Car ownership; should we really give it up?

[West Bromwich Holme]

This newspaper article inspired me to discuss the topic.

Personally, I wouldn't want this to happen, soulless pod cars in future and shared vehicles only, no people with sports cars or SUVs, doesn't seem great.

If people enjoy cars, like I do, fine, life's too short now, as the COVID pandemic's taught us. If you don't, that's also okay.

But what's not so good.... pricing motorists off the road, trying to get people into public transport or shared ownership, self-driving cars.

I doubt Lamborghini or Ferrari will enter the robotaxi or self-driving car business anytime soon!

Should politicians stop trying to force people to give up car ownership, and focus on more pressing things, like welfare, military, healthcare systems etc.?

[Malaiya Union]

Motorcycle is a superior mode of transport.

[West Bromwich Holme]

Motorcycle is a superior mode of transport.

I wouldn't want ownership of those banned either; Kawasaki and Honda make some pretty good motorbikes.
Also into motorbikes too, not just cars.

[Malphe II]

Isn't a matter of people giving up car ownership, it's a matter of public infrastructure & urban planning. Most people will use the most effective mode of transportation available to them, if surrounding infrastructure is car dependent they'll exclusively use cars, if surrounding infrastructure succinctly incorporates other means of transport they'll use those where it's more effective; a car is a cumbersome expensive bastard of a machine, people who aren't into them will only get one because it's necessary to get around.

The issues the UK is having is because of our car dependent infrastructure, the onus of fixing it is on the government. I vote we bring back ferries as a primary mode of transportation, they're a lot cosier.

[Ifreann]

Organising our societies such that everyone needs their own car is hugely wasteful and is damaging the environment. Thinking that SUVs are cool is obviously not a meaningful concern in light of that.

[Cannot think of a name]

I truly love cars more than any one person ever should.

And we should absolutely be moving towards an approach to urban design that eliminates the need for cars which would ultimately be making them mostly incompatible with cars. They are ineffecient ways to get people around that take up space and resources that could better be served by other methods.

I do think about things like one of my jobs (that's not even the modern economy, just freelance life) requires transporting trucks full of stuff from location to location and loading and unloading all of that, but I feel like that can be handled by a related type of vehicle that would fit in the public transportation structure but could step out of it to be act like a box truck or 10 ton.

There are solutions to most of the problems taking away individual cars would create, and way more problems would be solved.

It wouldn't happen overnight. It would take years, maybe decades, to transition to car-less cities. It would take even longer to find an alternative to servicing rural communities without individual vehicles.

The result, for quite some time, would be that no one who didn't want a car would have to get one and anyone who wanted a car would have a lot more open road to enjoy one with. Ultimately for a while there'd be less Prius' and Camrys but still Ferraris and Porsches. Companies like Toyota, Hyundai, and others who make economy cars will move on to making public transportation options.

The environment benefits, people in cities benefit-especially poor people, local economies benefit...even in a weird way car enthusiasts benefit.

Regardless of if I can paint a silver lining on it for car lovers, it will have to happen eventually so rather than fight it, find a way to live with it.

I'm old, it won't be done before I die and my nephew is young, he can adapt.

[Picairn]

Cars are unironically bad for the environment, and even electric cars are unsustainable if every person can have one. Public transportation reduces the number of cars on the road, which means more space and less pollution.

Case in point of why cars are bad:

[Chan Island]

Organising our societies such that everyone needs their own car is hugely wasteful and is damaging the environment. Thinking that SUVs are cool is obviously not a meaningful concern in light of that.

^succinctly describes my thoughts. If anything, current discussions on making car ownership less prevalent is compensation for a century of extremely car centric policy which destroys the environment and makes cities much less pleasant.

[Saiwania]

Too many places require a vehicle, so it's non-negotiable. Like it or not, it is the way people carry groceries back to their residence if they have one.

Most SUVs in the US are really CUVs, because it has a car chassis as opposed to a truck's. People will ditch wanting that category if other options are considered safe enough for collisions and if fuel or energy costs are sufficiently expensive.

[Ifreann]

Too many places require a vehicle, so it's non-negotiable. Like it or not, it is the way people carry groceries back to their residence if they have one.

So we give them other options. It is, in fact, entirely negotiable. The fact that people need a car now does not mean that we can never make it so that they don't need a car.

[Radiatia]

This is one of those subjects that the pandemic has caused me to alter my view on.

Pre-pandemic I was all for measures to encourage mass transit and phase out unnecessary private car usage but nowadays I feel like the lack of adequate public transport where I (used to) live probably saved my life in 2020 as it forced me to drive everywhere and therefore not come into contact with the disease-ridden peasants public transport patrons.

I still think that forcing people to be totally reliant on automobiles is a bad thing (it's very hard to live without one here), but giving it up altogether? That's just absolutely insane.

Also good god, I am not carrying my groceries on a bus, are you insane? Aside from the physical strain and lack of room to put it, and inability for one person to carry that much alone... it's begging to be stolen.

[Ifreann]

This is one of those subjects that the pandemic has caused me to alter my view on.

Pre-pandemic I was all for measures to encourage mass transit and phase out unnecessary private car usage but nowadays I feel like the lack of adequate public transport where I (used to) live probably saved my life in 2020 as it forced me to drive everywhere and therefore not come into contact with the disease-ridden peasants public transport patrons.

I still think that forcing people to be totally reliant on automobiles is a bad thing (it's very hard to live without one here), but giving it up altogether? That's just absolutely insane.

What's insane about it?

[Page]

It is abso-fucking-lutely unacceptable for the elites to demand that proletariat give up their cars when they need those cars to pay their bills. Build us a public transportation infrastructure that actually removes the need for cars. Don't try to bleed cars away from people by taxing the shit out of them and gas. The insane gas prices could be cut down significantly if governments would only suspend the taxes until the world has adapted to oil post-Russia.

The Tampa Bay Area where I'm from, it is a place where you are totally screwed without a car. There is no public transport except for a shitty bus system that has stops very few and far between and huge gaps in service. The news ran an article once about a woman who needed 2 hours to get to work every day with bus transfers and walking, who could be getting there in under a half hour if she had a car.

In Aachen, my wife and I are doing fine without a car but we live in the middle of a city, and we can borrow my in-laws' car when we need it, but even here in Germany I have seen enough of the countryside to know that life really sucks for rural folks who don't have cars. I met a lot of refugees in German class, and they were assigned housing all over the place so they ended up in little villages and it took them 2 hours to get to German class in Aachen too, and they faced the same problem with finding work.

Realistically, with a real effort and without ruling class parasites leeching, we could maybe eliminate cars in most places by 2060, save for far flung backwoods. Even so, I do think something is lost when a person can no longer cross great distances under their own power. Cars are freedom. You can't ask the monorail driver to pull into the McDonald's drive through. And yeah, climate change is already a huge crisis and it's going to get worse, and cars are a huge part of that, but banning cars right now to save the environment would be like nuking every city with a high incident rate of covid cases to rein in the pandemic.

I might never have a car again but I will always keep my 2006 Pontiac G6 in my heart. It had the best brakes. I once hit 100mph in every state with that car from New Jersey to Florida (yeah, dumbass thing to do, but a fond memory).

[Luna Amore]

Also good god, I am not carrying my groceries on a bus, are you insane? Aside from the physical strain and lack of room to put it, and inability for one person to carry that much alone... it's begging to be stolen.

I did it for several years. It definitely isn't pleasant but it does force you to prioritize what you actually need since you gotta haul it yourself.

That said, in a country like America, I really doubt most people could physically do it. Realistically, I think you'd start seeing a faster move to grocery delivery services.

[Chan Island]

Too many places require a vehicle, so it's non-negotiable. Like it or not, it is the way people carry groceries back to their residence if they have one.

So we give them other options. It is, in fact, entirely negotiable. The fact that people need a car now does not mean that we can never make it so that they don't need a car.

Nor are we forever doomed to be reliant on them. New infrastructure can be built, incentives can be initiated and culture can be changed.

We concede too much to cars as is.

[Ifreann]

Also good god, I am not carrying my groceries on a bus, are you insane? Aside from the physical strain and lack of room to put it, and inability for one person to carry that much alone... it's begging to be stolen.

If only there were some way to convey goods from one place to another without you carrying them. Some kind of really big car, but for stuff instead of people.

[Luna Amore]

Also good god, I am not carrying my groceries on a bus, are you insane? Aside from the physical strain and lack of room to put it, and inability for one person to carry that much alone... it's begging to be stolen.

If only there were some way to convey goods from one place to another without you carrying them. Some kind of really big car, but for stuff instead of people.

Public transport for things? What sort of dream world are you living in?

[Ifreann]

If only there were some way to convey goods from one place to another without you carrying them. Some kind of really big car, but for stuff instead of people.

Public transport for things? What sort of dream world are you living in?

Yes, some kind of things-bus. Thingus, we'll call it.

[Malphe II]

Also good god, I am not carrying my groceries on a bus, are you insane? Aside from the physical strain and lack of room to put it, and inability for one person to carry that much alone... it's begging to be stolen.

I did it for several years. It definitely isn't pleasant but it does force you to prioritize what you actually need since you gotta haul it yourself.

That said, in a country like America, I really doubt most people could physically do it. Realistically, I think you'd start seeing a faster move to grocery delivery services.

I always bring my groceries home on a bike, only enough for about two days over less than a mile. I understand in the states the norm is more huge hauls of groceries cus of how far you have to go to get to shops in the gigantic sprawling suburbs, so I can definitely get the concern weight wise.

The alarm over theft just feels like an artifact of the American allergy to public transport tho, just keep a hand or weight on it and you're good?

[Ifreann]

I did it for several years. It definitely isn't pleasant but it does force you to prioritize what you actually need since you gotta haul it yourself.

That said, in a country like America, I really doubt most people could physically do it. Realistically, I think you'd start seeing a faster move to grocery delivery services.

I always bring my groceries home on a bike, only enough for about two days over less than a mile. I understand in the states the norm is more huge hauls of groceries cus of how far you have to go to get to shops in the gigantic sprawling suburbs, so I can definitely get the concern weight wise.

The alarm over theft just feels like an artifact of the American allergy to public transport tho, just keep a hand or weight on it and you're good?

And if people are stealing groceries, there are probably better solutions to that than cars for everyone.

[Adamede]

Cars have a time and a place. Cities should be focused on being able efficiently house people comfortably, and massive highways running through them isn't really conductive towards that.

[Dexterra]

Five months ago today, I lost my car in an accident. Since then I've adapted to the bus system as my main get-around, and even though it's constraining for both time and geographical reasons, whenever I'm on the bus I think about how much less carbon I'm putting into the atmosphere now that I'm not driving anymore. And how much I'm saving by not buying gas.

Even before all of this, I always thought that public transportation was the future, but now I really do see it clearly. If we expand access to public transportation systems - in terms of A) the hours served, B) areas covered, C) types of public transport available (such as buses, trolleys, rideshares etc.) and D) cost to use public transportation for each person - the number of cars eventually taken off of the road would relieve literal metric tons of stress from the Earth and heavily ameliorate traffic for those still burning a hole in the ozone layer. Not to mention improving everyone's general safety, considering how incredibly dangerous driving is.

In short, car ownership is yesterday - public transportation is tomorrow

[Saiwania]

So we give them other options. It is, in fact, entirely negotiable. The fact that people need a car now does not mean that we can never make it so that they don't need a car.

It is too expensive to try to build out good public transportation everywhere compared to just getting everyone on electric vehicles, and that in itself is too expensive as of now. There was a concept car (don't know if a prototype was ever made) that I really liked the idea of, it had a lump of Thorium and on paper it could supposedly run for 200+ years. It was too good to where other people don't want to let it happen, because there is no profit in it. Other main problem was what to do if it gets into a wreck or is damaged.

Ideally, it'd be perfect. Once someone owns such a vehicle, it is one that never gives you problems, except for basic wear and tear if its used a lot. Leagues better than any fossil fuel vehicle because it has less parts that can possibly break relatively speaking, under the hood.

Many cars people buy are too expensive just because those models are fancy or have features that're nice but in the end- don't have much utility. This car if realized, would actually be worth its weight in gold. Priceless if it was objectively better than any other and there was only 1 or a few in existence. The car that never needed refueling or recharging. The car that will just keep going when you want it. Using the long half life of some forms of radiation as energy/electrical power.

[Antipatros]

I think that we can reduce car use (especially in urban areas), but overall they will remain a fixture of our lives for the foreseeable future.

The cars we do use can be electrified and ideally supported by a clean power grid.

[Countesia]

A lot of big cities need to improve their public transport infrastructure massively, but car ownership is necessary in rural or sparsely inhabited areas.