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“Cars aren’t a symbol of freedom. They are a symbol of dependence in places designed to be prisons without them.”
Paraphrased from a book I read (sorry, it was 10+ years ago)
Might also be noted that cars are a class symbol and a means of engaging in conspicuous consumption.
People who make the most noise about the “freedom” a car affords them are very often people who flout their vehicles a exotic hobbies or luxuries. They are, incidentally, the same folks who denounce bike lanes, bus stops, cross-walks, speed cameras, and parking shortages. Almost as though they don’t value freedom in the abstract at all.
cute! I love informative comics like this.
people always jump to assuming creating an infrastructure that requires less reliance on cars means a flat out ban on cars when really we just desperately need more alternatives to being stuck on the car-only model. of course, rural areas and disabilities and such will mean that cars are sometimes necessary, but there’s so much that a fully functional public transit system can do!!
exactly - I saw a couple of bad faiths in the comments and I just thought like “c’mon guys, be serious.”
One addition to this is also winter upkeep, which is very relevant in Finland.
People like to talk about “winter cycling”, because it’s somehow so much different from “every other season cycling”. Mainly it comes down to winter upkeep; snow plowing and such. Then some people complain how nobody rides in the winter and they shouldn’t use too much budget for it.
It would be fun to see people talk about “winter driving”. How much we actually spend making driving possible during the winter.
Where I live in the US that’s in the millions, hundreds of millions even. Also, if that budget dries up then they don’t plow shit. They’ll usually get an emergency fund but it takes a few days, while it’s snowing…
It’s not just spending money. In my city, we’re poisoning the groundwater with road salt to support winter driving. One well near me has sodium levels in the water high enough that the water utility has issued a no-drink advisory for people with hypertension.
Ain’t that true. As a car mechanic(in asia), i used to not think about it for a long time, but lately the cost of owning a car seems to bug me to no end. Often in busy day, someone will come in with a breakdown which might take a few hours to do because of the workload, and the reply i get from them is “can you do mine first? I’m in a hurry and i need the car, without it i can’t get anywhere”. Or someone came in with a badly maintained car, where they have to delay a lot of simple but crucial repair because they’re short on money. Or ignore an oil leak while topping up oil constantly because they have no time to get it fixed, which sometimes cost even more in total.
I just paid nearly 1/4 of my monthly salary to fix my 20 years old car, and that’s only for the part. Can’t get a used car because i need the cash, can’t get a new car because i don’t wanna have more mortgage. It’s crippling if you’re poor. It’s simply bullshit when people use the poor to justify car-centric development.
I feel you on the high cost of repairs costing a large portion of monthly income - I was quoted $500-700 for a (difficult model) spark plug replacement and plan to just DIY, even if it’s frustrating and hard.
Yeah, sometimes the cost of part isn’t that much but a lot of time it’s just long annoying tedious work. Seems like a lot of car is moving toward that direction and into a proprietary blackbox nightmare just so dealership can charge more.
Can confirm.
My car has been “on loan” to my parents for a year. I’m lucky to live in an area with decent public trans, but my sense of freedom is definitely vastly diminished.
You have public trans? Can you just like rent them for a while or how does it work?
In my city you can just use your library card. Pretty convenient
Buy a bike, and often that sense of freedom comes back.
Still getting around, still able to use public transit at its best, but also able to fill in the other parts of trips with a form of low-stress exercise.
I get the feeling you’re not from the US. In the vast majority of US cities, bike infrastructure is either non-existent, or so limited/unprotected that it’s still dangerous to use.
Let me try to give a good comparison. Telling people to switch to biking in US cities is like telling someone to switch to biking on the Autobahn. It’s impractical, it’s dangerous, and often it’s even illegal. You might think that’s hyperbole, but I promise it’s not. For many major cities, 40 MPH (65 KPH) is considered a low speed, found on side-streets and other non-major roads; in neighborhoods, where kids play, it drops down to 30 MPH. On highways, you’re looking at 50 MPH minimum, sometimes up to 75 MPH, and these are inner-city highways.
Americans don’t choose not to bike out of laziness, but because, in most places, biking as a form of transportation will get you killed.
I am American, but I’m lucky enough to live in a city where bikes are relatively practical.
My Australian town is almost as bad as American ones because it was built after cars became necessary
It has decent bike paths and painted bike lanes on many roads. Riding to local centres is easy, or to any of the five or so nearby schools (which gets a lot of kids onto bikes), but if you work a desk job it is probably in one of the three big centres and you’re likely to live up to an hour by bike away. So few adults get around by bike
This doesn’t make any sense. The only way to move around without depending on other companies is by walking, and there’s no way that can replace cars, trains, buses, bicycles, etc.
Not depending on anyone else is not a sensible goal. We live in a society.
The only way to move around without depending on other companies is by walking, and there’s no way that can replace cars, trains, buses, bicycles, etc.
If you have all of those options available, you can never be stranded when one of those options fails.
But with a car-centric society, all it takes is a single point of failure, and you are no longer free to move about the society.
They are not advocating for society to be less interdependent. They are explaining that a car-centric society has less freedom of movement, because the “independence” of a car is a lie.
Well that’s just nonsense. There are enough downsides to cars without having to make up fringe lunacy like this.
Nonsense and fringe lunacy… like asking for multiple options when it comes to transportation? Recognizing that building redundancies into our infrastructure is actually more efficient than relying on a one-size-fits-all solution?
A car breaking down can completely derail an individual’s day. A truck breaking down on a highway can derail a city’s day. The less the person or city needs cars to function, the less likely they are to be stuck when something goes wrong.
like asking for multiple options when it comes to transportation
No, like trying to say that cars don’t give you independence because they need insurance and servicing. That’s simply not the kind of independence people are talking about.
It’s like saying metro systems aren’t convenient because they are really difficult to build. It’s confusing two different things.
A car breaking down can completely derail an individual’s day.
So? You know what can also derail your day?
That’s simply not the kind of independence people are talking about.
Yes it is. People praise the car as the ultimate freedom because they imagine that they can take that car anywhere. But the moment they have a problem with their car, they literally can’t go anywhere.
Everyone has a story about how their car didn’t start, or about the mechanic that didn’t actually fix the problem, or how they’re still waiting on a part and can’t fix it until tomorrow. Plenty of people are stuck waiting on the roadside for hours waiting for a tow. Plenty of people are stuck waiting for days to hear back from their insurance company on if repairs are covered or who will pay for it or which mechanic is allowed to do the work.
So? You know what can also derail your day?
Do you… think that’s a gotcha? How many times has your train derailed? Is this a common problem in your life? Don’t you hate it when your employee doesn’t show up to work all the time because his train derailed?
It’s so ridiculously uncommon that it may as well be a rounding error compared to car accidents and incidents.
Yes it is. People praise the car as the ultimate freedom because they imagine that they can take that car anywhere.
They can!
But the moment they have a problem with their car, they literally can’t go anywhere.
Nobody is under the illusion that cars never break! Come on dude. Trains and buses are hardly infallible either!
Everyone has a story about how their car didn’t start, or about the mechanic that didn’t actually fix the problem, or how they’re still waiting on a part and can’t fix it until tomorrow.
Everyone has 10 stories about trains being cancelled or buses not showing up. That’s life. Completely irrelevant to the fact that cars give you independence.
How many times has your train derailed? Is this a common problem in your life?
Obviously I was not talking about actually derailment. That was obvious to anyone not being deliberately stupid. Trains are delayed or cancelled all the time. Much more frequently than cars break down.
It’s becoming clear that you live somewhere where there are no trains or buses so you have no actual experience of them and imagine them to be perfect.
Everyone has 10 stories about trains being cancelled or buses not showing up. That’s life. Completely irrelevant to the fact that cars give you independence.
So… again… if you have access to a train, a bus, and a car, then one single failure won’t stop you. If you only have access to a car, a single failure will stop you. I don’t know how to make that any more clear. It’s not about a train being better than a car, it’s about only having a car.
But, yes, trains and buses in a functioning mass transit system are insanely more reliable than cars. That’s not just personal experience, though it’s quite an assumption to make! That’s just statistics.
Me, 15 miles from town, independently waiting for the bus to arrive (it’s a hour long ride, and only comes twice a week):
I grew up with great public transit, and having access to a bicycle, (NYC.) In my 20s I realized that attempting to own and maintain a car would be so expensive that I would not be able to save money for the future. I ride my bike everywhere. If I want to go somewhere more than 50 miles away, or where transit doesn’t go, I rent a car. I rent a car maybe 2x a year tops. Depending on how long I’m renting the car I probably spend $400 a year on rentals + insurance. My last bike I had for 20 years. Cost me $1400 brand new, spread that cost out over 20 years, owning the bike cost me $70 a year. It was easy to repair myself, and the tools to repair it were inexpensive to purchase. Fuck cars indeed.
…i have slight beef with that.
- We made cars more complicated than they need to be due to electronic systems and all that. I don’t say that we should simply go back, that’s dumb. But I cannot help but wonder if a line of simple, less advanced ICE cars promoted on their ease of maintenance wouldn’t get popular with, for example, rural folks. After all, being able to fix the beast yourself would lover your costs a lot.
- Walkable cities are great, I know cause I live in one. My city (or town?) has around 7 km length (at least the parts that matter). Distance an average person can go in ~70, maybe 80 minutes by foot. But if I wanted to hit the relatively nearby lake or beach, getting there by foot is another story. And yeah, bikes exists and make it easier but if I need to hit another city that is 60km from here…yeah.
- Author also forgot that these companies won’t fail, because these are not “one and only” of each in the world. Each contry, hell, each county has multiple of them. It’s highly unrealistic for them to all fail at the same time.
We didn’t make cars more complicated because “of the electronics” or “because we had to”.
Car companies make cars more complicated because they make huge amounts of money from warranties, maintenance that you can’t do yourself for some reason, and of course the leases.
Cars being as complicated and impossible to work on as they are today is because line must go up. Everything else is propaganda.
maintenance that you can’t do yourself for some reason
Also helps hide shoddy low quality parts.
The condensers on 2017-2021 Honda Civics are basically guaranteed to fail. There’s a warranty, but the only people who can open up the AC are the dealerships, who have been trained to find some speck of dust to justify denying the warranty.
It really fucking sucks - I’d love the option of being able to make some money on doordash, but the “reliable” Honda Civic I bought gets up to 100+ F with the air on full blast.
That’s…effectively what they said. The added electronics make it infeasible for normal people to maintain their own vehicles. They never speculated on why the electronics were added.
The way you came at them makes it seem like they’re provided a scapegoat when they didn’t.
Edit: I regret stepping into an arena against a pedant with an axe to grind.
But “electronics” don’t mean “impossible to repair yourself”. And to be clear, I’m not expecting someone to become a shade tree mechanic. Remember, “right to repair” also includes the ability to go to a 3rd party repair service.
But requiring your mechanic to buy $15k+ in licensing per year, making specialized (and proprietary) fasteners, taking months to get replacement parts to the mechanic, or not honoring warranty because you went out of network are not things that are intrinsic with an electronic system.
- Also implied that other methods of transportation are devoid of failure points.
Sure wish I lived in a walkable city though 😢
- Are you saying the problem is cars are too expensive and too expensive to maintain because they are too complex?
Cheap cars are more dangerous. Simpler cars have higher emissions. I think the more complex ones are better. I would like to see legislation against the anti repair methods manufacturers use
- Cars let you take longer trips. One of the Australian capitals had a train to the beach towns. That right of way was taken by a highway and the railway now only runs a tourist route between the three or four beach towns but not to the city
With cars less needed other transit methods get built for popular trips
Failing all that, hire a car the few times of year you want an out of town holiday would be cheaper even than a very cheap car
- This one is completely correct. Last time I had a car problem I had a choice of tow companies and mechanics. Government services are monopolies but they’re pretty proof against failure. The worst that might happen is you might buy a car that turns out to be less valuable than you expected because it’s bad quality or the company owner turns out to be a nazi. But even that only costs you if you need to sell the vehicle.
I envy you for your walkable city. I don’t think I did better by getting a thousand square metre block and a detached house. I’d like to see our cities made walkable and the outer suburbs connected by rail so no one needs a car. I’d like to see cars banned from the city centre except working vehicles, taxis, disabled people, tourists with a hotel in town. For long trips off the transit network one would take a train to a car hire depot out of the city and drive from there. Hopefully cars will be sufficiently smart that the fact the drivers will have little practices will be mitigated
But I cannot help but wonder if a line of simple, less advanced ICE cars promoted on their ease of maintenance wouldn’t get popular with, for example, rural folks. After all, being able to fix the beast yourself would lover your costs a lot
No car company will make a car which is maintainable by a common man because it affects their bottom line. We can dream of alternate concepts (open-source car design/metal 3D printing) but government regulations and lobbying will kill such concepts. We have to focus on the current scenario.
But if I wanted to hit the relatively nearby lake or beach, getting there by foot is another story
The majority of the anti-car people are not saying “destroy all cars. Nobody should have cars”. We are just saying “please don’t make our entire lives car-dependent. Please design cities/governments/social life in such a way so that it’s accessible to non-car folks.”
I also have a car, but I only use it for going to places which are not reachable by public transport. For traveling to work, I use public transport 5 days a week. Cars should be (IMO) a recreational mode of transport.
Author also forgot that these companies won’t fail, because these are not “one and only” of each in the world
I agree with you; they won’t fail. However, they surely can make our lives hell if they want to. This is a power that I don’t want them to have over me.
true but America hates public transportation
That’s only because America makes terrible public transit
It’s because they purposely make sure it can’t get anywhere because they don’t want “poor” people to go nice places. Anytime it does they move the nice shit away.
Thank you for wording it so eloquently.
I learned quickly the car took away my freedom. I needed a car to get a job.
I was suddenly forced to have a job to pay an auto loan. By the time I paid the loan I needed a new car as the first broke down.
Then I needed my job to pay for the 2nd car. If I lived closer to the city with public transport I likely would have never gotten a car in the first place.
Cars are basically a life tax
Also, people younger than the legal age for driving are unable to get around safely and independently if they live somewhere car-dependent. I know this from personal experience (although where I live car dependency is not the only problem of course)
@callyral @grue don’t forget disabled people. Cars are always touted as the solution for disability but there are *many* disabilities which completely remove driving as a possibility (blindness, epilepsy, many learning disabilities, many physical disabilities … And generally being elderly, if we’re honest) and car dependence leaves you entirely reliant on a chauffeur of some kind for any and every time you want to leave the house.
Look I am for an efficient mass transit system instead of building all of these perpetually-under-construction-roads. I would happily pay for bus / train tickets to get to work! It would be like a raise not being forced to pay for all that crap illustrated in the comic. I keep seeing comics like this on my front page and it’s kind of annoying. It’s somehow MY fault I choose to drive a vehicle instead peddling a bike on a path that would be a suicide mission to get to work. How about voting in the local elections instead of cheeky little comics that just seem annoy people? Lots of plans for transit systems get killed at the voting booths nobody goes to. Or not. I don’t care. I’m just screaming at the sky now.
I fail to see how this comic blames people driving cars for the problem. Just that we should strive to improve how we build our society so that we could have meaningful and good lives without requiring an automobile.
How do I get to and then around Michigan’s Upper Peninsula? I don’t want to go be in cities like at all? What’s the plan for that?
You use a car.
Do not mistake cars being appropriate for the 20% of population that’s rural for them being appropriate for the 80% of population that’s urban, 'cause they’re not.
I never said that it shouldn’t be improved. But even with good public transit I would still feel trapped without my own vehicle.
@5in1k That problem sounds like it would be better dealt with by consulting with a counsellor than by feeding a continuing environmental disaster.
Fuck em. Yes I know I am part of em.
With a car, you can fix it yourself if you are determined enough. However, if you’re using public transport, the same arguments apply + now things are enirely out of your control. There’s no way in hell the public transport company will let you tinker with their broken stuff. The insurance company can pull out of them at any time for any reason. The company can go bankrupt, etc.
i feel like independance and not having to rely on someone would work better as an argument for the car.
Consider a bicycle. Very low maintenance, simple to fix, no need for fuel, unlimited range. Complete independence, with the sole exception of winter maintenance of paths, but that’s also a problem for cars and public transport.
bikes absolutely do not have unlimited range, at some point the human will die of exhaustion or starvation without food or dehydration without water. cars needs far less winter path clearing than all but the best fat tire bikes. cars suck in cities the majority of the earth is not a city.
cars needs far less winter path clearing than all but the best fat tire bikes
I drive a regular city bike, nothing fancy, just studded tires. I’m talking about Norway here, so studded tires are the norm in winter for almost any vehicle. I prefer biking especially in winter because of the amount of cars stuck on the roads. With the bike I’m flexible, I can drive around obstacles or impasses, worst case lift it over a ditch to make my way somewhere else. On an average day I’m at least twice as fast biking than I would be driving.
You live in an urban area right? If you’re in the North of Norway and you still think like this you must be superhuman (I’ve only visited the North of Sweden once in February and I wouldn’t want to cycle anywhere further than 5-10 km in those conditions).
You live in an urban area right?
Yes, like about 80-85% of Norwegians inhabitants do. https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/folketall/statistikk/tettsteders-befolkning-og-areal.
Of course, if you live in the woods in the middle of nowhere a bike won’t get you far in winter, but neither gets you a car until the snowplow has come through and dug you out. Skis are much more useful in these conditions.
I’ve lived in the North and commuted by bike except for days with extreme weather conditions. And again, you shouldn’t be driving then either. Now that I’m a bit older I’d go for an electric bike though, I think.
The range of the bicycle is constrained only by the rider. Assuming that the rider eats, drinks and sleeps (as most of us tend to do anyways for the sake of staying alive), the range is unlimited. You can’t drive a car either if you starve to death.
I’m not disagreeing with you on the rest, I was just talking about dependencies, which the bicycle has the least (apart from walking or skiing for example).
You need less energy per km to cycle at a relaxed pace compared to walking.
This would 100% fix the comic for me
In the past 25 years I’ve used public transport, I think the bus broke down once while I was aboard, and I think it ended up in the newspaper. I think it’s a good thing public transport folks spend a lot of time maintaining the vehicles and especially on regular preventive maintenance.
I can barely fix my bicycle, so I don’t want to tinker with the bus company’s broken stuff. I trust that stuff to the certified mechanics they employ. Doubly so for trains, that’s for some serious mechanics only.
Most public transit in Europe is government backed, they’re not just going bankrupt or lose their insurence, and I don’t know why I’d tinker with a broken bus, the company has people for that.
Exactly. Also, public transport is a system. Even if the vehicle you are currently traveling in breaks down, there’s usually replacements and alternatives to get to the same destination.
@wintermute @MBech I had a bus break down here while I was riding it.
(OK, it was a bit more dramatic. It caught fire.)
The replacement bus was there in under two minutes. It’s almost like people design systems with fallbacks and failsafes.
Almost.
No matter how determined I was to work on my car, it didn’t matter. That shit sucks, is hard to do, especially if you don’t have previous experience.
Also, cars today aren’t roomy 1990’s (or before) engines. They pack it so tight in there, with the need to specialized tools and knowledge.
Cars have become increasingly hard to work on oneself. Especially as computers and mechanical engines have been fused together.
I’d rather have my bike with a lane, or a sidewalk, lined with trees, than have stroads with rubber dust, smog, and noise, uninhabitable to pedestrians.
I guess you’re right. Personally, I’ve done some maintainance on my car as well as some basic repair, but I can understand that it’s not for everyone.
And yeah, as the other commentor pointed out bikes seem like a better symbol.
@Rin @grue It’s hilarious watching people like you tout the “inevitability” of public transit failure as if **THE MAJORITY OF THE PLANET DOESN’T USE IT WITHOUT ANY OF THESE “INEVITABLE” FAILURES COMING TO FRUITION!**
It’s almost as if you’re spouting bullshit from a position of abject ignorance and a deep-seated aversion of analysis and/or introspection.
Almost.
My brother in christ, you missed the point.
@Rin Yep. Position of abject ignorance.
Buh-bye.
Ironic
