So I have a theory that the carrying capacity of a car has nothing to do with the size of the car and everything to do with how much the owner cares about the car and the comfort tolerance of the passengers. Out of all the loads I’ve observed carried with a car(pickups count as cars but not vans or trailers) the biggest are always in a small beat-up old car full of tolerant and poor young people. I can’t think of a time when I’ve tried loading a car and stopped because the car is too small, it’s always because the owner objects.

Because US “cities” are sparsely populated suburban wastelands that take hours to drive across. The model of exclusively cars and suburbs just doesn’t scale.

Private cars in general are not useless, but private cars in the center of cities should be useless if the city is designed well. The space-transportation trade off does not make sense.

Yes, of course delivery trucks need access to cities, some goods are not practical to move by cargo bike. As do emergency services and buses. Nobody disagrees with this. The problem in many cities is that streets are clogged with useless private cars. So the obvious solution is to ban private cars.

Let’s say that for the same journey, an ebike is a half as much exercise as a pedal bike(or whatever you want, the actual number isn’t important). A car journey is 0 exercise, it’s infinitely worse. Going from a car journey to an ebike journey is infinite times more exercise, going from an ebike journey to a pedal bike is twice as much exercise.

By gatekeeping you’re stopping people from making smaller improvements because they aren’t going all the way

Our housing supply is so shit that people have to sleep in cars.

And where I live, people were having too much fun living in vans, so they even made that difficult.

Do I really need to repeat every reason why cars suck?. Just check everything else in this community.

Relevant for this conversion is that driving a car is far less exercise than even an ebike, and that generally people riding any kind of bikes creates a positive feedback loop where others feel more comfortable, cities build infrastructure, ect.

Why are you gatekeeping? Some people only want transportation, not a workout. Ebikes are infinitely better than cars in every way.

In what scenario would you bring photo albums when evacuating? If it’s non-serious then you can come back, it’s serious then you should have higher priorities.

No, the less than 20% of people who are forced to use a car sometimes are irrelevant to this discussion.

Stroads suck for driving especially. You are going far too fast and have to be constantly paying attention to everything because a hazard might appear at any moment. It’s exhausting.

Across most high-income countries – across Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, Japan, and the Middle East – more than 80% of the population lives in urban areas.

Yes, even for them, the information they can get through a phone is lifesaving. They can learn how to build water supply and sanitation systems and shelter. They can learn how to farm and forage for food. They can find the best way to cross international borders and become a refugee. And so on, they can improve every aspect of their lives. Information is power, and with a smartphone they have access to the entire world, rather than just word of mouth knowledge in their local community.

Obviously, places without any form of electricity are screwed, but satellite internet is rapidly becoming cheaper and more accessible so soon they won’t even need cell coverage.

2. Those in extreme poverty need access to more important things than access to these gadgets.

We’re going down a sidetrack here but this is just false. A smartphone these days is a ticket to many things required to live. Applying for jobs, applying for government services, buying essential items cheaply, cheap/free education.

Mobility scooters, public transport, ect. Because of the overfocus on cars, acessibility is badly neglected and this needs to change.

What about the people that are unable drive a car because of physical or mental disabilities or age? Or the people that are allowed to drive but shouldn’t? There are vastly more of them than people who couldn’t ride a bike but can drive a car.

And yeah, unfortunately getting rid of cars completely is not going to happen, but cars will work so much better when the only people driving are those with no other alternative.

Fuck cars is about using our resources better to improve mobility for all.

Yeah, obviously you “can” merge, but in doing so you insert yourself into the middle of a 2 second gap creating 2 × less than 1 second gaps. Like I said, in this hypothetical everyone is a perfect driver that always follows the rules, so that’s not an option.

For that matter, the driver behind should see that you are about to merge into a gap that’s too small and slow down to leave a space that’s at least 4 seconds big.

I’d also like to point out that your attitude to driving is terrible, the size in meters of anything on a highway is irrelevant, 2 seconds is not a lot of time to react and slow down a car at 100, and that just because you “can” do something doesn’t mean you should.

I have a question on this. Let’s assume everyone is a perfect driver and must have at least a 2 second following distance at all times. If there’s a free flowing queue of traffic on the highway with 2-4 second gaps between, merging in is impossible without someone slowing down and letting you in. Every time I merge this situation stresses me out.

Rural areas shouldn’t be this busy. This design is fine as long as it’s quiet, but it would take 1 more car waiting to turn left to back up the whole upbound road.

Let’s worry about the inefficiency of SUVs and pickup trucks for transporting one person to work. Compared to that solar panels are a drop in the bucket.

But sliced bread has become something else that doesn’t exist with loaves. You can’t buy an unsliced loaf of ultra-processed white bread.