[QatzelOk]

Sunday, August 12, 2007
Why I hate cars
by Kiashu

I hate cars because they cause death, are the most expensive and slowest mode of land transport, and contribute to global warming.

Cars are more deadly than firearms in Australia

In 2006 in Australia, there were 1,601 persons killed in 1,456 road crashes. There were 14,358,684 registered vehicles of all types. Thus, 11.15 deaths per 100,000 vehicles.

The same year there were 2,526,888 registered firearms. There were 147 suicides, 19 homicides, 20 accidental deaths, and 7 incidents of lethal self-defence by police, for 193 firearms deaths in all, or 7.63 deaths for every 100,000 firearms.
...
As well as gun control, we should have vehicle control. We ought to be as restrictive about who owns vehicles and has licences for them, and should restrict vehicles not by type, but by owner and supplier.
...
Cars are the most expensive and slowest mode of transport

In summary, with details below,

* Cars - $22 per day, effective time 2hr30min, effective speed 16km/hr
* Public Transit - $9 per day, effective time 1hr45 min, effective speed 23km/hr
* Bicycle - $3 per day, effective time 1hr30min, effective speed 27km/hr
...
Cars and global warming

Overall, fossil fuel-burning transport accounts for about 36% of CO2 emissions.
...
Cars are dangerous, expensive, poisonous and boil the world. I loathe them...

rest of blog article

A really interesting piece, from Australia, about the reasons we should all detest cars. Some good comments afterwards as well.

[QatzelOk]

Why I hate cars
by John Adams

Hypermobility
by John Adams
(appeared in Prospect, London, March 2000)

Politicians in all industrial countries struggle to apply technical fixes to the problems caused by increasing physical mobility. But even if we devise non-polluting congestion-free modes of transport and all work from home we will still pay a very high price for mobility, says John Adams...

Mobility is liberating and empowering. But you can have too much of a good thing. The growth in the numbers of people exercising their freedom and power is fouling the planet and its arteries.

Prodigious technological efforts are being made to solve the problems of congestion and pollution caused by increased motorised mobility. Let us suppose for a moment that they succeed. Imagine that scientists invent something close to a pollution-free perpetual motion engine. Imagine further, that they succeed in developing the ultimate, intelligent transport system – a computerised traffic control system which will hugely increase the capacity of existing roads, rails and airports. Finally, imagine a world in which computers are universally affordable and access to the internet is too cheap to meter; pollution-free virtual mobility is vigorously promoted as an important part of the solution to the problems caused by too much physical mobility. ...

A constraint on behaviour which technology cannot remove is the number of hours in a day. As we spread ourselves ever wider, we must spread ourselves thinner. If we spend more time interacting with people at a distance, we must spend less time with those closer to home. If we have contact with more people, we must devote less attention to each one. In small-scale pedestrian societies – hypomobile societies – everyone knows everyone. In hypermobile societies, old-fashioned geographical communities are replaced by aspatial communities of interest – we spend more time, physically, among strangers. The advantages of mobility are heavily advertised; the disadvantages of hypermobility receive much less attention. Many of the unwelcome characteristics of the hypermobile society can readily be imagined by extrapolating existing trends.

...

rest of article

The author deconstructs "increased range" as an empty dream of consumer society. An interesting read, but even reading the first five paragraphs, and then the captions of each subsequent paragraph, will give you the main thrust of what Mr Adams is saying.

The fact that there are now about one third as many children killed every year in road accidents as in 1922, when there was hardly any traffic and a 20mph speed limit, does not mean that the roads are now three times safer for children to play in; they have become so dangerous that children are not allowed out any more.

[Grunch]

I hate cars because their drives honk and yell at me when I ride my bicycle. I hate driving because it feels like I am insulated from the world.

[NYYS]

I hate cars because they're boring to drive.

Cars are the most expensive and slowest mode of transport

The hell? How is taking a bike or walking faster than taking a car? Or is the writer just referring to a specific route?

[QatzelOk]

How is taking a bike or walking faster than taking a car? Or is the writer just referring to a specific route?

Well, you could read the article to answer that question.

Many people take into the consideration the number of hours the average person has to work each day to pay for his car, or park it, or get it repaired.

But I have noticed that drivers - who are a minority in Montreal - are usually late, don't show up when it snows, and are the ones who have to leave the earliest to make it home in a decent amount of time. This is mainly because almost all the drivers I know live in suburbia.

[hannu]

I enjoy a good skid down the lanes but only late on a saturday night when no-one is about & the locals have been informed.

I've lived on the same stretch of highway for a long time & over that period the quality of my life has deteriorated significantly due to the increase in traffic.

I can't understand why humans & animals play second best to a piece of rotting tin? But it's not like that really. Humans & animals are playing second best to the people who drive those rotting pieces of tin.......

I hate people who ruin the quality of other peoples lives by driving & enabling the driving of cars.

[QatzelOk]

Why I hate cars
by Eduardo M. Peñalver

washingtonpost.com
The End of Sprawl?
By Eduardo M. Peñalver
Sunday, December 30, 2007; Page B07

The collapse in the housing market and high gasoline prices are bad news for middle-class homeowners left to sift through the wreckage. But if there is consolation to be found amid the rubble, it may be that the inexorable spreading out that has characterized American life since World War II might finally be coming to an end. Given the connections between car-dependent suburban development and social ills from climate change and the destruction of wetlands to obesity and social isolation, the end can come none too soon....

rest of article

This is an anti-sprawl article in the Washington Post by a Cornell Law Professor who sounds remarkably like that radical enviro-drama queen James Howard Kunstler.

[PredatorOC]

I LOOOOOOVE cars because they pump out fumes that will burn the sky and bathe the silly little people in cancerous sunlight and will strangle all the cute little Bambis and all the fucking pandas. I LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE cars because they weed out the slow and the dumb who can't bother to look when they cross the street. I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE cars because they mangle and kill every damn idiot kid who thinks they can drive really really well because they have played Grand Turismo 4.

'Splat!' is the sound as they learn their lesson!

Death to all!

[Grunch]

[QatzelOk]

The Zen of Cars, Bikes, and Feet

A recent compilation of transport wisdom



"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H.G. Wells

"All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking." - Nietzsche

"No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning." - Cyril Connolly

"There's something wrong with a society that drives a car to work out in a gym." - Bill Nye

"Nothing compares with the simple pleasure of a bike ride." - John F. Kennedy

"Walking makes for a long life." - Hindu prover

source

I hate cars because they screw up my zen.

[Grunch]

"Walking makes for a long life." - Hindu prover

I see a lot of elderly Indians out walking every day.

[Kiashu]

Wow, it seems I have a fan who reposts my articles. Thanks!

[QatzelOk]

Oh my God! Another car hater!

So Kiashu, one of the posters wondered why you had posted the speed of car transportation as being slower than bicycle or walking. Can you explain how you came to this conclusion? I mean, don't cars race around a lot faster than bikes or pedestrians do?

Or were you calculating the time spent paying for the car as well?

(I can't believe the real, actual Kiashu has joined the forum)

[Adrien]

An Australian disliking cars is really a traitor to his fatherland.

Tsk, tsk.

[QatzelOk]

Was a car one of Australia's founding fathers, Adrien?

Did a car fight heroically for Australia in World War Two?

Do cars perform most of the unpaid charity work in Australia?

I'm really trying to get a handle on why Australians owe respect to motor vehicles.

[Adrien]

It shows you don't know much about cars, Qatzel.



Vroom.

[hannu]

It shows you don't know much about cars, Qatzel.

Where do you stand on the use of angular contact bearings to support a triple shaft manual gearbox?

The three shafts & differential in my car gearbox all run on angular contacts which require shimming to a desired preload. It's not immposibly difficult to shim them correctly but I think it would be far better if they had roller bearing to support axial load & seperate thrust bearings to support side thrust....... What do you think?

[Adrien]

That was easy.

I've only started recently to read into mechanics so I'll leave your question for a couple of months down the road.

[hannu]

That was easy.

I've only started recently to read into mechanics so I'll leave your question for a couple of months down the road.

No problem.......We don't know anything about mechanics either but we have to reshim & rebuild the gearbox tommorow.

This was just an observation of mine based on the amount of axial play of the gearbox shafts & drive shafts because of the use of angular contacts.

[Notorious B.i.G.]

I'm really trying to get a handle on why Australians owe respect to motor vehicles.

You come to Australia and go out side of the tuorist CBD area of a city and you'll see why. 200 km between homesteads, 400km to the next town, therefore a car is essential. Just one of the many reasons why Australians owe respect to the motor vehicles.