Originally Posted by
Robert Foster
I am not trying to justify anything I know I am not now nor likely to be in the future car free even if my only vehicle is in my wife’s name. I have no problem with car light because it is easy to define. I have no problem with someone calling themselves car free even if cars influence their everyday life. Like I may have mentioned I have stayed with families in Africa that are "car free" in that they have no access to cars and have never driven one because they couldn’t even rent one.
What I question is the definition posted on the forum and the way it is applied. I maybe wonder why someone that has shared a forum with people that have claimed to never use a car and thus are car free would consider the definition posted as a introduction to the forum and want to claim the same status rather than something else like car light or not car dependant. Someone decided to use words like only in the forum introduction and “only” use public transit must mean something different to some here.
When I first came to this forum there were posters that claimed they were car free and even some that moved from one place to another using their bicycle and a trailer. I thought that was interesting and so I started shopping using one of my bicycles and buying a trailer. I now go to the doctor’s office and even church by bike weather permitting. Still didn’t call myself car free. Then a poster that had posted for a while as car free mentioned that their SO had a car and it was used from time to time when the bike wasn’t practical. I simply don’t see why someone would claim to be car free when they use a car that is borrowed, rented, leased, co-owned or given to them.
Is car free a definition or a club? Is saying someone is car free so important that the word “only” has to be redefined? And it has nothing to do with cutting people slack. I don’t judge a person anyone on how they get from point A to point B. I just see it as disingenuous when someone might ask how someone gets to the doctor’s office or go to visit a sick relative in the hospital and they get the answer, sometimes you have to rent a car. That doesn’t “sound” car free to me, it sounds car light. I also realize it will decrease the number of people claiming car free status if they can’t drive a car.
I am also waiting to see what definition is agreed upon by consensus and if someone suggests the introduction of the forum is too restrictive. If it is simply a concept why not admit it?
Your tenacity and purism are usually an asset to the forum, but on this point I think your inflexibility is very frustrating. Are you a Republican Congressman in real life? I wish you could get that we're only talking about a working definition--this is not the Nicene Creed of Carfree Living.
But face the facts--we ALL depend on cars to some degree, and we all acknowledge this fact.
By your overly strict definition, there are probably a dozen cardree people in the entire developed world. They all live together on an Aleutian island, and they're waiting for the Mothership to come and fetch them. At that point, they'll still be carfree, but not spaceshipfree.
