery store closes. When I want to make a recipe, I don't check the fridge for what I have until literally right before I need to start making it because forgetting something adds at most 15 minutes to the prep time. I've never had to haul ten grocery bags from my car because I never need to buy that much at one time and then watch half of it go bad in the fridge. I can go get snacks when I'm high as a kite on weed without killing someone on the road. True freedom for me is never needing to drive or own a car.
Amen, Driving is dependance.
I’d argue it’s both freedom and dependence.
If you live in a rural area it really does feel like you are trapped there without a motorized vehicle. Especially late at night or in an emergency, even an ambulance can be 20+ minutes away in many places.
You can see this with the popularity of over powered e-bikes with teens. Basically silent dirt bikes at this point. They let kids go much farther from home and reduce the speed differential on road sides.
Public transit would be nice of course, but lots of people live 20-50km from any stores, and plenty live further. And have long cold winters.
I commuted by bike and subway for 18 years in Boston, but then moved home to care for dementia parents, now my son is biking (just pedals), and we’re forced to ride on paths or one town over where they have wide sidewalks and crossings (there aren’t either in our 2 stoplight town). Btw my commute took twice as long by public transport than by bike, but that’s another issue.
Like everything else, it’s a gray area, I think the US could realistically reduce vehicle use to the 40%s, but to go much lower would require the elimination of sprawl, building denser housing and a ton more local shopping, doctors, and grocery stores. Not just more trains and buses.
/end rant, sorry it got long, nuance is tricky.
If you live in a rural area... in the USA
Rural areas where I lived in Mexico are walkable/bikable and most people get to the city an hour or so away with a shuttle that goes back and forth to the village. Our rural model is different and better where all the people live close in a small town or village area that has all the stuff to do and grocery stores and the crop fields, ranches, and orchards spread out radially from there.
The USA was built over the past century for the profit of oil companies. Most USians probably don't realize that it's possible to do things differently, and at this point it's probably not possible to change without land reform, given how much of US farmland has been consolidated under corporate ownership.
People all over assume things are done the best way already, and will argue endlessly with any proposed improvements, insisting they aren't practicable despite being dead wrong.
I think in rural areas you are dealing with a small minority. Suburbs should not need 2-3 cars per household. Cities certainly should not.
I think even Rural infrastructure should be setup for a 0-1 car per household. 90% of personal transport can be handled by two wheels and ride hailing services.
Using the unsafe argument for two wheels just points out the car problem more. Also the truck problem, which is due to mismanagement of train and rail resources.
Carbrains don't understand the true freedom that is taking transit on a night out. I never have to worry about a Designated Driver or dragging my hungover ass back to wherever I left my (hypothetical) car. As long as my drunk ass can find my way to the train station I can get home no problem
Same with living close to a grocery store, I basically never check what I actually have on hand since it's less than a block away. I can easily pick up whatever I'm making for supper on the way home or dash out if I forgot something. I can think about what I want to eat on the train home, pick up any ingredients I need on the walk to my place, maybe stop by a liquor store for a bottle of wine for supper, it's wonderful. I'd really struggle with planning meals if going to the store involved packing up a vehicle
I think that USians live in a state of constant, subconscious anxiety due to how incredibly atomized they are. There will need to be major cultural shifts before we'll ever have the wherewithal to build needed public transportation infrastructure.
Things will have to get a lot worse before they get better. I am hoping that gas prices will rise enough to provoke some changes; the next six months will be telling.
I'm convinced that cars are a huge contributing factor towards that atomization of society. Cars turn everything that involves them into an isolated solo activity. They remove every possible opportunity for social interaction while at the same time raising the stakes of any single persons mistake.
Take walking in a crowd vs driving in traffic. Let's say I let my attention wander and I bump into someone. I say "oops sorry my b" and continue on with my day. I do the same thing in traffic and I've potentially caused hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of damage, possibly injured myself and others, and generally caused a huge pain in the ass for everyone involved. And even if I didn't hit someone I've contributed to the oppressive feeling of paranoia that accompanies driving and the fear of damaging the vehicle you've spent a ridiculous amount of money on.
Even something as inherently communal as waiting in line is reduced to a solo experience. When you're standing in a line you can see the people immediately ahead and behind you, you can commiserate about the wait time with them, strike up a conversation, you generally see the people in the same boat as you and relate because you're all going through the same thing. Waiting in line in a car you have no way of communicating even with the people directly next to you, everyone else is reduced to "traffic", you don't see a human just an ugly, smelly, loud monstrosity of metal and plastic.
Cars promise to expand your horizons but all they do is shrink your world
I think it's a self-reinforcing cycle - isolation leads to anxiety, which leads to further isolation. The anxiety that drives people into cars is the same one that dries them to live in the suburbs: the idea that no one can be trusted, and that the unknown masses of humanity are dangerous. From that perspective, public transit is risky, and a car is a fortress. That anxiety may be even further heightened if you already feel at risk for one reason or another (like being a racialized or sexualized individual).
Higher gas prices in my area will just cause more homelessness. There are no alternatives to driving, people will lose their homes before they live without a car.
Like I said, things will get worse before they get better. There will have to be the political will to build the needed infrastructure, and that won't come about without immense suffering. I never claimed it would be an easy or even peaceful transition.
Depends how you see it. I live in the countryside and would hate living in the city. Yet one does not both live in the countryside AND eat without a car when the closest grocery store is 30km away. We used to have a local grocery store that hardly had anything and which unsurprisingly went out if business.
In my case, driving IS freedom. It’s the freedom to go where I want when I want without having to rely on anyone else.
Do I miss having the grocery store across the street when I lived in the city? For sure, but I sure am glad I’m back in the countryside now.
I'm just looking at this full size grocery store surrounded by medium-small farms. Two of them are growing canola, its flowers are beautiful yellow. There's farmshacks and traditional countryside things like windmills, barely further from the grocery store than that store's parking lot.
I can’t imagine this being possible (the full sized part anyway). The less customers you have, the less options you can offer, it’s simple economics.
Perhaps what doesn’t help my case is that most of the town works for that one company where everyone has one or two of their meals at their cafeteria. Still, of the neighboring towns, none has a grocery store bigger than a corner store. The only town that does have one has almost 5000 people….
The truth is, when we did have a grocery store, everyone went to the city once a week anyway because everything is there (or they work there). So while they’re at it, they also shopped at the bigger grocery stores, leading to a decline in customers at the local one.
ah yes, there are commie block style apartment towers about 300m away, but you can't really see them from the store because of the big trees.