Fuck Cars
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
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Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
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No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.
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Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.
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No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.
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No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.
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No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.
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No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.
Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.
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But, does ticketing the owner of the car, via automation, really accurately cite the offender? How does the camera know it was you, without a shadow of a doubt? You’re ticketing or citing the owner of the vehicle without them being present and stopped by an officer. Red Light cameras are just as bad. There’s no guarantee that the person who is listed as the owner was the one to drive the vehicle and commit the offense.
These cameras are a slippery slope of being cited, ticketed, charged or fined without an officer on site verifying that you were the one who actually committed the offense. Do you want to have to defend yourself halfway across town or the state/territory/region you live in when someone steals or borrows your car without permission and speeds or runs a red light? Why should you have to defend yourself at all? Why shouldn’t they use methods that ensure they’re citing the correct person, such as having an officer present to verify that the owner* was the operator and perpetrator too? “Oh, but they caught the driver’s blurry face, and it arguably looks like the owner!” But, is it? Are these cameras and automated systems, even with certified officers reviewing the video, which isn’t the case the majority of the time, infallible? How* do we know that the camera was properly calibrated that day? How do we know that it didn’t mistake XYZ other circumstance for this person erroneously?
These are a bad idea. Instead let’s build better infrastructure or assign people, real life people, to deter speeding or reckless driving. People are fallible, sure, but at least the driver is verified, the driver is cited, and then the person we verified was the operator of the vehicle at the time of the incident… can go across town to defend themselves in court. “Oh, but he sped away! We’ll never know who the driver was and now we’re just going to cite the owner, anyway!” Continued shit policing, if you’re interested, how about you investigate by going to the listed address and doing some police work.
In the UK, where this is, the registered keeper of the vehicle is sent a letter requiring they identify the driver at the time of the incident. Lying about it is a serious offence if caught. So, yes, it's as accurate as can be.
You'd have reported your car stolen to the police. Again, lying about this is a serious offence.
“I do not recall.”, “You prove it was me.”, “Can you even prove it was me?”, “What proof do you have that it was me?”, “How do we know that your device isn’t malfunctioning and erroneously ticketing me?”, “I wasn’t speeding, but you’re citing me without an officer having been present to witness the act in person and verify it was me driving?”, “I am not required to make your case against me for you.” “You prove that I didn’t sell the car, or that it wasn’t borrowed without my knowledge, or that I failed to report it stolen.”, “oh, sorry, I forgot to report it stolen… but, I shouldn’t be required to defend myself after being cited, you should be required to prove it was me before citing me.”
Sure, you get cited in person and then have to go to court to defend yourself. But, at least they’ve established that you were the operator of the vehicle.
I do not suggest giving the government the opportunity or power to cite the owner by default without first establishing that you were the individual who committed the offense or crime. I also don’t suggest giving the power to automated camera devices that have been shown, in certain cases with certain devices, to be fallible in how they determine someone committed the crime or offense.
How about sending them warnings from the device and only citations from an actual officer in person when caught in the act? A certain number of warnings to the offending vehicle could require the owner to then present themselves to discuss the situation before citations are given. Refusing to present oneself by a certain period could then result in sending a police officer to the registered address to the vehicle to then continue their investigation… in person.
Just build better infrastructure.
Ok, what better infrastructure do you recommend? Consider a 60mph straight road that passes through a village with shops and schools on both sides of the road, currently a 30mph speed limit through that section.
Speed plateaus are great for limiting speed. There’s a residential neighborhood in my area, two lane, 1ea either direction, that has a few of them with the gentle slopes up to a flat topped plateau and down again, not just larger speed bumps, but plateaued. You can even put cross walks on these. The speed limit in that area is 25mph in that section.
That isn’t a fix all for every* situation, but there are other options, especially other than using automated surveillance systems that are regularly questioned for being excessive, biased, fallible, and for being used by jurisdictions as free and unchecked revenue sources.
Especially when infrastructure engineering doesn’t become a revenue source that the jurisdiction then relies on, which leads them to build more, while also funneling tax payer money into third party venders who are also capable of either reviewing the data collected or viewing that data themselves. Some of these outsource to third parties to manage the traffic enforcement process, instead of having law enforcement certified and city/jurisdiction employed peace officers from being the only ones who can view or review the data.