What is anti-car dependency?
This site serves as a bible for all things regarding anti-car dependency. You have a question? Just find it in the sidebar or search for it.
However, if you want an overview what anti-car dependency is about, you can read further.
Build cities for people, not cars.
We don’t actually need cars for everything in our daily lives. We should build our city around people not cars. This means better walkability, better bike infrastructure, better public transport.
Cars should be optional, not necessary.
What’s wrong with cars?
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Cars pollute
A report said that Earth has 11 years to cut emissions to avoid dire climate scenarios. From this study, it said that
Transport is responsible for 24% of global direct carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fuel combustion
Another article cites that
Transport accounts for around one-fifth of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions
Where
Road travel accounts for three-quarters of transport emissions. Most of this comes from passenger vehicles – cars and buses.
Tire wear contributes to the microplastics in the environment. From this research and article,
30 vol% of the microplastic particles that pollute rivers, lakes and oceans consist of tire wear, thus affecting aquatic wildlife.
The best way to reduce all this pollution in a short time frame is to reduce cars. Electric cars can help but they can’t come fast enough. We need immediate action and we need it now.
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Car infrastructure is expensive to maintain
From this paper, it said
Extrapolated to the total number of passenger kilometers driven, cycled or walked in the European Union, the cost of automobility is about €500 billion per year. Due to positive health effects, cycling is an external benefit worth €24 billion/year and walking €66 billion/year.
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Car infrastructure makes everything else expensive
Cars need parking and those “free” parking spaces doesn’t actually come free. Those costs are actually being passed over to us in the form of rent, higher shopping prices, etc [source].
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Cars are not accessible to everyone
Cars are only accessible to a subset of people. For these categories of people [source],
- Children and Teenagers
- they can’t drive
- Stay-at-Home Parents
- parents who have no choice to drive when running errands
- The Income-Vulnerable
- they can’t afford to drive
- Senior Citizens
- they can’t drive
They are limited to all sorts of services just because they can’t drive.
- Children and Teenagers
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Cars waste our time
People stuck in traffic are wasting time. Time that can be spent on other things. All this time wasted comes down to a figure. From this article,
$1,622 in time wasted for the average Chicago driver, and $5.8 billion for the city,
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Cars take up a lot of space
These are valuable spaces only dedicated for cars. Space that could have been used to build parks, homes, shops, etc. Not only space on the roads, but space when they are parked too. According to this article,
Cars are parked 95 percent of the time.
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Cars are dangerous
Human beings make mistakes. But when they make mistakes behind the wheel, people’s lives are lost. The recent accident that killed 8 children on the ELITE highway proved that. In fact, The Department of Statistics reported that 3165 people died last year from traffic accidents alone.
This does not include the amount of people injured by vehicles.
What can we do?
We should provide better alternatives to cars. This means that we need to improve on walkability, bikability and better public transportation.
Take away car lanes to build better sidewalks, better bike paths and better bus lanes.
There are more of us that subscribe to this idea. Check out the welcome post on the /r/fuckcars subreddit.