Originally Posted by Ekdog (Post 16113859)

I'd like to hear your opinions about this. Are cars innocuous instruments or a blight on society?

Originally Posted by Blue Belly (Post 16114163)

Cars represent a level of independence to us that is tough to achieve, otherwise.

Originally Posted by Blue Belly (Post 16114163)

Cars represent a level of independence to us that is tough to achieve, otherwise. Go get a gallon of milk & a doz eggs, 6 miles away, on a rainy day. .

Originally Posted by Blue Belly (Post 16114163)

Tge automobile is an engineering marvel, even to this day. People love their mechanical machines. I think we can all appreciate that. The bicycle is a much stripped down version of a car..

Originally Posted by Blue Belly (Post 16114163)

my thoughts on the automobile are this. I'm an avid car enthusiast. I don't wish to see the gasoline engine be come extinct. I do, on the other hand, hope to see the electric car become much more prevalent. I believe that the hybrid car is a sham. I refuse to buy a car that has two power sources which add to my maintenance costs & still feeds the oil industry & creates pollution, even if at a reduced rate. If not for the hybrid there would be a bigger push for the all electric car with a greater range of travel.
If I had my ideal, we can have our own ideal(right?), we'd all have electric commuter cars. Those of us who want or need, could have our gasoline engine powered vehicle for pleasure, or any other use where electricity isn't sensible.
Best case scenario, we use less gasoline & we use alternative modes of transportation more often(bicycle, walk, train, etc).

Originally Posted by GodsBassist (Post 16114276)

I could not disagree with this statement more. We've become so dependent on cars as a society that our mobility is defined by it. A full one third of Americans are ineligible to get a driver's license due to age or ability and are made immobile because of it. The remaining two thirds feel so much pressure either socially or because it's the only infrastructure that there is that they feel like they have to own a car, further perpetuating the cycle. This is the exact opposite of independence.

Clearly, I fall in the 'blight' category but cars are also tools, as Alekhine said. I don't know that we should regulate cars out of existence, as everybody has the right to choose that route. I DO wish that we would stop incentivizing them and subsidizing them. Any mode of transportation should be fully borne by the purveyors of that mode. This includes parking and roads. I suspect that if motorists were forced to pay for the entire infrastructure in up-front and transparent usage fees, the car would be extinct in a decade.

Originally Posted by B. Carfree (Post 16114284)

Independence? Relying on the fossil fuel extraction industry for basic mobility functions that are readily achieved by human power is hardly independent, IMO. While a powered wheelchair does indeed greatly expand the horizons of a disabled person, it is not quite the same situation when an able-bodied person chooses to restrict their life to what they can do in the same wheelchair. By the way, I do all my shopping without using a car and several of the stores I frequent are five miles away. (We do get a bit of rain in Oregon.) In fact, yesterday's grocery haul did indeed include a dozen eggs and one and one-half gallons of milk, as well as some produce. And yes, it was raining.



I appreciate that love is blind. Other than the fact that they both move, it's hard for me to see much similarity between a bike, which augments muscle power, and a car, which relies almost entirely on fossil fuels to move a person. A car could be thought of as a device whose primary function appears to be to translocate reduced carbon compounds from underground onto the bodies of humans.




Since commuting is only 20% of American car use, using different types of motor vehicles for commuting and pleasure isn't much of a change. Also, where do you think those electric cars get their energy from? The American electrical grid is about half coal-fired. Any significant increase in demand, like for personal transportation machines, is far more likely to be met with increased burning of coal than any other means. Do you think the emissions from burning coal are clean? Or, worst case, burning wood? Locally, much of our electricity is now being generated by burning wood and our air quality has suffered greatly since the wood burning plant went in.

There's no free lunch. We're using up millions of years worth of energy resources per year in what is clearly not only a needless gluttony, but is damaging our personal health. Back when a typical American household had about half the cars of today's homes, we didn't have an obesity epidemic and type II diabetes was nearly unheard of, especially among young people. Quite aside from the 35,000 direct deaths and 2.4 million injuries per year, we are quite clearly driving ourselves to death. I find nothing to love about that. I feel like I am watching millions of my fellow citizens commit slow-motion suicide.

Originally Posted by Blue Belly (Post 16114163)

I'm an avid car enthusiast. I don't wish to see the gasoline engine be come extinct. I do, on the other hand, hope to see the electric car become much more prevalent. I believe that the hybrid car is a sham. I refuse to buy a car that has two power sources which add to my maintenance costs & still feeds the oil industry & creates pollution, even if at a reduced rate. If not for the hybrid there would be a bigger push for the all electric car with a greater range of travel.

Originally Posted by Blue Belly (Post 16114163)

Cars represent a level of independence to us that is tough to achieve, otherwise. Go get a gallon of milk & a doz eggs, 6 miles away, on a rainy day.

Originally Posted by wolfchild (Post 16114391)

Actually I feel a lot more freedom and independence when on a bicycle then inside a car. When I am on a bike I don't have to ride on the road all the time, I can ride pretty much anywhere I want to and take short-cuts that I could never do in a car...Being stuck inside a car every single day for most of your life is not really independence, it's slavery. I don't have a problem renting or borrowing a car once or twice per year when making a long trip out of town, but I wouldn't want to be stuck in one every single day.

Originally Posted by Blue Belly (Post 16114163)

Cars represent a level of independence to us that is tough to achieve, otherwise. Go get a gallon of milk & a doz eggs, 6 miles away, on a rainy day.
The automobile is an engineering marvel, even to this day. People love their machines.

Originally Posted by B. Carfree (Post 16114284)

Independence? Relying on the fossil fuel extraction industry for basic mobility functions that are readily achieved by human power is hardly independent, IMO.

I do all my shopping without using a car and several of the stores I frequent are five miles away. (We do get a bit of rain in Oregon.) In fact, yesterday's grocery haul did indeed include a dozen eggs and one and one-half gallons of milk, as well as some produce. And yes, it was raining.

Originally Posted by Roody (Post 16114587)

If there were no cars, the grocery store would not be 6 miles away. It would be 6 blocks away, or less, within a few minutes' walking or cycling distance. There would be a streetcar stopping very close to your front door that would take you to the thriving central shopping district within a short time also.

One of my interests is old maps. I have studied them and seen how much our cities and small towns have changed in order to accommodate the cars. People don't stop to think how our entire world is built up with the car in mind. When we talk about a carfree city of the future, we're talking about something very different than what we have now.

Originally Posted by 350htrr (Post 16114583)

My truck has "become" a tool for me, I basically only use it for camping fishing getting stuff home from the store, but my car er cars, were an extention of myself. 90+% of every mile I put on my car was for "fun/excitement"... :love: I used to just rip around endlessly enjoying the thrill of speed and cornering and being faster than most anybody... :innocent: 4.7 sec. 0-60, 12.9 sec. 1/4mile in my daily driver... :eek:

Originally Posted by Blue Belly (Post 16114619)

I like your thinking. I don't think the population would support that here, or many of the places we live. I live in a state of 600,000 people. Most of those are condensed into a small area. It would take a huge re dispersing of wealth & another huge change in our society, in general. While some of those changes would be really awesome, a large majority of our population would laugh at us with their votes.

Originally Posted by Roody (Post 16114674)

Well, it will only be a few years before people from NYC and Boston are moving into Vermont to escape rising sea levels and worsening storms caused by excess carbon in the air. Maybe then Vermonters will quit laughing at those who were trying to warn them.

I think many people who live in Burlington could do quite well without owning cars. However, I doubt if cars and trucks will ever disappear entirely from rural areas. The population is too small to bother with. If there are 600,000 (lucky) people living in Vermont, that's equivalent to the population of my metro area, which is only the third largest in my state.

Originally Posted by Roody (Post 16114674)

Well, it will only be a few years before people from NYC and Boston are moving into Vermont to escape rising sea levels and worsening storms caused by excess carbon in the air. Maybe then Vermonters will quit laughing at those who were trying to warn them.

Originally Posted by Roody (Post 16114651)

Is a truck the best tool for camping, fishing, and grocery runs? It sounds like using a sledge hammer to hang a painting. If you don't think a bike is an adequate tool for these activities, maybe you could try something like a Honda Civic with AWD. Just a suggestion... I don't know what your personal needs/wants are, but maybe this would save you some money and pollute a lot less. And the groceries would travel better than they do in the bed of a pickup.

And you don't enjoy riding your bike fast? Try hammering down a hill on a performance bike... If there's a curve on the hill, you will discover what "cornering" really means! I find that the "sensation of speed" can be as great on a bicycle as in a sports car. YMMV.

Originally Posted by Smallwheels (Post 16114633)

Tools improve life and accelerate technological progress. Where would we all be without any type of motorized vehicle ever being invented? I imagine that people would still be living in small cities. Larger cities would be along coastlines and along rivers. Sail powered travel would be more prevalent. Horses would be everywhere. Horses are expensive tools to own and maintain. They also pollute a lot.

International cultural exchanges would be more difficult than today. Even amongst people living in the USA there would be big differences between the eastern and western parts of the country. Perhaps an internet would have been invented sooner than it was. Maybe telephone service would have blossomed faster than it did.

One huge impediment to technological growth would be the efficient gathering of raw materials needed to make things. Transporting those things would also be much more difficult.

Cars and other motorized vehicles have created the society we now have. The speed with which one can move information, products, and raw materials is the measure of a society. It governs the power of society.

Transporting people via cars is part of that equation. Cars allow the right people for the right job. Without cars there would be a barrier for some people to fill jobs that suit them. Imagine a scientist or engineer refusing some jobs because they live too far away. Of course such barriers could be overcome but not everybody wants to travel longer distances to work without a car. We know that already by observing our coworkers who won't ride a bicycle just one mile to get to work.

Horses just couldn't take the place of cars.

Cars are beneficial tools of our society. Without them we would still be in the iron age.

I was involved in a car wreck that ruined my career as a musician. The injury damaged my neck which affected my fingers. I didn't start hating cars. I just hated the idiot who ran a stop sign because he wanted to save five seconds on his way home.

Automobiles might be one of the greatest tools ever put to use in the world. That doesn't mean they aren't abused or over abundant. Some of them are objects of art. That just makes them more fun. Even with that being said, there are no automobiles out there that I just really desire enough to buy.

Originally Posted by I-Like-To-Bike (Post 16114709)

What is your definition of "it will only be a few years"?

Originally Posted by Roody (Post 16114747)

However, I think private automobiles ("cars") have become inappropriate technology for most of the world in the 21st century. Why?

• The population has quadrupled in 109 years.
  
• Most (52 %) of the people now live in cities rather than rural areas.
  

Originally Posted by wolfchild (Post 16114367)

I do believe that cars are tools for getting from point A to point B, but not everyone needs those tools. Public transit bus or train are also vehicles and they're just tools like a car. I think the problem in our society is that cars have become objects of adoration and a status symbol for a lot of people. Some people have become slaves and prisoners to their car and they just don't see any other alternative, they think it's impossible to get around without their machine...Lifestyle choices determine if you need a car or not. I also believe that there would be much less obesity and population would be much healthier if more people rode their bikes and walked instead of driving everywhere.

Originally Posted by Smallwheels (Post 16114633)

Tools improve life and accelerate technological progress. Where would we all be without any type of motorized vehicle ever being invented? I imagine that people would still be living in small cities. Larger cities would be along coastlines and along rivers. Sail powered travel would be more prevalent. Horses would be everywhere. Horses are expensive tools to own and maintain. They also pollute a lot.