I’m a person living in a rural area and have to either go by train, the nearest station being 15 mins away by car and the trains having a schedule that keeps fluctuating.
Or have to go by car where it takes 60 mins to get where I need to go. I wouldn’t want to get a late pickup or anything outrageous just something to get me places.
I’m not a car enthusiast or anything like that.
Owning a car if you need one is not in itself a problem. “fuckcars” isn’t about blindly hating cars, it’s about being aware that cars are inefficient, dangerous, and bad for people’s health. It’s about raising awareness about how car-centric and car-dependent society has become, despite there being better ways to structure transportation.
Thank you for the clarification, so what I’m hearing is that owning a car is fine if it’s not something outrageously large or inefficient and I don’t have good public transit connections?
We’re not some kind of cult setting rules for how people should live. If you need a car, buy a car, if you want to own some kind of ridiculous lifted truck, you can do that, but I’ll reserve the right to make fun of you and think you’re an asshole.
the “fuck cars” mindset is typically that we’re against car-dependency, not against people who are victims of car-dependent societies. Naturally people in suburbs and more rural areas, especially here in america, will need a car. It’s not ideal and it’s something that should be fixed but it happens.
Exactly. Blaming individuals for systemic problems never gets you anywhere. If you can reduce your car dependency, sure, do that, but don’t beat yourself up if you can’t.
This is important! On that note: The first “pesonal climate footprint caluclator” was developed and published by BP, the oil company. The idea was to make people feel bad about their personal behavior instead of questioning the business models and political influence/ anti-progress-lobbying of those corporations.
It’s important to note that there are some countries where even the rural communities have enough transit options that cars aren’t necessary. It’s less common, but it does exist.
Yeah, I think this is kind of a problem with fuck cars communication. It really needs to be clear that it’s against car dependency.
I mean I’m a “fuck cars purist” I’m not a fan of cars at all. But yes, the movement is very much about car-dependency, not cars.
I think everyone here understands that most people don’t live in northern Europe with great cycling and train infrastructure. So you do what you got to do to live a happy life in car infested capitalist society, nothing wrong with that. If that means you need a car, get a car. Preferably it’d be used and with a low ride height / bumper height. So it’s at least a bit safer for cyclist and pedestrians.
I think all we ask is that when there is an opportunity to advocate for more pedestrian or cycling infrastructure that you do so
FuckCars is not about BEING carfree, it’s about realizing that you’re FORCED to have a car, to pay $10,000 per year to own that car, to breathe in the pollution from the roads, to risk your life on the road, and how bad that sucks.
Or course it is. Also, it’s ok to not literally fuck cars. It’s just a sentiment that we wish cars didn’t have to dominate so much due to poor civic planning.
Yeah, in rural areas it makes sense to own a car because public transportation is often sparse or absent. In your case, you could use the car to get just to train station and then take the train.
I live in a rural area and have just accepted that owning a car is a necessity. The shitty thing about living in a car dependent system is that your awareness of the shiftiness of the system doesn’t necessarily exempt you from having to still live inside of it.
Yeahhhh :( it sucks
I bought an ebike and that’s been kind of a game changer. Its allowed my partner and I to share a car, and I just ebike around at 40km/hour whenever she needs to drive. It requires a bit of willingness to get cold/wet, and some creativity with bike locking, but it makes those 10-15km distances in my hometown realistically accessible by bike on an everyday basis.
Do you need to drive far everyday? The best solution could be setting up a small community car share with your friends so you have one to use occasionally when you need it.
I think that cars are OK for people that:
-Live in rural areas -People with larger families -Operate essential-ish services(e.g. deliveries)
But for most other people, cars are not needed.
Unless you are directly involved in agricultural production or natural conservation etc. it is kind of unsustainable to live in a rural area (except totally off-grid etc.). One reason being the need for a car to do basic things.
Of course as an individual it is not easy to just totally change ones life situation, so yes with the above caveat and being aware of the car issues of course, IMHO it is acceptable to own a car in a rural area. I do too.
I don’t think I agree with that. There are other reasons to live in a more rural area like being more secluded, closer to nature or, more commonly, cost of living.
A rural area also does not imply car dependence. I myself have recently moved to a fairly rural area (1.5k inhabitants) and can still get just about everything done by bike.
This only works because the neighbouring village a few km away has a supermarket and a train station with service to the next largest city and a metropolis. It’s not very good train service mind you (single non-electric rail with hourly schedule) but even that is enough for me to not need a car. Imagine how much would be possible if it was actually decent train service.I can understand why you might want a car in such a situation but it’s certainly not required.
Just move somewhere where there’s transport if you can.
