Why are you trying to convince me that cars are awesome and for adults that needs to get stuff done?

You think I go shopping using a kayak? There are literally the biggest retail stores of my country a few street corners away from where I live. There is a grocery store on the other side of the street.

And you know, people without cars have nothing to do all day. They don’t work and don’t do anything important. Only people with cars are busy people getting stuff done. It’s impossible to get stuff done otherwise.

Not to mention that peole without cars will never feel like real adults.

I’m not an adult and I don’t get stuff done because I don’t have a car? I can’t go shopping? WTF?

Keep your “freedom”. I don’t want it. There’s already enough cars in the streets. You don’t want me driving. Stop trying to convince people that don’t want to drive. You have nothing to gain. Everyone already loves cars. I know that.

I’m glad that you love your car. You’re not the only one. Now can some people actually want to live without one or are you going to force yours into my living room to tell me how useful it is, and how it makes you feel mature and important?

And people actually use that as an insult. “You’re not an adult until you own a car”. Which is a sad way of seeing millions of people that have been living without a car for their whole life.

And the freedom feeling depends mostly if you live in a region that is offering you ways not to be car dependent. Where I live, we have a very decent network of bike paths in the city but also going into the countryside and traversing the province. I live on the island of an archipelago and can pull my inflatable kayak with my bike trailer, explore the islands around, access nature nearby. I can also go camping and hiking and into the wilderness 200 km away by using this cycling network. I often go visit my parents and family 140-170 km away by cycling there. I could have start to drive and bought a car 25 years ago but I moved somewhere I wouldn’t need one, and my bike represents freedom. I’m free from having to pay big oil to fill a tank to go anywhere. I’m free from monthly parking fees. I’m free from paying the plates and the insurance.

Over the years, what I learned about cars don’t make me see them as freedom. I see them as a way to keep people perpetually paying for gas, sending billions to big oil. I see them as an endless sea and stream of pollution. They pollute the air and the sound. They are bad for mental and physical health. They take an ungodly amount of space. They kill about a million people every year. On the planet, every 30 seconds someone is killed in a car related “accident”. Every year, two billion animals (yes, billions) are killed by cars.

Going to see my nephew for his birthday in the suburbs where my sister lives is comical. Twelve people invited to go park their cars around a house that only has space for the cars of the occupants. You have to find parking everywhere you go for this thing, then whine that there’s no parking anywhere. Going to a funereal is also depressing, but even more so because you can see the traffic and congestion created by someone that died.

Cars are a horrible for humanity. They’re like a drug that everyone tells you to try. You’ll see. They’re so useful. Of course you can’t go back.

Yeah. I moved into a city and region with enough transit for my needs but my family still lives in a place where there hasn’t been a coach or trains in 30 years. There were before but not anymore. And going to other regions or cities without a car is also becoming more and more difficult, if not impossible.

Unfortunately my province and country only care about cars. I really don’t want to drive but I fear that I won’t have any other choice at some point in the future because my other options are actively deteriorating.

A car. Gas/petrol for a car. A parking spot for a car. Car insurance. A driver’s license. Winter tires for cars. Anything car related.

It’s so ridiculous to pay for a mobile living room that needs to be parked everywhere people go with it.

That’s why road diets and reducing road capacity is also important. Like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Madrid or Vienna, the space dedicated to cars also have to be reduced in order to incite people to use something else than a car.

However I’m pretty sure that a standard transit system not made up of single cars that can only transport one or two person at a time and spy on them is also much safer.

Not that odd. Death by car is easily accepted by society. They are “accidents” and a “necessary evil” for society to function.

There’s around a million people dying from cars every year and we just shrug and normalize them. Human or not, we just have to have cars and “accidents” are just that.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), road traffic injuries caused an estimated 1.35 million deaths worldwide in 2016. That is, one person is killed every 26 seconds on average.

Nobody cares about cars killing people and animals. So she’s probably right.

Unless you buy a plot of land in a forested area, it’s not yours, so you can be evicted at any time.

Or you will need to see a dentist or doctor at some point.

I had that kind of thought multiple times and it’s so tempting until you think about the details.

I make a difference between the workers and the industry.

Therapists where I live can work in the public system, or in the private system.

It’s free to see a therapist in the public system and they are paid by the government, but it’s nearly impossible to have a session because they are booked months and months in advance. So they are not making more from this.

Then there’s the ones working privately, usually also booked months in advance but for a few hundred dollars an hour. They are also not making more from this because they were already working full time.

However there is a “mental health industry”, like Betterhelp, that will gladly exploit and profit from the circumstances.

“And because I consider mental health important, today I’m proud to present my sponsor, Betterhelp!”

Sweet capitalism.

My cynical ass tells me that if we can grow storage devices, the tech is gonna be bought and patented by a giant corporation so they can charge us a hefty price for it.

Only it was probably not “pspspsp” because as a French speaker, I’ve never understood that English onomatopoeia. It doesn’t make that sound in French. When I try to get the attention of a cat or another animal, it’s usually more of a “dzkdzkdzk” or “tzktzk” sound. A bit like the sound of a kiss but made with tapping the tongue on the roof of the mouth instead of with the lips.

I don’t drive but I live on a four lane road in front of trafic light and beyond particles, for me it’s a combination of multiple things, all from cars.

There’s the pollution from the combustion particles, but the noise is also a significant source of stress. From the young dudes that want to impress and rev their engines, to the huge trucks with trailers, they are all noisy and it makes it impossible to keep the windows open. Even the electric cars are noisy. Some of them sound like they are constantly honking at low volume. Plus, their tires are also making that white noise when they move at a certain speed, and they also shed microplastics.

And then because we don’t have emergency lanes, there are several emergency vehicles passing in front of my apartment multiple times a day, sirens blasting and honking at cars stuck in trafic.

Also, the visual aspect of a car sewer makes me depressed. Seeing them everywhere. A sea of cars in cities, but also deep in nature.

Last year I visited a few Carribean islands and all of them were choked by cars. Want to take a hike? Just get a car, there’s a parking on the top of the volcano.

The article ends on the note that electric cars will at least help with the pollution from combustion particles, which is good. But the noise and the sea of cars will remain, they’ll just be electric.

And face coverings are now illegal in public.

I don’t have a car nor a house and I’m in my 40ies. I’ve been told multiple times that I’m not a responsible adult as long as I don’t have one of these.

Don’t worry, car collisions are only one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in the US.

Who cares if you’re blind, you need to go places. Here’s your license. The other shiny dots are just NPCs.

Anything but public or active transit.

Of course. My meat tenderizer connected to the internet has an accelerometer and sensors. For a small monthly subscription fee it tells me how hard I need to beat the meat, and for how long. All powered by AI for my convenience.

A bicycle. No gas to pay, no parking fees, no insurance, and I can do most of the maintenance.

I wonder if those are more popular with men.

Maybe they could also give copies of the song Benzin by Ramstein, to listen while you sniff your nostalgic gasoline scented air “freshener”.

Yeah. It’s always a bit pathetic to watch or read about the efforts of cities to make things safer around here.

The scheme that is very popular here to “secure” intersections is to add an exclusive pedestrian phase (a scramble) to the traffic lights cycle. So everyone has to wait for everyone. No pedestrians are crossing while cars are moving through an intersection, and no cars are crossing the intersection while pedestrians are. But it’s tuned for cars and pedestrians have to wait an eternity to have their exclusive phase. So what happens? Pedestrians are eventually losing patience and cross traffic like chickens.

Exclusive phases are also encouraging car drivers never to yield to pedestrians or cyclists, because they never have to. So in some cities where they mainly have this type of crossing, car drivers are not stopping where there’s no traffic lights. Some cities even have to leave orange flags on the side of the road so that pedestrians can wave them in front or cars while crossing.

And don’t get me wrong, scrambles are wonderful for pedestrians when they are in the majority, and when they are configured for pedestrians first. It’s just that some cities here put them at every intersection as a way to separate cars and pedestrians, for safety, and it’s frustrating. And then they scold pedestrians for not waiting “their” turn.

As a pedestrian and cyclist, it’s one of the things I see when I change city. I really don’t like walking in Québec City for this because you have to let cars pass in all the directions first before you are allowed to cross. In Montréal everyone crosses at the same time but they put straight arrows on green lights for a few seconds at the beginning of the cycle, so pedestrians and cyclists have a few seconds to start crossing before cars can try to crush them. And I prefer this. A lot.