Freedom is not "being able to drive anywhere." Freedom is being able to go anywhere with just your own body without a giant metal cage around it.
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
581 points (99.3% liked)
Fuck Cars
10549 readers
836 users here now
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
-
Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
-
No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.
-
Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.
-
No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.
-
No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.
-
No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.
-
No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.
Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
@HiddenLayer555
Freedom is being able to go anywhere without being threatened by giant metal cages
@comfy
and even if we use a spoon to remove the part of our brains that know cars suck, surely no one actually wants to drive everywhere, surely a sane person only wants to drive in certain places?
no one fucking drives from norway to china, what people drive is from their house in the boonies to oslo airport, then from seoul airport they get a rental car and drive around the south korean countryside or whatever.
I hate cars and yet i think they genuinely have a place, however that place is in rural garages and as nationalized carshare systems. There are places that can only reasonably be reached by car, and that is the only place where cars should exist.
And let's not forget: you can't use the giant metal cage unless you have a plethora of details registered with the government and associated with the cage! And you're legally required to have a contract with a private company to insure the cage.
Freedom. Bah.
A contract they will try not to honor at every turn at that and if they do for the least amount possible.
This woman is the mother of based. Every time i hear anything from her its good. Paris is lucky to have her.
Although, it's super common to ear that any problem is to blame on her. It's so common it has become kind of a running gag. "Oh there is a scratch on my car thank you so much Hidalgo".
Some explanation I heard is that people living in Paris or very close kinda like her (expect the richer right-winged neighborhoods in the west) but people outside of Paris hate her more because Paris might be less accessible by car than it used to be. My own take on this is that it's bullshit and Paris was never accessible by car, I have very clear childhood memories of my parents looking for a parking spot for more that 15 minutes while swearing they would never take the car to go to Paris ever again.
30 years ago it would commonly take me a full hour to find a parking space in my neighbourhood. I've long since switched to a bicycle. But it certainly wasn't better back then. And the traffic wasn't better either.
People outside of Paris should take their car to the nearest Francilien/RER etc. Station.
Taking your car into the city is just a dumb idea
Yeah that's what the city is aiming at.
It's also what a vast majority of people is doing for a very pragmatic reason : RER A has the throughput of an 11-lanes highway (you can easily get to this number assuming that when it's crowed there is a 1500-passenger train departing each two minutes and that 1.5 people per car will comply to security distances).
Sadly not everyone is equal, RER B (north <-> south axis) is overcrowded and has a lot of incidents.
swearing they would never take the car to go to Paris ever again
Mission accomplished
A true "Thanks Obama" for modern times
Montreal mayor Valerie Plante has the same story.... Made the city much better for the majority of citizens but got tons of hate from the minority of drivers in the city plus the suburbanites who couldn't find a parking spot on the weekends
Unfortunately she is not seeking re-election due to the hate she gets from a very vocal minority of the ciitizens and the suburbanites who arent even technically citizens in montreal
Even got reelected!
On 28 June 2020, Hidalgo was reelected as mayor of Paris, winning 48.5% of ballots cast.
Depends, most poor people doesn't live in city center but at its border. So they use lot cars or rer.
The rental price is crazy high there.
They need to divide rent price and create more public transport to connect the outside city to its center. So it's a very difficult project, so urban planner sketched ideas to decentralize paris from its center.
Nah. Only 4% of the trips of people inside Paris are made by car. If people inside Paris can do it, then so can people from outside Paris. Leave your car outside of the city and use the methods of transport that 96% of Parisians use. There is no right to car travel.
They may need to invest in dedicated transit stations and parking garages to accomplish this but IMO thats worth it to keep less cars within the city.
My main point was the living cost. I lived in Paris center in 8m2 for 400€. And paid the navigo pass around 70€ or even more.
If you want to plan an ecological city, you don't only need to reduce cars but create affordable public transport that connect city border to its center. And the article explain badly the challenge.
Ecological planification can't bypass social and economy. I was just arguing that you can't do an ecological city if you don't reduce rent in Paris's center.
The problem Paris face is its "gentrification"
The city center is the most expensive one compared to living in rural area with a garden and few basic shop. And everything is less expensive outside Paris.
Yeah i see what you mean. That is a real problem and sadly most cities do exactly the wrong things to deal with it.
You can't imagine all the hate she gets, though...
I can only imagine. I think there's few cities that have undergone such a transformation as has paris in the last 10 years. It's lovely to see. But all the anger that people have felt from that is probably almost exclulively projected onto her. She's the lonely reason for alll the hardships that the carbrained old people in Paris have to endure. That's what they feel everyday.
I think she should have a Car-only-day before the election where everyone who switched to a bike is driving by car for the day. The resulting chaos would be a nice reminder for what the city has gained in lofe quality during the last decade.
It's easy to get accustomed to improved circumstances like more bike travel. But people seldomly forget if something has negatively affected them - especially if it was caused in some remote way by her policies.
Ofcourse. The rot that is car dependency is hard to scrub out of peoples brains. The only way is by forced exposure to alternatives.
She tried to claim there wasn’t any sewage in the Seine for the Olympics. She swam in it for a press event, and a website told people upriver what time to flush to make sure it all got there for her big moment.
You almost like the Fr*nch for that sort of thing.
I thought this was for Macron?
Of course she does.. Amyone who wants to make things better for everyone always does. She needs to have a group for entitled people to hate, like Meloni does, to deflect that from herself.
I remember wandering through summertime Paris early '90s, exhaust fumes sticking everywhere on my clothes and sweaty parts. All cars had dents because cars where everywhere and fuck your car...I need to park in this couple of centimeters.
This is kind of a miracle.
Paris is rising on my list of places to visit. Now if they could take care of all the smoking...
I was there last summer again after 5-6 years and it's astounding how much difference they've already made transforming the city. I enjoyed it before but would have never imagined living there until this trip.
Nah, that’s the best part! Vive la difference!
Let my people walk & breathe!