cooker

Not necessarily, unless people want to. It's clear there are two definitions - a stricter one and a less strict one - and different people prefer one or the other.

Are there any myths or misconceptions about LCL/LCF that you think need to be addressed?

Machka 

I was actually kind of vaguely hoping it might be a thread full of things like ...

Myth: You can't be car free and have children

Truth: A heartwarming story of someone who has managed to be car free with children.


Myth: You have to remain within a 5 mile radius of where you live if you are car free.

Truth: Several exciting tales of people who have travelled extensively by bicycle or walking.


Stuff like that. But nope. It would take a miracle for people to actually start posting stuff like that in this forum.

cooker

Well then you are a miracle worker because you just did. Why were you expecting someone else to post your good ideas?

350htrr

Good job with those myths... I was going to post more of my myths later in the same vein, but you beat me to them and yours are even better.

Machka 

How many people, aside from me, have posted in this thread:
https://www.bikeforums.net/living-car...-car-free.html

A few ... but really, hardly any.

I've been trying to break myths for years here, but it would appear that for the most part, the myths are true because hardly anyone participates in the myth-breaking threads.

If we want to start breaking myths, start participating in the myth-breaking threads!

cooker

This is the current one.

wolfchild

Those two are actual facts and truths which pretty much describe most LCF regulars who post on this list or those who live car-free out in the real world...I highly doubt that any car-free person on this list has been successful in raising a family of kids while living in a car-free household and transporting a bunch of kids everywhere using a bicycle. I also doubt that most of them ride their bicycles any further then within a 5 mile radius of where they live and I also doubt that most of them travel extensively on a bicycle and do long distance rides like yourself...There we go, another myth busted.

Machka 

Well ... I did. And Rowan did. And I know a few others who do ... but they don't post here. One such friend is currently on a cross-Canada cycling trip.

So it can be done. It's a pity those here don't do more of it.

cooker

Often car free people live in a place where everything they usually need is within a couple of miles so it's not a limitation if they don't need to go more than 5 miles routinely, it's a bonus. However, if they live in Copenhagen or Amsterdam they can hop on a train and travel anywhere in Europe. My son lived car free in London for a year and a half while getting his Masters degree, and he and his fiancee, who got a job while they were there (one of the few benefits of the British Commonwealth), traveled several times to Scotland, France and Germany.

They live car free in Toronto now, and probably mostly do stay within 5 miles, but they did a 30km bike ride to the rubber duck and the Leslie spit etc. on Canada day weekend. They did the 50km ride for heart in June and biked to the event. About a year ago they did rent a car to go to a concert in Detroit.

I'm not car free but I bike or take transit to a job 7 miles away every day. On the weekend I took my dog on public transit 8 or 9 miles to see a small protest parade I knew some participants in. I could have driven, but walking the dog to the subway and around the parade route was part of the plan.

tandempower

I look at urban places in Europe, China, and India where the car populations seem lower than the human populations, but there still seems to be a shortage of trees relative to buildings and land. Sometimes I think this is due to natural deficiencies that prevent robust tree growth, but I don't think human activities are devoid of effect, either.

Driving, parking, and pavement are just some human activities that affect the ability of land to host tree routes and canopies. Other human activities, such as farming and harvesting of wood can still cause trees removal without cars and pavement being involved. Still, that doesn't mean there exists a possibility of managing both the human practice of driving as well as other human practices, like wood-harvesting and farming, so that more trees can flourish and thus absorb atmospheric CO2.

So if the issue is CO2, which is definitely not the only problem with cars, then LCF/LCL are just one objective to pursue among many. Nevertheless, within the pursuit of reducing the number of cars, lanes, parking spots, pavement, sprawl, etc. there are challenges to overcome that chart a path forward for others to potentially follow. This is similar to the way Rosa Parks sat down in the front of the bus and her small action charted a path toward overcoming fear for many other people in similar situations.

With LCF, it is the same. People have fears to take the bus or ride a bike, especially where social judgment and discrimination are feared. I heard the other day, for example, that if you work for an auto maker and you drive a different brand of car to work, that you are relegated to a different parking lot further away. What do they do if you show up to work on a bike? Employer bias is just one fear to overcome, though. There are so many other fears and inconveniences about LCF, and unlike the fears and inconveniences of living by car, they are not easily accepted as par for the course.

So debating about whether someone can call themselves 'carfree' or not is just so much less relevant than figuring out what the obstacles are to becoming 'more carfree' and overcoming those.

Leisesturm

Or it isn't a choice... I mean... two pages of posts and no one has yet ventured that for some, driving, even occasionally, is simply NOT AN OPTION! I get it, y'all's come by the middle class bias quite honestly... the Internet itself is a baseline of sorts. If you have Internet access that doesn't come via the wifi at the Public Library you likely live in a level of personal comfort that makes imponderables like LCF ... ... imponderable. Some of the rest of us... a lot more people than you might imagine... not so much. And this might be for other reasons than economic ones. Legal blindness... amputation(s), epilepsy, court ordered permanent revocation...

FBinNY 

+1, those who posit that it's impossible to enjoy a "normal" life and raise a family without a car, ignore the millions who do. Many or likely most, of these people aren't using a bicycle in lieu of a car, they're living in cities with and using public transit.

In fact, things like the internet is making it easier to live without a car. One can have just about every need delivered to the home, so the major logistical issues to LCF are gone.

However, I agree that LCF is far easier in denser areas where there are more amenities within a smaller radius.

McBTC

LCF is only something some people obsess about if they actually live in a society that affords them an option-- most of the world's population is LCF but there's no choice in the matter.

Rollfast

It's kinda like LCF is trying to prevent a nuclear war or something.


Telling people on a site about bikes is interesting.

cooker

So now you have mentioned it, thanks! It's interesting that two of you now, have introduced good thread content while prefacing it with the comment that somebody else should have brought it up.

No, if you want something done, do it yourself!

How would you phrase this in terms of a myth or misconception - that people assume everybody who is car-free is so by choice?

Walter S

It depends on what your definition of define is (assuming what is is, has been dealt with)

I-Like-To-Bike

Most adults already know better, or enough about reality, than to make such an assumption; a few people who like to believe that they are spokesmen for or members of a so-called LCF "movement" post as if they hold that misconception.

cooker

Always have to throw in a little vague allegation about unspecified other posters, eh?

wolfchild

Maybe not a nuclear war, but some of them are trying to prevent climate change...Anybody who believes that LCF can solve our climate woes is just believing another myth.

wolfchild

That's a myth, you're just believing another conspiracy theory.

king_boru

Car free to me is when you finally stop making payments on one.

cooker

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tandempower

Maybe, but coincidentally I was watching an interview w/ Orson Wells on Dick Cavett from the 1970s where Wells also mentioned that if you showed up to perform in a radio show sponsored by a certain brand of cigarettes and you had a different brand with you to smoke, they would fire you on the spot. Maybe he was just making up lies to start conspiracies, the way he tricked people with the War of the Worlds broadcast, but maybe he was talking about a real culture of employer discrimination that's been outlawed in at least some places with laws restricting employers from requiring the purchase of company products as a condition of hiring and/or retention.

How would you know about the car companies anyway, though? Do you work for one?

Machka 

You realise that "the 1970s" was 45-ish years ago, right? Almost half a century. There have been a few changes since then.

How would he know? How about research! Some of us actually research things. It's a great way to learn.

tandempower

When I study culture, I notice that there are timeless undercurrents that may change superficially through time, but people repeat the same good and bad behaviors. Some people simply don't see it as a problem to bully and discriminate people into supporting the economic projects they want supported. It could be a specific brand of cigarettes or driving because they see driving as the cornerstone of the US economy and so if you're not driving, you're not supporting the US. You would think people would overcome these kinds of subjugating tendencies as time moves forward, but just the outward form changes. If everything bad went away, the world would become perfect. Perfection is never going to be reality, so there's always this interesting question of what forms imperfection is going to take and how to deal with it.

He said it like he works at an auto factory and knows from personal experience. I told you that I heard what I heard via research. I didn't just make it up. I forgot whether I read it or saw it in a documentary, but it was one of the two.