McBTC

How do you control solar activity and stop the seas from rising? Easy-- quit your job, sell your car and ride a bike...

cooker

It's certainly true that if one's motivation for going car-free is simply to lower their personal carbon footprint, then biking instead of driving is only one small part of it, and additional steps like better managing your home heating and air-conditioning, changing your diet and finding other ways to alter your consumption patterns could greatly magnify the effect.

Good news - you don't have to quit your job!

McBTC

Listen to Al Gore but don't follow Gore's example?

wphamilton

This thread reminds me of how I began a car-free lifestyle, with a wife and a kid in elementary school. We had an older car, that I'd had to "repair" pretty frequently. Not ever actually fixed, but patched together well enough to keep it running. At that point it had an overheating problem, and I hadn't gotten around to fixing it. So we were walking to school and he asked "when is the car going to get fixed?" It was an honest question, only part whine, which is natural for a kid that age. So I asked him, what if it never got fixed? I wasn't being mean - that was also an honest question. He was quiet for a while, processing that, and then I elaborated, a car is not that important. We don't really need it. It's an abrupt paradigm shift, if you've never considered it. Or even imagined it.

Maybe it got me thinking as well, because a short time later we were a car-free bicycle family. Fast forward to one day, walking to school again, which gets to the point of whether the lifestyle is "normal". We'd bike a short distance on the Greenway, maybe half a mile but I think much less, walk up a short hill stashing his bike in the forest (it was safe enough there) and then cross a practice field to the schools' back bus entrance. This day, some of the elementary teachers freaked about it. Walking! From a different direction! Horrifying ... and don't dare cross an imaginary line in the parking lot because it's too dangerous to step foot in a parking lot! They laid down the law that day in the full glory of their righteous fury, and demanded that we proceed to the front entrance, where normal people drop off from their sedans and SUV's. I didn't bother arguing - with them. But long story short, the next day there was a new "law" laid down from on high, and like it or not the same teachers were nothing but pleasant and cooperative as we again came from the "wrong" direction, across the "dangerous" lot of parked cars, and through the door of his choosing. Holding it open for him with respectful greetings.

I relate this story because obviously there is nothing abnormal about walking, or an adult supervising a child through a parking lot with no traffic, or a kid walking through a door along with dozens of other school children. Yet there was a perception among a few that it must be abnormal, because it was outside of their experience. Even though each of the actions are normal, the lifestyle cannot be perceived as "normal" when it is unusual, or even unimaginable. I think the whole idea of car-free living is like that. Or at least it is in places like here, where even just commuting by bike is only about 0.2%. It is never a "normal" lifestyle, even though every part of it is normal.

Walter S

And yet the fact that I'm carfree is invisible to most of the people I deal with. Most of the time it doesn't come up. I mean everybody just assumes that I'm either a bicycle nut (if I'm in garb) or I must have drove here.

cooker

The research that you and wolfchild didn't do shows that tandempower is correct about car companies.

wolfchild

The research and so-called facts that you and tandempower believe is just confirmation bias. People can google all kinds nonsense and come up with a bunch of "fabricated facts" and make it look like truth when it isn't...Personally I have no interest in researching a subject which I am not even interested in.

cooker

You had no hesitation in declaring it a myth and a conspiracy theory. You were mistaken.

https://www.thestar.com/autos/2015/08/16/fca-employee-parking-rules-in-brampton-questioned.html

Besides, I started this thread for you:

I-Like-To-Bike

Even a broken clock is correct occasionally; twice a day in fact.

jonc123

This is 100% fact for at least one place I know of in St. Louis, MO. The company I work for is a vendor for an auto maker. We had to purchase a new truck as all of the ones we were driving were of a different maker.

Most of the time if you are a vendor in a large place like a auto maker, you'll have have your employee that services that account drive the same brand of vehicle.

cooker

I wonder if car makers etc. have an issue with staff who bike to work. Typically the major industrial plants are in more car-favouring locations so it may not come up a lot there, but at corporate offices or a dealership, if a staff showed up on a bike, would it affect their career?

I-Like-To-Bike

Does your whimsical wondering/speculation somehow make this OT sideshow about car parking lot assignments into a subject relevant to Living Car Free?

cooker

Yes, exactly I was trying to segue to a discussion more appropriate to LCF and the thread. Do you think employers, especially in the automotive sector, discriminate against or inconvenience employees who LCL/LCF, or do you think that's a myth?

In fact it turns out that was the very question tandempower was trying to raise, before wolfchild's diversion:.

Machka 

<<sigh>>

Roody

Thank you. And for several years, that was the accepted definition of "carfree" here on this subforum.

Agreement on a stipulated definition or working definition saves endless time and eliminates 99% of the stupid bickering in this world. So god forbid we should do that here!

Machka 

Yes, we know ... you would like to have some way to ostracise people and tell them to "Just get the hell off [this forum]! You have nothing to contribute, and you have no interest, so just go away. Please."

SHBR

I find it interesting that the most of the bickering here is done by those who are not car free.

Gotta vent somewhere I guess.

Here is myth.

Car ownership = freedom.

I'm free of all of the expense, and related stress that goes along with car ownership.

No more daily traffic jams, massive repair bills, insurance headaches, parking restrictions, random traffic stops, DMV registration errors, and most importantly, no more wasted time dealing with all of these problems.

wolfchild

I think it depends on a position of a person...If salesman or a manager or somebody who deals with public who works at a dealership showed up on a bicycle it would definitely affect their career, a general helper or a bathroom cleaner not so much... Personally I wouldn't use a bicycle if going for an interview at any automotive company. JMO

wolfchild

If a company knows that the person is car-free and still decide to hire a LCL/LCF person , then I don't think they would inconvenience that employee, obviously they hired that person for reason because the employee may have something positive to offer to the company.....Then again there is at least 2-3 people on this list who believe that automotive companies have some kind of conspiracy against car-free people and have send spies to spy on car-free people and are trying to kill the car-free movement.

Rowan

Don't forget... some car manufacturers have sold bicycles under their brand. Heaven knows, I am getting ads on my cell phone for some Ford bike thing. Porsche comes to mind, so does BMW. I think GM had one as well.

Plus, quite a few car companies have used bicycles to help promote their products in commercials and other advertising material. Subaru has done for years, and of course, Skoda who are major sponsors of the TdF. A Japanese pick-up brand has been using MTBs in TV commercials a lot lately here in Australia.

The notion of someone in the public eye for a dealership or manufacturer turning up to work with a bike is not so far fetched.

cooker

Yes, bikes definitely are ubiquitous in car commercials, presumably mostly to subtly insinuate the notion that cars can be part of a sporty, healthy and even 'green' lifestyle. Except in occasional commercials where the cyclist is a loser or an annoyance.

However, a car salesman who biked to work might be a little too much of a contradiction

cooker

Do you have any follow-up on the ideas you posted about?

Machka 

Yep.

cooker

Excellent.

cooker

I hope that's true, that an employee's contribution outweighs their choice of transportation.
As for the other point, if I ran a multi-billion dollar company dedicated to growth in car sales, I'm sure I would set aside a few bucks to have people monitor the "car-free movement" and think about ways of stalling or derailing it.