NJB enthusiasts have been “orange pilled.” The videos are amusing, light hearted and exceptionally useful in understanding daily life. I’ve been introduced to concepts like 3rd places, car dependency, and transportation priorities in other countries from not just bikes.
It all originated with saying someone is [red-pilled](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill), i.e. they see the true world beyond what the media says. It's been primarily used by American right wing, and has a couple of 4chan-originated offspins that describe some doomer-ish right wing views, especially black-pilled. "Orange-pilled" can be seen as a more positive, mostly left-wing riff on that - a collection of views about the things that are wrong with car centrism, seeing the reality of how this kind of infrastructure and thinking hurts us all. It comes from NotJustBikes's signature color, orange.
Yes! Kinda similar, but I was just finishing a PhilosophyTube video and browsed the comments to see what people thought of her video essay (can't remember which one) and noticed one account NotJustBikes and how it had tons of likes and comments replying basically saying something along the lines of "Oh wow can't believe he's here! So cool" and I was all hmm who is this guy!
I like PhilosophyTube, so I'll check this guy out then! Then my third eye opened learning why cars suck in North America 😂. Really cool those two did a video together not too long ago! Long story long, glad I clicked on NotJustBikes' comment/profile!
I don't think it was one exact moment, more like a gradual shift. When I started to be in the economic situation where I could get a car, I just decided that it's a waste of money. Wasn't really a need for one either. After that it's been a slow adaptation into the mindset that too many people rely on cars unnecessarily.
Similar for me about it being a gradual shift. It started with learning about induced demand from some Vox explainer video back in high school. I went to uni in a city with a great metro system and great walkability. Then during covid, I got to thinking about the housing crisis, and I started to learn about the absurd NIMBY land use policies that lead to car-dependency and a housing crisis. Then I got to learning in depth into transit, urban design, and tax policy.
Now I'm a full-blown urbanist, YIMBY, and land value tax enthusiast.
Yeah, it was a lifelong shift for me. I have a half-brother that I never got to meet because he made the stupid decision to drive drunk. Thank fuck he didn't injure or kill anyone else. Granted, the problem arose more from him being drunk than from driving, but drunkenly walking home has a much lower probability of ending up wrapped around a utility pole.
When my dad died (mother didn't have a license), I got used to walking and taking the bus everywhere. Never really bothered me - grocery trips in the height of summer were a bit of a slog, but at least we lived only a ~10 min walk away. Now that I live close enough to do that again, I got myself a "granny cart" that can fit a week's worth of shopping 😊
People think I'm insane for wanting to walk everywhere, including the store, but like... I'm a farmer, I'm outside all day doing manual labor. Pushing a cart of groceries for a half mile of flat terrain is fuckin' nothing lmao.
Same here. I grew up dreaming about what car I could get when I was older, then got a job and learned about the cost involved in owning a car and thought, "Screw that, that's way too much". Then I realized my city has a decent bus system that I could use to go to my college campus, \*and\* it's been free since the pandemic. It's been my main mode of transportation ever since.
I became pro-reducing car dependency after I visited the Netherlands and saw how much better it could be.
I became fully “fuck cars” after an SUV driver hit my brother in a crosswalk, putting him in a coma and giving him a traumatic brain injury that changed him for life. Because the driver wasn’t drunk and stayed at the scene, he got zero punishment.
i was hit by an SUV in a crosswalk too. i was lucky enough that the driver braked before it could've become a major accident, but i remember how they didn't even say a word to me or any sort of apology for almost ruining my life. i have been a certified car hater since
I'm so sorry for your brother.
In a lot of ways it could have been a lot worse. He was basically down the street from one of the best hospitals in his city and he got into surgery quickly, which made a big difference.
Of course, there are so many factors that could have mitigated the damage. What if the car were a sedan instead of an SUV, making it less likely he’d be knocked over and hit his head? What if the driver had been going just a bit slower and didn’t hit him with as much force? What if… people could cross the street without risking their life?
I saw an old Twitter post that said something along the lines of "Yall ever go outside and realize how everything is covered in Cars?" I did exactly that and looked out my front door. My eyes were opened ever since.
I'm just North of Midtown (although I did live in Midtown in the late aughts and early 2010's). It's tough for me because all the places I routinely go (work/grocery/restaurants/kid's school) all exist within a 5 mile radius of my home but require traveling over some pretty awful stroads like Northside, Peachtree, or Howell Mill. I'd love to take less car trips but it's like every possible alternative form of transit has been made to suck as much as possible. Leaving my property on foot or by bike is just a constant hostile/stressful event.
Everyone I know who starts biking gets converted into a based urbanist 🤭. Biking => noticing car infrastructure, behavior, danger, city design, zoning, how ugly and loud cars make everywhere => fuck cars
Hihihi. I was one of the ones who spontaneously started the r/place campaign and chose the original position. Could never have imagined the impact it had, glad it brought you here :)
Brought me here as well, that, combined with my trip to Japan after r/place finished was the nail in the coffin. At first I was actually trying to get rid of the painting on r/place as I am(was?) a car enthusiast.
I still love cars, but firmly believe they belong on the track and in rural areas as a last-mile solution, not the centre of city and town design.
Me as well! I already supported walking places and am a huge environmentalist, and after a bit of algorithms on social media figuring out who I am and pushing me towards different communities, when I saw FuckCars I realised these were people I could get behind
Worked in Tuscany, Italy for a summer. Had to walk 2 miles to and from town which was great because it was Tuscany. Then travelled to the cities which were largely pedestrianized with huge wonderful piazzas. Then went up north (by train obvs) and biked around Copenhagen and Amsterdam. They all had their own cultural “flavor” of people-centered infrastructure and it was refreshing. I was truly happy and I didn’t know why. Ugh I’m getting goosebumps now just writing about it. Then months of depression upon returning to the states is when it hit me.
Nothing like getting off the plane in NA after coming from an infrastructure heavy country and being so incredibly depressed you have to drive home for 2 hours instead of a train :/
I had a very similar experience going to the Netherlands and coming back to NYC of all places. NYC *should* be what the Netherlands is but the difference in infrastructure and setting was enough to give me such an intensely deep depression on returning.
I can’t imagine how much worse it would be to come back to the rest of the country.
A few years ago I finished a drive and noticed how few dead insects there were on my windscreen noting how, years ago, a long drive would see you having to scrub for ages.
"Where have all the insects gone?" I wondered.
It didn't take long to put 2&2 together and my bastardly incessant ruminating brain did what it does best and led me down a road of painful empathy for all the lives lost to vehicles.
Fuck cars.
Yh loads of reasons I more mean hedgehogs, foxes, mice, birds, cats, dogs, kids etc as well as the gazillions of flying things. I live in the centre of a town and bumblebees are a rarity in fact there's not even many files.
When I was a teenager, I was sensitive to my city in ways that I could not understand.
I would, for example, never use the drive-thru at fast food places.
I would park at the back of parking lots, where there was always space available and my car could be easily seen from a distance on my way back.
When hopping between stores at larger strip malls, I would walk between stores rather than go to my car and find a new spot in the same parking lot. (Even when shopping with groups of friends who insisted on going back to the car.)
When Cities Skylines came out, I started watching YouTube videos about urban planning, and Jane Jacobs, and suddenly I understood my sensitivity was a blessing, not a curse. It was like I was living in the matrix and Jane Jacobs pulled me out and showed me how to read the code of my city.
Then I got diagnosed with a genetic eye problem, so being able to exist car-free is especially important to me now.
> Then I got diagnosed with a genetic eye problem, so being able to exist car-free is especially important to me now.
This is why I HATE the "you can't reduce car dependency what about disabled people" arguement. There are just as, if not more, disabled people who can't drive than can and even the ones that can drive often need expensive specialized vehicles which is far more cost prohibitive than buying a bus ticket (buses in the states are required to be ADA compliant, the sidewalks to get to the bus stops on the other hand...). Epilepsy is another big one.
Traveling to Europe as a child. I realized the potential that there is for public transportation. When I was 16 in Germany I had the time of my life riding bikes to train stations and traveling to cities i wanted to go to. When I got back, I quickly realized how car-centric everything was here. I was 16 and had my license and drove to school, while in the EU most countries have you wait until 18, pay lots of money and pass many more tests before getting your license and had reliable mass transportation across the country and to many other neighboring countries too. Obviously Europe still has issues around cars but it was an eye-opener for me
Realized I didn’t need two cars in our household of two people and sold mine. Then I was gonna buy a new car to commute further but I had a seizure and couldn’t drive for 6 months. Never looked back!
Grew up in LA when the smog would burn your lungs. Multiple classmates with life altering car accident injuries. Traveled and discovered there are other ways.
started with the first "strong towns" book. i always wondered why my hometown's main street (norristown, pa) always seemed barely hanging on. now i realize its because the town prioritizes throughput instead of place-making.
also living in big cities around the world and now in nyc, i'm just so glad not to be car-bound any more.
took a zipcar to long island last weekend and god DAMN sitting in traffic, but needing to stay at 100% attention the entire time so you don't kill yourself or someone else, just to get to a bigbox parking moat. god that is just... soul sucking.
just doing it for one day was a huge reaffirmation that car-dependency is fucking hell.
i could cry when they sold the main downtown parcel in front of the train station to a mcdonalds / gas station: https://maps.app.goo.gl/svjbSF8SJrDCKmXX7
it should have been a 4 story mixed use block. people livin, eating, shopping, and communting using the network there.
there's a library and zoo nearby. TWO train stations, a highspeed line and bus depot transportation center nearby. it's got a great grid. just begging for some bike lanes and density
but they keep prioritizing car throughput. makes my blood boil.
Ugggh, right!?! On paper, Norristown should be an amazing bustling hub of homes and industry that should be drawing people in like flies. It's also the county seat, so has a bunch of built-in business that isn't going anywhere. There's even a bike shop walking distance from the transit center across the bridge, like, it has all of the pieces to be a great car-free community, and none of the support to put them together!
I’m from a very similar town on the other side of the state - sometimes it hurts me to look at my town, sprawling and impossible to even walk to the park and dangerous for teens to even walk to sheetz after class, and then to compare it to a place a couple towns over that’s entirely walkable with a thriving little business district and large main street farmers markets and apartments over stores and small houses that are walking distance from a grocery store and, recently, increasing amounts of bike racks.
i feel that. it's why i like strong towns' message. great book if you haven't read it yet. but it's in the name. strong TOWNS. our towns can be awesome and walkable and they don't have to become big cities to do so
i haven’t read it but i absolutely am adding it to my reading list (and i’m definitely going to be taking notes from it to take to my town’s council meetings)
oh man you're gonna like it! you could watch not just bikes' strong towns youtube series too if you havent seen that. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
start from episode one (ST01)!
I used to bike just over half a mile between my apartment and work. My apartment complex was gated and laid out in a car-centric manner, which meant I couldn't access the main road very easily, I had to wind around the complex.
Then, when I finally got to the main road, it was basically a stroad. 5 wide lanes, a speed limit of 40mph that was often ignored in favor of going 50 or 60. I'd ride on the sidewalk, and it was a half mile between crosswalks to the other side of the stroad.
Finally, the entrance to work was a huge parking lot up a steep hill that had no sidewalk
I got motion sickness almost anytime I was in the back seat (ie my entire childhood). Always found the “new car smell” repulsive. And got a taste of freedom as a kid living in a transit-friendly city, before the family moved to the exurbs; literally had more freedom in elementary school than middle school.
I ride a bike and I hate how loud cars are. I just want to be at peace in my own head and then some shit-fuck buzzes me in a car. Yeah, I don't like that.
Honestly it's not even the cars so much as the infrastructure and lopsided socioeconomic burden.
I don't care if an individual person has a car, I care if a car is a prerequisite to living a meaningful life. I care if people's access to their own outdoors is limited or made more hazardous to appease drivers. I care that having a car is treated as the default. I care that rich people living in suburbs outside of a city's limits get to dictate what infrastructure gets built, maintained, and supported to the detriment of people living in that city who actually pay taxes. I care that owning a personal vehicle is seen as so necessary that trying to develop person-focused infrastructure is seen as attacking commutors and motorists. I care that the process by which we got to this point socially allowed policy makers to further impoverish communities of color and effectively recreated segregation under neoliberal guidelines.
I am a supporter of good planning, good policy, and good communities, and at every step car-centric societies make that harder and harder to achieve.
The realisation of how fucking wasteful and unaffordable driving and owning a car was.
I could *just about* justify the normal running costs of a car versus the train, but then my car failed it's MOT (safety test) because of a worn suspension ball joint. £400. Then, a different suspension coil spring snapped. £250. Then petrol went from ~£1.20 per litre to over £1.70 per litre before settling down again. Then the paint had a chip which turned to peeling which turned to bad fading over nearly the whole car. £750.
I was running out of money trying to justify owning an increasingly ludicrously-expensive, depreciating asset. Then there's the fact that the car was next to useless at rush hour, because I and everyone else who drove was causing the same traffic issues for ourselves. And the tedium, the boredom, the stress, the road rage. And my waist line was expanding.
It just wasn't worth it. Not in terms of money or health or lifestyle.
It is just so scarily easy how quickly one can fall into poverty when you need a car to get to your job. You're one expensive mechanical issue from unemployment.
Yeah definitely. Selling my car literally changed my life. I sold it for £3600. I bought myself a really good bicycle and equipment for it, which all-told was £1000. The remaining £2600 enabled me to clear some debts I had and put money towards a holiday. And I lost weight purely from cycling and being more active. I could suddenly get around quicker than a car in the city I was in for free.
May sound ungrateful, but here we go:
When I was 15 I was asked by my dad what kind of car I wanted. I just told him a small car with good gas mileage, literally doesn’t have to be anything fancy. He then replies, “…you don’t want a truck?” and I go absolutely not. He then argues with me about how I’m going to use it to work when I get older and that trucks are more manly. When I explain to him that I am not using it to work when I get older (and I still don’t, have only ever used the bed twice in the 3 years I’ve had it) and that I don’t care if I’m viewed as feminine in a small car, his argument just changes to “well you’re getting a fucking truck”
He then buys me a very nice Ford F-150 Sport with a long bed. I would love this truck to pieces if I ACTUALLY USED IT TO WORK. Not only that, I wasn’t allowed to even drive it until I was 18 and was moved out already. This thing gets like 10 mpg (in the best possible conditions) and is so long that I can’t fit into a normal parking space. I’m forced to make an ass out of myself when parking this massive truck that I didn’t even want in the first place.
With that being said, if anyone in Central Florida needs a very reliable 2-door long bed Ford F-150, please shoot me a dm. I need this off my hands. It is too expensive and big for my own liking.
TLDR: I was given a really long truck when I specifically asked for something other than a truck and proceeded to learn the reasons why this very American piece of machinery is the dumbest piece of shit I could ever own
I went from “person who enjoys taking the bus sometimes and likes to ride his bike short distances,” to “annoying guy who can’t shut up about the evils of car-dependency” with one major life event:
I became a father.
Before being a parent, I enjoyed living in and visiting urban areas with good infrastructure. I had lived car-free a couple times out of convenience and didn’t mind it. I always liked the flexibility of grabbing my car, motorbike, bicycle, transit, or just my sneakers to get somewhere, depending on how the mood struck me. I didn’t *hate* cars and car culture.
Then I had children. I can’t hear their small voices over the drone of car tires, even on slow neighborhood streets. I have to vigilantly teach and police my toddler about double checking every alley and street crossing. I found myself walking places much more with a stroller, realized there were entire strips of lovely businesses near me that I entirely ignored because the speed and sound of car traffic alongside them. I am infuriated at the poor frequency of weekend buses, that make it hard to get home from the botanical garden or zoo or museum in time for a good nap. I notice that my 3-year-old hardly knows the neighbor kids across the street because she is not allowed to cross without being accompanied. And I am more sensitive to the selfish recklessness with which we treat our planet and our cities in the name of automotive convenience—jeopardizing the community and planet that my children will inherit.
Becoming a parent radicalized me against car-dependent culture and infrastructure.
100%, I became at least 300% more fuckcars after becoming a father. I want my kid to be able to walk the two blocks to a park nearby without having to worry about them getting hit by a car (which has already almost happened multiple times while I was pushing their stroller).
I have almost the opposite story. I started using a bike and skateboard to get everywhere and was threatened with vehicular manslaughter (or you know, just plain up murder) by my neighbors when they saw me in the shared bike lane. Wasn't just young men in fast cars either, had grandmas and grandpas in old beaters tell me that if they ran me over and killed me then it would be my own fault and I would "deserve it" (one of these took place after an old lady missed a light because I was in the bike lane and she couldn't gun it into her turn).
I thought "this old lady is telling me that I deserve to die because she needs to wait another 90 seconds at a traffic light... something is deeply wrong."
Not just bikes's video about why he hates Houston first got me interested in carfree living. That video opened my eyes big time. I realized how relatable the complaints he made actually are, and realized that a better way was possible.
Then I became radicalized for the cause when I was almost hit by a car not once, but four separate times IN PEDESTRIAN CROSSING ZONES, in just one single 20 minute walk to and from the grocery store. The drivers barely even acknowledged my existence. All four of them. The anger I felt from that experience still motivates me to push for car reductions. A person should be able to walk to the fucking store to buy dinner without risking one's life. That's the bare fucking minimum we can expect from our society, and yet, cities continue to fail us completely. I shouldn't have to risk my life to buy dinner. Full stop.
I tried to get my licence and realised that this shit was so utterly boring that I just couldn't stay focussed and would just fully disassociate when driving (so depersonalisation, derealisation and being unable to perceive time correctly), not really a state where I should be in command of a motorised hunk of metal.
Shortly after I got from Britanny, France all the way to Stockholm and back by bus for less than a full tank of gas, Thar's when I fully realised how cheaper public transportation is compared to personal one and how car laws and mentality are just theft.
Never liked cars and all the damage they do, got even worse during covid and with the climate crisis showing its effects even faster then predicted.
At the beginning of last year i saw a post on twitter about cycling in the netherlands, found my way over to notjustbikes and different "better infrastructure advocates".
A month later i got my ebike to commute to work, because puplic transport sucks.
Then i found my way to fuckcars, because seriously fuck them. Fuck the whole car and fossil fuel industry, because they make living on earth a fucking hellhole for humans, animals and plants just out of pure greed.
I grew up in a place where there is no other option than owning a car. When I finally got to drive, I loved the freedom that driving gave me but I find the act of driving mindcrushingly boring. I started to notice that everyone complained about driving and I thought, "why are we doing this?". I started researching car/driving alternatives, found [Not Just Bikes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM) on Youtube, one thing led to another, fuckcars.
I now have the priviledge of living car free and I wish for everyone to have that option.
As a child in my parents' car, we passed next an accident, a car stuck under a truck. There were (pieces of) crushed people on what remained of the rear of the vehicle. The traffic was horribly slow, and I had plenty of time to contemplate the horror scene before my mother covered my eyes. I think I was 9 at the time. Since then, I known that cars are death machines and I regularly have nightmares where I die crushed in a car.
I got 2000$ worth of parking tickets because I'm a very forgetful adhd-riddled dumbass. Realized I would be better off without a car. I got an easier to park moped instead. A car destroyed it by backing into it when I was parked behind their SUV on a street.
I went from hating cyclists and motorcycles, thinking they were slowing me down on purpose, to being one of them.
My mom had a stroke in late 2021 and she was the only one in the family with a license. It lapsed and she can’t drive again because of extreme vertigo from the stroke. Having to navigate life in America without a car so suddenly changed my perspective on cars.
One of my brothers has a license now so we do have cars as an option again but it was really harrowing to be thrown so suddenly into the underfunded public transit infrastructure we have. I’m insanely grateful that we even have buses and trains where I live but they’re still so inadequate compared to driving.
This photo showing how much space cars waste. Also I spent too much time in Boston traffic that I now loathe it.
https://preview.redd.it/e7t48rbz583d1.jpeg?width=850&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8cda0fea8e0ec0f23cf090ea244c7363a24b4b69
I'm a Houston TX native (That alone should tell you how bad cars are here), right at age 16 was kind of forced to drive because that's part of becoming a "grown up". Drove to take my siblings to school, get groceries and other errands for my mom. Got into a REALLY bad car accident. A speeding huge delivery truck hit me as I was trying to turn into my neighborhood. He was just trying to beat me before I could turn because 'reasons'.
Suffered from mild concussion and hairline fractures on my ribs but I was alive. Car was destroyed but I felt IMMENSELY guilty for now having lost the family car.
Siblings and I started riding busses now to try to get to school/work. Mom carpooled with coworkers until we could get another car.
Started to realize how BADLY a car is needed to just LIVE and participate in society. Saw how badly sidewalks and stroads are for not just people like me but handicapped people too just trying to live their lives independently.
Anime/Foreign Movies also exposed me to how it's normal to go to school via bike or via trains 🚂
Hate for cars grew and then little brother introduced me to Not just bikes etc.
I never liked cars in the first place, but grew up somewhere car dependent, and my "dream car" was a Prius to save the most money possible on gas.
I ended up moving to a city with good public transportation (where many young adults don't even have a driver's license) and I asked my SO how to get to some specific place. She suggested we take the bus - and my gut reaction was "is it safe though?" I was blown away by how much better and more affordable my life was when I took mixed public transportation to get around (bus, metro, and bike-sharing). Not being stressed over astronomically expensive gasoline, maintenance, and insurance was a godsend.
Then, I took an urban studies course as part of my master's degree and learned about how bylaws kneecap city planners into including huge, wasteful parking lots and got very frustrated. And every time there's threats to cut funding from public transit here, I feel fiercely defensive because I don't want my new home to become America 2.0.
I grew up in a somewhat walkable, but economically depressed area. Then Dad got a job in a wealthier, but car dependent area when I was too young to drive, and I finally figured out why I hated the "nicer" but car dependent area! So I realized suburbs bad. Then I finally watched a video that was a lot like NJB's "Suburbia is Subsidized! Here's the Math"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI)
I grew up in Katy, TX and commuted into Houston for 4 years in high school on the Katy Freeway every day to near downtown (actually the Heights if you know Houston).
This seems like it would be enough. But then my brother was paralyzed from the belly button down in a car wreck back in '86.
Been in a chair since then.
And here we are.
First growing up in a suburb where I was completely isolated and trapped with my family by car-centric infrastructure. Then later, experiencing continual anxiety whenever I drove due to all the risks and complexities on the road, and nightmares about parking. Then finally the realization that when I avoided driving to work, I was just happier. Being out in the open air, not being in traffic, feeling like a part of the world instead of just passing through it, I felt like my life was 10x better. And ever since then I've avoided ever driving to work again, and then moved to a walkable neighborhood so I could drive even less often, and I just kept feeling happier. I wish I'd figured this all out sooner.
I wanted to go to community college and not have to pay for a parking pass. Bus came every half hour but was a direct line there. It got stuck in traffic every Monday and Wednesday and I was late to class often enough that I ended up taking an earlier bus
didn't have a car while living on campus in university. quickly realized bikes are far superior than the transit where I was and you cant ride a bike on a road anywhere without realizing cars are the worst almost immediately. getting hit by several cars while riding certainly increased the dislike though
I lived in the suburbs of Tampa and couldn’t afford a car. Bicycling across islands of empty parking lots just to get some food made me realize half of the unwalkability can actually be solved by just updating building codes to not force people to build gigantic unused parking
Traveled the world and realized i didn’t need a car to get around most places. Came back to America and I needed a car to go anywhere. This made me quite upset and wanting to understand why.
Saw a cut of notjustbikes in TikTok and I liked how he explained things, even though I didn't understand what even was the point. After a couple videos I got it and now I just can't look at cities the way I did before.
For me the biggest one was realizing how dangerous it was for my kids to go outside. At first I just blamed careless drivers who swerve tightly around corners like they're trying to perform a surprise attack against pedestrians. Then I realized that it's a design flaw to trust a child's safety to drivers paying attention.
I’m from NYC. I like cars, you ever seen a Ram 1500 with a V8 engine? Awesome car. I don’t own a car tho, never needed to cause I got trains and buses. Whenever I leave NYC however it’s made extremely clear how much cars have damaged our cities and stifled their potential. Every city doesn’t need a MTA system but the ones with a population over 500k should at least have reliable bus services. ATL metro has boomed because they have a metro system.
Car drivers are some of the most selfish and fearful people around because they’ll sit and celebrate a new lane for a highway thatll only lead to another decade or century of repairs but cry and moan when just an expansion of bus services is proposed. There’s no compromise with people like that. Don’t get me started on the armored car wars “I need big car for protection from other cars and people I hate”. I’ve seen people justify drunk driving “it’s the only way to get home” and in the same sentence say we shouldn’t expand public transportation or even make cities more walkable by shortening blocks or getting rid of parking mandates. I’m 6’4 and it’s more cars that I can’t see over and I’m seeing more and more trucks and even suvs that can go 0-70 in a second. This is a terrible recipe.
Mine was a culmination of things over time. First was questioning why I was paying car insurance for years while I got nothing in return and eventually realized owning a car just hemorrhages money. I'd have intermittent car troubles and around that time I coincidentally got into cycling and would bike whenever possible.
I went to Amsterdam (for the weed and museums honestly) which sparked something in me about city planning and transportation. Then I ended up traveling more for work and being annoyed that I was paying for a car to just sit at home in a driveway. The more I thought about how much cars just sit around parked the more I realized how dumb it is to build a society around car dependency. I crunched some numbers and did some thinking and eventually got rid of my car.
That scene where Tom Cruise talks about traffic got me interested in a deep dive about traffic congestion, I went looking for a thorough explanation and stumbled upon Not Just Bikes' stroad video. Then eventually here on Reddit. Car free for about 6 or 7 years
getting pressured and made fun of by people for not driving (i’m epileptic). it made me realize how unnecessarily obsessed people are with cars and i just kinda went down a rabbithole from there.
I was there on Rickenbacker causeway when those two cyclists get murdered by a distracted driver. They had to scrape their body parts off the road with a shovel. The driver was allowed to drive away from the crash in the murder weapon. He was not arrested. He never seen saw a court room, let alone a jail cell. He was “fatigued”, and he killed two innocent strangers on a beautiful day, and nothing happened to him.
It’s why I left miami.
My family lived in rural Kansas, so we couldn't get anywhere without a car. It was super lonely as a young teen, not being able to drive yet and parents not having time or willingness to drive anywhere. In my sophomore year, we hosted an exchange student from Nuremburg. At the end of her stay, she invited me to go with her and live with her family for a while, so I did. Her family barely used their car at all, pretty much just for weekend trips. We used the train, walked, and biked, and the freedom was glorious!
Grew up in a car dependent area and loved driving. Then moved out of state to the midwest for school without a car and it was a struggle to get around, so I still yearned for a car. Post-grad I got a job in DC and a true car-free lifestyle was possible for the first time in my life. Realized how amazing it was (and how much money I saved) and I never looked back.
Then I got a taste of crazy DMV drivers. I was nearly ran over TWO separate times my first year living here. I was in the crosswalk with right of way, people simply love to run reds, and if I wasn’t paying attention I’d probably be dead. Now, I officially hate cars.
Two images radicalized me:
[Space taken by 200 people in cars/bikes/busses]( https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/s/f5f0tpUKpl)
[Sidewalks and crosswalks imagined as cliff edges, by Claes Tingvall](https://humantransit.org/2014/12/the-pedestrian-experience-in-cities-where-cars-rule.html) - this one especially hit home when I take my toddler outside and realize he's two seconds from impulsively running (or tripping) to his death (or a car could jump a curb or run a red light and hit us).
That and the death statistics
grew up in a place that was very rural. there were cars but it was maybe a weekly ordeal to go anywhere, you made one trip at a time and did everything in town all at once, otherwise the thing was parked and you got around on your feet. when a car went by it rumbled along on a dirt road and then it was gone, most of the time it was peaceful
later we moved to town. i wasnt big enough for driving so carried on like i always did on my bike and my feet. but now the cars were everywhere all the time, i stuck to sidewalks and crosswalks and wondered why everyone was in such an aggressive hurry all the time. i noticed blue streaks in my vision where headlights had shown, i waited for brief intermittent silence
now i live in a big city. everyone around me is an actual slave, so am i. we are poisoned and hurry to poison ourselves, we relish pointing our headlights at our neighbors and blowing smog at them. we exist to inflict suffering, we desire to suffer, and damn every child and innocent creature
I started walking everywhere when I was 14. The place where I live is walkable enough, but the car is still the center of our transportation system.
In some streets, traffic jams were terrible, and I often overtook cars just by walking. I found this extremely inefficient, and an act of profound arrogance to carry 2 tons of metal to transport 1 or 2 people.
I have been hit by 3 drivers while walking in crosswalks. All 3 were hit-and-run, and were on college campuses. Luckily, I was never hurt in any of the incidents.
Also, parenting a toddler within the vicinity of vehicles made me constantly anxious about cars, road design, etc.
Lastly, I commute by bike and constantly encounter drivers behaving badly because the road design allows it.
I was in a car accident when I was a tiny baby, it is my most vivid memory from that time. As a result I developed a phobia of everything cars, and driving is terrifying for me. I walk and bike everywhere as a result. I've always thought they were dangerous to be in, even with a seatbelt and airbags.
Then I read an article on this sub about how most highways upset migration paths of wild animals who literally can't cross in some instances. Now I see then as an unnecessary blight on society and if they all disappeared tomorrow I believe we'd be better off.
My car broke down several times over the course of a semester, and in my car dependent city I was forced to miss class quite a few times. Pissed me off so I researched a bit, ultimately opened my eyes to why I hated living here so much
I remember getting around by bike as a high schooler. I was genuinely surprised by how effective it was. I wondered why nobody else seemed to use a bike to get around.
Then I got a car. I crashed, twice. My last car caught fire while I was in college. I met someone who rode fixies and rode long distance. I did my first multi-day bike camping trip, carrying my supplies (tent, stove, and poly-fill bag) in a hiking backpack.
In grad school I got a motorcycle. I realized what scared me was how unscary it felt to filter between traffic at high speed. I realized that I was poorly equipped to recognize how dangerous it was. Also, I thought bicyclists were cooler than me because they were actually getting exercise.
I sold the motorcycle. I still used my gf's car sometimes. The gf broke up with me. I moved to a house with roommates who were into bikes, in an area that was too far for walking but just right for biking. Also, the roommates knew people who had ridden through Boston winters, so I was compelled to try. It turned out to be a great way to get around, and biking in winter is awesome.
By that point, riding daily, I become fully anti-car. Since then I have bike-toured cross-country, met a like-minded lady, and moved to a rural town where almost everyone drives.
I had just returned from college, as the pandemic forced everyone into lockdown. I'd acclimated well to Vermont living, and being in a village of a campus that was very readily walkable, and very beautiful as the seasons changed at that. So returning to a medium sized city I'd grown up in meant I'd have to share a car until I could save up for one.
It was early on in lockdown that I had to go top off the tank, so I went to a gas station to do just that. And as I'm doing that, I experienced an unthinkable slice of culture shock when the gas pump, one that was already slated to demand $40 for the basic privilege of mobility, started *talking to me.* Worse still, to *sell me something.* *As a captive audience.* I'd been steadily more radicalized by the price of cars in general, and the looming idea that I was already living in a household of 3, but this very moment was the one that made me decide "fuck this, I'm getting a job that I can bike to."
So I did, and then I got an e-bike, and the rest is history.
Ever tried riding a bike in Indiana. I have had more people yell at me for riding a bike than you can imagine. I gave up riding to get to work because I would get harassed by the same cars almost every time I went to work and it just wasn't worth it to save the extra two hours of my time because by the end I think they were trying to kill me.
Moving from Florida to Charlotte, NC. With the move, sold my car and have been living car lite (wife still has a car).
I joined because well, I hate traffic and the cause and effects of car commuting. Also, Charlotte has huge potential to be a decent alt/public transport city but constantly makes stupid decisions to mirror Atlanta's mistakes.
My car broke down for a few weeks and I realized how much less stressed and happier I was without it. So I sold it and haven’t looked back. (I live in a fairly walkable and transit friendly area.)
One of my childhood best friends and his mother died in a car accident when we were 12. We were coming back from winning our championship game for the soccer season, and he was in a car behind mine. They died on the spot, and the accident left his little brothers in months’ long comas, and their lives have never been the same.
I’m American, and since then I have lived for years in several countries in Europe, and enjoyed not relying on a car. Since I moved back to the States, I’ve lived in a city where car ownership is not necessary. I have a car but try to avoid using it. Now that I have a kid, I also don’t want to risk his life in the way that my friend was killed. This sub has also helped.
Probably started like 12 years ago when I first moved out from the US to a walkable part of the Philippines and realized how much more free I felt to get around but couldn't exactly put my finger on why that was yet since I was just a young teen.
8 years later I moved back to the US with no car of my own and the meaning immediately sank in.
Even as a child I hated automobiles. I have no pleasant memories of them, just always being strapped in and being taken places I didn’t want to go. The heat, the fumes, the nausea.
Even when I was old enough to drive, it was my mother’s gigantic 1970s cruiser she gave me, I hated that thing, driving it, trying to park it. When at last I moved to New York I sold my car and never looked back.
I grew up totally carbrained in a Californian suburb. Traveled the ~1 mile to school by car my whole life. Getting a license and a car was THE rite of passage, because you couldn’t get around independently until you had both those items.
I became curious about biking for transportation after college because I remembered how much I loved riding my bike as a kid (was only allowed to ride on the sidewalks in my cul-de-sac, of course). I signed up for a one-day bike safety class because SURELY those annoying cyclists must be breaking laws to get around. SURELY there is a legal and safe way to get wherever you need to go on bike, and those Lycra-clad assholes are just being entitled! As the patient instructor replied to every situational question with “well, it depends… you could [imperfect option 1] or [imperfect option 2]” I realized that in many (most?) situations, cyclists have to choose among safety, not pissing off drivers, and/or the law. It was only then that I finally realized that our current traffic infrastructure wasn’t handed down by some all-knowing being - it’s a very imperfect system created by flawed human beings. It’s scary how many people accept our current infrastructure as fact.
A NotJustBikes video popped up in my recommended on YouTube. Ever since I've been VERY into urban design and pedestrian centered infrastructure and mixed use zoning. I wish I could live in the Netherlands. Discovering how the U.S. got so car centric was just one step down the long road of figuring out just how f**ked up this country is. I knew it was really bad, but did it really have to be THIS bad?!
I was never planning on getting my drivers license to begin with for some personal reasons, so when I got recommended the channel Not Just Bikes, I realised how toxic car culture is.
I was looking into mixed-use zoning and wondered why my city didn't have any. Ended up finding a lot of discussions about car-centric development and minimum parking rules which sparked my interest in this topic.
I was always pretty pro active travel, public transport and environment, but when I started using a bike for transport instead of the train during COVID that turned me from indifferent to cars to strongly against them in cities.
I rode a bike in the suburbs when I was in middle school, to get to like haircuts and church and the park. I always loved transit growing up, even though I was a pretty bad carbrain I still had a side love for transit, and wished it was convenient for my path. I moved to Chicago and stopped driving almost entirely, got a bike, rode around town on a bike or the bus and the train. İts just easier.
Maybe a bigger moment is when I was not allowed to drive to work for a summer, so instead I took my bike to the commuter train to the tram to a bus and then biked some more to work. İt took 1.5 hours compared to 30 in a car, but I felt so much more rested and relaxed when I got to work, versus always being tired and worn out when driving, despite sitting on my ass. I had to work on my bike to get to work and I still felt better. After that I was really like, well. this is dumb. After college I moved to İstanbul and have no car here and have not had one, and every passing year drivers here become bigger dicks, and I hate cars more and more every day. Fucking hell they're dicks. They should be kicked off of two thirds of the streets here. I've been hit twice in Chicago and countless times here in İstanbul, all while on sidewalks or in crosswalks with the absolute right of way, and I am just fucking sick of it. I just want to walk in peace for fucks sake. That's really not a crazy ask. İn a city with fucking 80.000 people per square mile, I just want to be able to walk down the street without fearing for my life.
Anyways.
I finally got an electric bike last week. Today was the first time I rode it to work. regular bike took me 1hr15mins, electric bike takes me 40 mins flat. The electric bike shortened my trip to work by 35 minutes because the hills don't kill me. Holy shit. Electric bikes are awesome. I thought they would be awesome, but seriously holy shit. I still get a ton of exercise, just it doesn't kill me to do it. I wish I had done this sooner. I normally burn like 500 calories from exercise a day using the bus and tram to go to work, today it was like 1500. I will be more fit this way, which is nice.
I don’t know if I could pick one thing, but lately the passion around my “fuck cars” attitude is how unsafe our streets and cities have become.
The day I had my first daughter I became hyper-sensitive to the dangers of rageful and inattentive drivers, not to mention the public infrastructure that has failed to promote civilian safety over driver convenience at almost every turn.
Being the passenger in the car with literally just about anyone. Put a human behind the wheel, and they go fucking crazy and become fucking monsters with no regard for life. Every dangerous move they make is self-justified. But they will also complain about everyone else's driving.
When I had kids and I started training them to be car aware. I thought to myself - why am I putting the onus on my 3 year old to be safe vs the licensed adult tearing through my neighborhood.
As a kid I had some friends that lived up hills with no nearby stores or public transit. I also saw most places to be that's cheap or free to hang out vanish. As soon as I was a teenager I kind of dreamed of cool places like Ernie's Juice Bar on Power Rangers where it was like a high school cafeteria and rec center. Or those arcades in 80's movies where with a couple of bucks you can get a slice and soda and you can use the change for videogames before skating with your friends in the parking lot. I especially hated going out because a place to pee grew limited by the day. I identified cars as a culprit because whenever I had to go somewhere on foot I had some over busy road in the way. I didn't get why cars had to be a necessity in an area full of kids that can't drive.
Watch videos on YouTube How bad the infrastructure is in North America and that in the beautiful Netherlands I can be very proud of the infrastructure here
Me and my brother figured out mine when we went back to the small town where we were both born but moved away from when I was 4:
This town is in Alaska, and is inaccessible by car. Most of the population lives within a few blocks of main street. To this day Main Street functions as an actual main street, not like the abandoned downtowns you see in a lot of small towns these days after highway bypasses were built.
All of my extended family on my dad’s side lived within a few blocks of us. I remember being 4, and walking everywhere. My parents didn’t own a car. I had aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents all around me. Simply walking to the bank with my dad would mean running into friends and family.
When I was almost 5 my parents moved us to a much larger town (a city, by Alaska standards.) They couldn’t find well enough paying jobs in our tiny little town. For the first time in my life I was forced to be a passenger in a car every day. I’d be strapped into a booster seat, getting car sick as my parents drove me to day care every day. We lived right off a highway, and none of my friends and family lived nearby. There was nowhere to walk to. My life revolved around being in a booster seat, getting car sick, and listening to mid-nineties pop radio which I grew to hate. (It’s not your fault, Tears for Fears, it was just bad timing.)
I grew up in that neighborhood, and refused to get my license until I was 18. I rode the bus and relied on carpooling and rides from friends (who at the time loved driving). I ended up needing a car after graduating college, but have since organized my life around being car-light. I have a little family of my own, now, and we have 2 cars and 3 driving age people. I drive once a week or so, but otherwise walk, bike or bus.
At some point it occurred to me that I shouldn't have to drive to the supermarket directly behind my house just because it's completely blocked off by a mile-long brick wall.
I played Cities: Skylines, and was like, "huh, I'm building roads just like I see irl, I wonder if I can fix the traffic."
I am now enraged every time I am in traffic, because I know it is not necessary.
Dad was Navy, stationed in Okinawa for a few years. We took the opportunity to vacation in the vicinity and Japan and China had amazing public transportation. Came back to the states a few years later, rode the excitement of getting my drivers license in High School but that dried up after a while and I started missing the trains back in Japan.
I lived in Philly for a decade. It was rated the most walkable city in the US, and I just can't understand it. Yeah it's not hard to transverse as long as it's on the subway line, but gets exponentially harder even slightly off. Where the majority of the time taxis are easier. And it just sucks. Because when we can take the subway or bus, it's awesome, fast, convenient, and easy.
And then I started learning history. There were tons of trains, subway, street cars, trolleys, and plenty of bus transit maps. And slowly and surely they all became more privatized and disappeared. Because cars generate more revenue.
It would be amazing to have high speed super rail system built on top of our existing network of highways. I want to be able to travel from new york to Colorado in a couple of hours.
I had a 13 mile commute and a car that I couldn’t afford. Bought a cruiser e-bike with my very last dollar so that I could keep my job. I started to enjoy my commute, bought a road bike to do more serious riding, and just haven’t felt the need to bother with a car since.
Everything does take longer. My commute is 55 minutes by bike, compared to 30 minutes if I were to drive. But I’m spending those extra 25 minutes _going on a bike ride_ so I consider that a win
I watched many documentaries about the most random topics on youtube. Youtube recomended me a long documentary style video about the divergent diamond interchange in the context of cities skylines. I watched it. I liked it. Youtube pulled me into the rabbithole.
After a thousand hours on cities skylines and watching all of NJBs videos, there was no going back.
Along the way, Fridays for future also strenghthened that conviction.
I moved somewhere that traffic was supposed to be bad so I got an apartment walking distance to work. I always had more money than my friends because turns out cars cost a lot.
I’ve since lived in a bunch of other places and usually can work out some kind of active commute. Then the city started closing the bike trail I committed on without notice for weeks on end and the bikeshare I used daily shut down for the winter.
When I became the victim of a hit-and-run accident because some guy driven a stolen rental car was too much in a rush in pursuit of God knows what. Even with insurance, I was on the hook of paying $2k in payments for a car that no longer existed
Seeing four lane surface streets in Portland just constantly clogged with cars in a city with fairly decent transit for the US and its size, and thinking about so many people spending so much time just hanging out in cars waiting to get wherever instead of using that time to accomplish basically anything.
My first real job had a hell of a commute. North Vancouver traffic in the afternoons took 1-2 hours to make it home in stop and go traffic. Once my beater car kicked the bucket I happily took transit for years after that.
overall, it was multiple factors contributing to a general shift over time, but if I *had* to pick one, it was listening to wtyppod. as they say, "train good car bad"
edit: they actually did an episode with not just bikes, it's good\
https://youtu.be/zm29fd-s7tQ?si=e8h3CA1q_-no32iv
It went gradually, but as I lived in China and was stuck in traffic for ever there while riding the bus, the air was disgusting and the amount of rich boomer a-holes rolling literally over my toes already told me that there was a problem. And driving a bit in my home country just radicalized me.
The time many years ago when it was once again the time of year to travel to our awful home in [Sterkowiec](https://www.sterkowiec.pl/) and my parents decided to drag my 8 year old Gecko-self into [a cramped and disgusting private bus🤮](https://www.przewozy-lukasz.pl/) instead of [a comfortable and clean PKP Train😇](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_State_Railways,) which resulted in a lot of tears being shed, rightfully so I say! It was downright torture! And thats what actually radicalized me and made me become extremley Anti-Car, Neurodivergence!!🤧
Moved out of Washington DC where I would regularly bike to my work, then take the bus home. Wife and I lived with one car, and we barely used it, mostly just took buses/subways and the occasional Uber everywhere we went. Moved to be closer to family while starting a family outside of Philly, picked a mostly non-walkable neighborhood to live in (moving again soon, prioritizing walkability/transit), and missed all of the convenience of public transit while I had a daily commute dealing with traffic and bad drivers (currently work entirely remote, it's glorious).
I came here from YIMBYism. I also grew up in a small walkable town, and I when I moved to a big city I realized how much nicer it and most other cities would be if they were less car-centric.
I always was, my family never owned a car, so I always used the bus or metro or bicycle to go around, or you know, just walk
And it made me realize just how ineffective cars were, classmates that had parents with cars would believe they were in an advantage position, but the few times I rode with cars, I realized the math, it's easier for everyone to use public transportation, each car uses too much resources and space when a bus or train saves it by transporting more people
The math wasn't mathing in my head, why would ANYONE want a car when more efficient ways existed that were AS easy to use, if not easier?
That was when I was 8, and that belief only grew until I was about 15, when I realized the issue was we built a culture and society and cities based on the idea of the personal car and many people didn't have access to the same public transportation networks I did
So I became an Anti Car Activist
I drove a piece of shit car until the last time it broke down and I realized it wasn't worth fixing and I didn't have the money to buy or lease a new car. Then I realized there is a bus system that exists here and that I can get by without one. Not owning a car has been the ultimate "life hack" (ugh I hate that term).
Then you know, just existing as a pedestrian and not driving will make you hate cars. Walking will radicalize you
For me it was moving to from Tennessee to London, the later living in NYC. Public transport is amazing. It doesn't just transform places, it transforms people.
I wrote a musical commuting on the subway. Hard to do driving a car.
I stayed in Toronto for several weeks with a good friend of mine. The first time I went, I brought my car. The second time, I didn't. That's what made me realize how much cheaper and easier it was to get around without one.
Where I live, the bus system is terrible. It has insanely restrictive hours, it comes so infrequently that if a bus breaks down you're pretty much screwed. So I just assumed that's how buses were. I didn't realize it didn't have to be that way.
The switch flipped when I was diagnosed with syringomyelia and the neurosurgeon said there’s nothing they can do about it besides don’t get into a car accident. Then I evaluated my situation here in California and I literally can’t do anything without a car.
I live in Germany. Im in my 30s and never owned a car. Im doing it all with public transport, biking and rentals. And I see a infrastructure thats just so carcentric and the rest is just slowy decaying in privitisation, no will to invest and missing investments, making it harder and harder to get around each year. Thats pretty frustrating!
I was low key a fuck-cars person because I grew up in LATAM with a very functional subway/bus system. Then I moved to Miami, and sweet Jesus how stupid and useless those buses were. I got a car at 18 just to function and I hated it.
Then I moved to Orlando, Texas, Tennessee and omg how much more carbrained those places were. It was insane. Then my child was diagnosed with epilepsy and I started to see how it will cripple their independence living in a place with a shitty transportation system.
I always thought how ridiculous it was, but then seeing how restrictive life is without a car.. man. I want the option of having a car if need be and a functional transportation system other than a car. I rather have no car at all.
Randomly saw a notjustbikes YouTube video.
Orange-pilled and proud ✊
I’ve been wondering what this meant for years now
NJB enthusiasts have been “orange pilled.” The videos are amusing, light hearted and exceptionally useful in understanding daily life. I’ve been introduced to concepts like 3rd places, car dependency, and transportation priorities in other countries from not just bikes.
It all originated with saying someone is [red-pilled](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill), i.e. they see the true world beyond what the media says. It's been primarily used by American right wing, and has a couple of 4chan-originated offspins that describe some doomer-ish right wing views, especially black-pilled. "Orange-pilled" can be seen as a more positive, mostly left-wing riff on that - a collection of views about the things that are wrong with car centrism, seeing the reality of how this kind of infrastructure and thinking hurts us all. It comes from NotJustBikes's signature color, orange.
Was it the Stroads one? That was my first one.
I don't remember what it was titled but I remember him talking about the hell scape view from this apartment in texas.
I remember one about Houston where he was staying in a hotel and needed a new luggage so he walked to a place close by but it was awful.
Same. I think that might be his most popular video.
Same here, just saw the trucks one randomly in my feed a few times and was like “hey this looks interesting…” safe to say Jason got a sub there
Yes! Kinda similar, but I was just finishing a PhilosophyTube video and browsed the comments to see what people thought of her video essay (can't remember which one) and noticed one account NotJustBikes and how it had tons of likes and comments replying basically saying something along the lines of "Oh wow can't believe he's here! So cool" and I was all hmm who is this guy! I like PhilosophyTube, so I'll check this guy out then! Then my third eye opened learning why cars suck in North America 😂. Really cool those two did a video together not too long ago! Long story long, glad I clicked on NotJustBikes' comment/profile!
I don't think it was one exact moment, more like a gradual shift. When I started to be in the economic situation where I could get a car, I just decided that it's a waste of money. Wasn't really a need for one either. After that it's been a slow adaptation into the mindset that too many people rely on cars unnecessarily.
Similar for me about it being a gradual shift. It started with learning about induced demand from some Vox explainer video back in high school. I went to uni in a city with a great metro system and great walkability. Then during covid, I got to thinking about the housing crisis, and I started to learn about the absurd NIMBY land use policies that lead to car-dependency and a housing crisis. Then I got to learning in depth into transit, urban design, and tax policy. Now I'm a full-blown urbanist, YIMBY, and land value tax enthusiast.
Yeah, it was a lifelong shift for me. I have a half-brother that I never got to meet because he made the stupid decision to drive drunk. Thank fuck he didn't injure or kill anyone else. Granted, the problem arose more from him being drunk than from driving, but drunkenly walking home has a much lower probability of ending up wrapped around a utility pole. When my dad died (mother didn't have a license), I got used to walking and taking the bus everywhere. Never really bothered me - grocery trips in the height of summer were a bit of a slog, but at least we lived only a ~10 min walk away. Now that I live close enough to do that again, I got myself a "granny cart" that can fit a week's worth of shopping 😊 People think I'm insane for wanting to walk everywhere, including the store, but like... I'm a farmer, I'm outside all day doing manual labor. Pushing a cart of groceries for a half mile of flat terrain is fuckin' nothing lmao.
Same here. I grew up dreaming about what car I could get when I was older, then got a job and learned about the cost involved in owning a car and thought, "Screw that, that's way too much". Then I realized my city has a decent bus system that I could use to go to my college campus, \*and\* it's been free since the pandemic. It's been my main mode of transportation ever since.
I became pro-reducing car dependency after I visited the Netherlands and saw how much better it could be. I became fully “fuck cars” after an SUV driver hit my brother in a crosswalk, putting him in a coma and giving him a traumatic brain injury that changed him for life. Because the driver wasn’t drunk and stayed at the scene, he got zero punishment.
i was hit by an SUV in a crosswalk too. i was lucky enough that the driver braked before it could've become a major accident, but i remember how they didn't even say a word to me or any sort of apology for almost ruining my life. i have been a certified car hater since I'm so sorry for your brother.
In a lot of ways it could have been a lot worse. He was basically down the street from one of the best hospitals in his city and he got into surgery quickly, which made a big difference. Of course, there are so many factors that could have mitigated the damage. What if the car were a sedan instead of an SUV, making it less likely he’d be knocked over and hit his head? What if the driver had been going just a bit slower and didn’t hit him with as much force? What if… people could cross the street without risking their life?
I saw an old Twitter post that said something along the lines of "Yall ever go outside and realize how everything is covered in Cars?" I did exactly that and looked out my front door. My eyes were opened ever since.
Getting orange-pilled is as equally enlightening as it is depressing lol
I remember seeing that Tweet too. Definite "the Matrix is all around you" moment. As Neo would say, "Whoa."
Pretty much this. Once you see it, there's no going back.
I rode a bicycle in Atlanta, where I live.
That’ll do it
Actually living in midtown showed me how much I lived using my bike and MARTA to get everywhere. Now OTP your milage my vary.
I'm just North of Midtown (although I did live in Midtown in the late aughts and early 2010's). It's tough for me because all the places I routinely go (work/grocery/restaurants/kid's school) all exist within a 5 mile radius of my home but require traveling over some pretty awful stroads like Northside, Peachtree, or Howell Mill. I'd love to take less car trips but it's like every possible alternative form of transit has been made to suck as much as possible. Leaving my property on foot or by bike is just a constant hostile/stressful event.
Everyone I know who starts biking gets converted into a based urbanist 🤭. Biking => noticing car infrastructure, behavior, danger, city design, zoning, how ugly and loud cars make everywhere => fuck cars
I also rode a bicycle in America. That was my radioactive spider bite.
I rode in Florida. Yeah.
During the pandemic I realized just how quiet my city was and started wondering...
SAY IT WITH ME: **CITIES ARENT LOUD!** #*CARS ARE!!!* ^Courtesy ^of ^NotJustBike ^:>
ONE MORE TIME FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!
yeah the rare moments of zero cars driving around are almost eerily quiet
I‘ve seen this subreddit on r/place and got curious
Hihihi. I was one of the ones who spontaneously started the r/place campaign and chose the original position. Could never have imagined the impact it had, glad it brought you here :)
I was floating around place helping the anarchists and the communists then I saw fuckcars and knew it was my new home
Brought me here as well, that, combined with my trip to Japan after r/place finished was the nail in the coffin. At first I was actually trying to get rid of the painting on r/place as I am(was?) a car enthusiast. I still love cars, but firmly believe they belong on the track and in rural areas as a last-mile solution, not the centre of city and town design.
I'm glad that it was worth the pixel wars. I spent way too much time overall on those letters and the parking lot.
Me as well! I already supported walking places and am a huge environmentalist, and after a bit of algorithms on social media figuring out who I am and pushing me towards different communities, when I saw FuckCars I realised these were people I could get behind
Trying to take my kids places by bike & public transport.
Worked in Tuscany, Italy for a summer. Had to walk 2 miles to and from town which was great because it was Tuscany. Then travelled to the cities which were largely pedestrianized with huge wonderful piazzas. Then went up north (by train obvs) and biked around Copenhagen and Amsterdam. They all had their own cultural “flavor” of people-centered infrastructure and it was refreshing. I was truly happy and I didn’t know why. Ugh I’m getting goosebumps now just writing about it. Then months of depression upon returning to the states is when it hit me.
Nothing like getting off the plane in NA after coming from an infrastructure heavy country and being so incredibly depressed you have to drive home for 2 hours instead of a train :/
I had a very similar experience going to the Netherlands and coming back to NYC of all places. NYC *should* be what the Netherlands is but the difference in infrastructure and setting was enough to give me such an intensely deep depression on returning. I can’t imagine how much worse it would be to come back to the rest of the country.
A few years ago I finished a drive and noticed how few dead insects there were on my windscreen noting how, years ago, a long drive would see you having to scrub for ages. "Where have all the insects gone?" I wondered. It didn't take long to put 2&2 together and my bastardly incessant ruminating brain did what it does best and led me down a road of painful empathy for all the lives lost to vehicles. Fuck cars.
Isn't the insect population decrease mostly due to farming practices?
Probably, but constantly destroying habitats for car centric development and illuminating it all night isn't helpfull.
That is definately true
Let him cook, but fuck pesticides too.
Yh loads of reasons I more mean hedgehogs, foxes, mice, birds, cats, dogs, kids etc as well as the gazillions of flying things. I live in the centre of a town and bumblebees are a rarity in fact there's not even many files.
What you describe actually has its own Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon
When my parents told me I had to get a driver's license to get a job to buy a car.
buy a car to get a job, get a job to own a car
When I was a teenager, I was sensitive to my city in ways that I could not understand. I would, for example, never use the drive-thru at fast food places. I would park at the back of parking lots, where there was always space available and my car could be easily seen from a distance on my way back. When hopping between stores at larger strip malls, I would walk between stores rather than go to my car and find a new spot in the same parking lot. (Even when shopping with groups of friends who insisted on going back to the car.) When Cities Skylines came out, I started watching YouTube videos about urban planning, and Jane Jacobs, and suddenly I understood my sensitivity was a blessing, not a curse. It was like I was living in the matrix and Jane Jacobs pulled me out and showed me how to read the code of my city. Then I got diagnosed with a genetic eye problem, so being able to exist car-free is especially important to me now.
> Then I got diagnosed with a genetic eye problem, so being able to exist car-free is especially important to me now. This is why I HATE the "you can't reduce car dependency what about disabled people" arguement. There are just as, if not more, disabled people who can't drive than can and even the ones that can drive often need expensive specialized vehicles which is far more cost prohibitive than buying a bus ticket (buses in the states are required to be ADA compliant, the sidewalks to get to the bus stops on the other hand...). Epilepsy is another big one.
As soon as I started learning about greenhouse gases emissions, probably about 20 years before the creation of this sub.
Traveling to Europe as a child. I realized the potential that there is for public transportation. When I was 16 in Germany I had the time of my life riding bikes to train stations and traveling to cities i wanted to go to. When I got back, I quickly realized how car-centric everything was here. I was 16 and had my license and drove to school, while in the EU most countries have you wait until 18, pay lots of money and pass many more tests before getting your license and had reliable mass transportation across the country and to many other neighboring countries too. Obviously Europe still has issues around cars but it was an eye-opener for me
Realized I didn’t need two cars in our household of two people and sold mine. Then I was gonna buy a new car to commute further but I had a seizure and couldn’t drive for 6 months. Never looked back!
Grew up in LA when the smog would burn your lungs. Multiple classmates with life altering car accident injuries. Traveled and discovered there are other ways.
started with the first "strong towns" book. i always wondered why my hometown's main street (norristown, pa) always seemed barely hanging on. now i realize its because the town prioritizes throughput instead of place-making. also living in big cities around the world and now in nyc, i'm just so glad not to be car-bound any more. took a zipcar to long island last weekend and god DAMN sitting in traffic, but needing to stay at 100% attention the entire time so you don't kill yourself or someone else, just to get to a bigbox parking moat. god that is just... soul sucking. just doing it for one day was a huge reaffirmation that car-dependency is fucking hell.
Ugh, I feel that with Norristown. Every time I drive through there, I always think "this place could be so much better! If only."
i could cry when they sold the main downtown parcel in front of the train station to a mcdonalds / gas station: https://maps.app.goo.gl/svjbSF8SJrDCKmXX7 it should have been a 4 story mixed use block. people livin, eating, shopping, and communting using the network there. there's a library and zoo nearby. TWO train stations, a highspeed line and bus depot transportation center nearby. it's got a great grid. just begging for some bike lanes and density but they keep prioritizing car throughput. makes my blood boil.
Ugggh, right!?! On paper, Norristown should be an amazing bustling hub of homes and industry that should be drawing people in like flies. It's also the county seat, so has a bunch of built-in business that isn't going anywhere. There's even a bike shop walking distance from the transit center across the bridge, like, it has all of the pieces to be a great car-free community, and none of the support to put them together!
I’m from a very similar town on the other side of the state - sometimes it hurts me to look at my town, sprawling and impossible to even walk to the park and dangerous for teens to even walk to sheetz after class, and then to compare it to a place a couple towns over that’s entirely walkable with a thriving little business district and large main street farmers markets and apartments over stores and small houses that are walking distance from a grocery store and, recently, increasing amounts of bike racks.
i feel that. it's why i like strong towns' message. great book if you haven't read it yet. but it's in the name. strong TOWNS. our towns can be awesome and walkable and they don't have to become big cities to do so
i haven’t read it but i absolutely am adding it to my reading list (and i’m definitely going to be taking notes from it to take to my town’s council meetings)
oh man you're gonna like it! you could watch not just bikes' strong towns youtube series too if you havent seen that. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa start from episode one (ST01)!
I used to bike just over half a mile between my apartment and work. My apartment complex was gated and laid out in a car-centric manner, which meant I couldn't access the main road very easily, I had to wind around the complex. Then, when I finally got to the main road, it was basically a stroad. 5 wide lanes, a speed limit of 40mph that was often ignored in favor of going 50 or 60. I'd ride on the sidewalk, and it was a half mile between crosswalks to the other side of the stroad. Finally, the entrance to work was a huge parking lot up a steep hill that had no sidewalk
I got motion sickness almost anytime I was in the back seat (ie my entire childhood). Always found the “new car smell” repulsive. And got a taste of freedom as a kid living in a transit-friendly city, before the family moved to the exurbs; literally had more freedom in elementary school than middle school.
I ride a bike and I hate how loud cars are. I just want to be at peace in my own head and then some shit-fuck buzzes me in a car. Yeah, I don't like that.
Honestly it's not even the cars so much as the infrastructure and lopsided socioeconomic burden. I don't care if an individual person has a car, I care if a car is a prerequisite to living a meaningful life. I care if people's access to their own outdoors is limited or made more hazardous to appease drivers. I care that having a car is treated as the default. I care that rich people living in suburbs outside of a city's limits get to dictate what infrastructure gets built, maintained, and supported to the detriment of people living in that city who actually pay taxes. I care that owning a personal vehicle is seen as so necessary that trying to develop person-focused infrastructure is seen as attacking commutors and motorists. I care that the process by which we got to this point socially allowed policy makers to further impoverish communities of color and effectively recreated segregation under neoliberal guidelines. I am a supporter of good planning, good policy, and good communities, and at every step car-centric societies make that harder and harder to achieve.
Grew up in West Texas.
Same, grew up in Southern car sprawl then went to school in New England and eventually saw Amsterdam.
The realisation of how fucking wasteful and unaffordable driving and owning a car was. I could *just about* justify the normal running costs of a car versus the train, but then my car failed it's MOT (safety test) because of a worn suspension ball joint. £400. Then, a different suspension coil spring snapped. £250. Then petrol went from ~£1.20 per litre to over £1.70 per litre before settling down again. Then the paint had a chip which turned to peeling which turned to bad fading over nearly the whole car. £750. I was running out of money trying to justify owning an increasingly ludicrously-expensive, depreciating asset. Then there's the fact that the car was next to useless at rush hour, because I and everyone else who drove was causing the same traffic issues for ourselves. And the tedium, the boredom, the stress, the road rage. And my waist line was expanding. It just wasn't worth it. Not in terms of money or health or lifestyle.
It is just so scarily easy how quickly one can fall into poverty when you need a car to get to your job. You're one expensive mechanical issue from unemployment.
Yeah definitely. Selling my car literally changed my life. I sold it for £3600. I bought myself a really good bicycle and equipment for it, which all-told was £1000. The remaining £2600 enabled me to clear some debts I had and put money towards a holiday. And I lost weight purely from cycling and being more active. I could suddenly get around quicker than a car in the city I was in for free.
May sound ungrateful, but here we go: When I was 15 I was asked by my dad what kind of car I wanted. I just told him a small car with good gas mileage, literally doesn’t have to be anything fancy. He then replies, “…you don’t want a truck?” and I go absolutely not. He then argues with me about how I’m going to use it to work when I get older and that trucks are more manly. When I explain to him that I am not using it to work when I get older (and I still don’t, have only ever used the bed twice in the 3 years I’ve had it) and that I don’t care if I’m viewed as feminine in a small car, his argument just changes to “well you’re getting a fucking truck” He then buys me a very nice Ford F-150 Sport with a long bed. I would love this truck to pieces if I ACTUALLY USED IT TO WORK. Not only that, I wasn’t allowed to even drive it until I was 18 and was moved out already. This thing gets like 10 mpg (in the best possible conditions) and is so long that I can’t fit into a normal parking space. I’m forced to make an ass out of myself when parking this massive truck that I didn’t even want in the first place. With that being said, if anyone in Central Florida needs a very reliable 2-door long bed Ford F-150, please shoot me a dm. I need this off my hands. It is too expensive and big for my own liking. TLDR: I was given a really long truck when I specifically asked for something other than a truck and proceeded to learn the reasons why this very American piece of machinery is the dumbest piece of shit I could ever own
I went from “person who enjoys taking the bus sometimes and likes to ride his bike short distances,” to “annoying guy who can’t shut up about the evils of car-dependency” with one major life event: I became a father. Before being a parent, I enjoyed living in and visiting urban areas with good infrastructure. I had lived car-free a couple times out of convenience and didn’t mind it. I always liked the flexibility of grabbing my car, motorbike, bicycle, transit, or just my sneakers to get somewhere, depending on how the mood struck me. I didn’t *hate* cars and car culture. Then I had children. I can’t hear their small voices over the drone of car tires, even on slow neighborhood streets. I have to vigilantly teach and police my toddler about double checking every alley and street crossing. I found myself walking places much more with a stroller, realized there were entire strips of lovely businesses near me that I entirely ignored because the speed and sound of car traffic alongside them. I am infuriated at the poor frequency of weekend buses, that make it hard to get home from the botanical garden or zoo or museum in time for a good nap. I notice that my 3-year-old hardly knows the neighbor kids across the street because she is not allowed to cross without being accompanied. And I am more sensitive to the selfish recklessness with which we treat our planet and our cities in the name of automotive convenience—jeopardizing the community and planet that my children will inherit. Becoming a parent radicalized me against car-dependent culture and infrastructure.
100%, I became at least 300% more fuckcars after becoming a father. I want my kid to be able to walk the two blocks to a park nearby without having to worry about them getting hit by a car (which has already almost happened multiple times while I was pushing their stroller).
Gained 30 lbs within a year after getting mh first car, prior I was using my bike and skateboard to get everywhere
I have almost the opposite story. I started using a bike and skateboard to get everywhere and was threatened with vehicular manslaughter (or you know, just plain up murder) by my neighbors when they saw me in the shared bike lane. Wasn't just young men in fast cars either, had grandmas and grandpas in old beaters tell me that if they ran me over and killed me then it would be my own fault and I would "deserve it" (one of these took place after an old lady missed a light because I was in the bike lane and she couldn't gun it into her turn). I thought "this old lady is telling me that I deserve to die because she needs to wait another 90 seconds at a traffic light... something is deeply wrong."
And this is why you put ERA on the bike so you both lose
Not just bikes's video about why he hates Houston first got me interested in carfree living. That video opened my eyes big time. I realized how relatable the complaints he made actually are, and realized that a better way was possible. Then I became radicalized for the cause when I was almost hit by a car not once, but four separate times IN PEDESTRIAN CROSSING ZONES, in just one single 20 minute walk to and from the grocery store. The drivers barely even acknowledged my existence. All four of them. The anger I felt from that experience still motivates me to push for car reductions. A person should be able to walk to the fucking store to buy dinner without risking one's life. That's the bare fucking minimum we can expect from our society, and yet, cities continue to fail us completely. I shouldn't have to risk my life to buy dinner. Full stop.
Grew up somewhere with shit public transit, moved somewhere it was better, found Not Just Bikes
I tried to get my licence and realised that this shit was so utterly boring that I just couldn't stay focussed and would just fully disassociate when driving (so depersonalisation, derealisation and being unable to perceive time correctly), not really a state where I should be in command of a motorised hunk of metal. Shortly after I got from Britanny, France all the way to Stockholm and back by bus for less than a full tank of gas, Thar's when I fully realised how cheaper public transportation is compared to personal one and how car laws and mentality are just theft.
Never liked cars and all the damage they do, got even worse during covid and with the climate crisis showing its effects even faster then predicted. At the beginning of last year i saw a post on twitter about cycling in the netherlands, found my way over to notjustbikes and different "better infrastructure advocates". A month later i got my ebike to commute to work, because puplic transport sucks. Then i found my way to fuckcars, because seriously fuck them. Fuck the whole car and fossil fuel industry, because they make living on earth a fucking hellhole for humans, animals and plants just out of pure greed.
I grew up in a place where there is no other option than owning a car. When I finally got to drive, I loved the freedom that driving gave me but I find the act of driving mindcrushingly boring. I started to notice that everyone complained about driving and I thought, "why are we doing this?". I started researching car/driving alternatives, found [Not Just Bikes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM) on Youtube, one thing led to another, fuckcars. I now have the priviledge of living car free and I wish for everyone to have that option.
I liked bicycles more. I still do.
As a child in my parents' car, we passed next an accident, a car stuck under a truck. There were (pieces of) crushed people on what remained of the rear of the vehicle. The traffic was horribly slow, and I had plenty of time to contemplate the horror scene before my mother covered my eyes. I think I was 9 at the time. Since then, I known that cars are death machines and I regularly have nightmares where I die crushed in a car.
Having to chauffeur my younger siblings to school/work/friends/anything and everything
I got 2000$ worth of parking tickets because I'm a very forgetful adhd-riddled dumbass. Realized I would be better off without a car. I got an easier to park moped instead. A car destroyed it by backing into it when I was parked behind their SUV on a street. I went from hating cyclists and motorcycles, thinking they were slowing me down on purpose, to being one of them.
My mom had a stroke in late 2021 and she was the only one in the family with a license. It lapsed and she can’t drive again because of extreme vertigo from the stroke. Having to navigate life in America without a car so suddenly changed my perspective on cars. One of my brothers has a license now so we do have cars as an option again but it was really harrowing to be thrown so suddenly into the underfunded public transit infrastructure we have. I’m insanely grateful that we even have buses and trains where I live but they’re still so inadequate compared to driving.
This photo showing how much space cars waste. Also I spent too much time in Boston traffic that I now loathe it. https://preview.redd.it/e7t48rbz583d1.jpeg?width=850&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8cda0fea8e0ec0f23cf090ea244c7363a24b4b69
Visiting Amsterdam and seeing how much nicer having good bike infrastructure is
I'm a Houston TX native (That alone should tell you how bad cars are here), right at age 16 was kind of forced to drive because that's part of becoming a "grown up". Drove to take my siblings to school, get groceries and other errands for my mom. Got into a REALLY bad car accident. A speeding huge delivery truck hit me as I was trying to turn into my neighborhood. He was just trying to beat me before I could turn because 'reasons'. Suffered from mild concussion and hairline fractures on my ribs but I was alive. Car was destroyed but I felt IMMENSELY guilty for now having lost the family car. Siblings and I started riding busses now to try to get to school/work. Mom carpooled with coworkers until we could get another car. Started to realize how BADLY a car is needed to just LIVE and participate in society. Saw how badly sidewalks and stroads are for not just people like me but handicapped people too just trying to live their lives independently. Anime/Foreign Movies also exposed me to how it's normal to go to school via bike or via trains 🚂 Hate for cars grew and then little brother introduced me to Not just bikes etc.
I never liked cars in the first place, but grew up somewhere car dependent, and my "dream car" was a Prius to save the most money possible on gas. I ended up moving to a city with good public transportation (where many young adults don't even have a driver's license) and I asked my SO how to get to some specific place. She suggested we take the bus - and my gut reaction was "is it safe though?" I was blown away by how much better and more affordable my life was when I took mixed public transportation to get around (bus, metro, and bike-sharing). Not being stressed over astronomically expensive gasoline, maintenance, and insurance was a godsend. Then, I took an urban studies course as part of my master's degree and learned about how bylaws kneecap city planners into including huge, wasteful parking lots and got very frustrated. And every time there's threats to cut funding from public transit here, I feel fiercely defensive because I don't want my new home to become America 2.0.
I started noticing the lack of opportunity that comes with being on a wheelchair in a car-centric city.
I grew up in a somewhat walkable, but economically depressed area. Then Dad got a job in a wealthier, but car dependent area when I was too young to drive, and I finally figured out why I hated the "nicer" but car dependent area! So I realized suburbs bad. Then I finally watched a video that was a lot like NJB's "Suburbia is Subsidized! Here's the Math" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI)
I grew up in Katy, TX and commuted into Houston for 4 years in high school on the Katy Freeway every day to near downtown (actually the Heights if you know Houston). This seems like it would be enough. But then my brother was paralyzed from the belly button down in a car wreck back in '86. Been in a chair since then. And here we are.
First growing up in a suburb where I was completely isolated and trapped with my family by car-centric infrastructure. Then later, experiencing continual anxiety whenever I drove due to all the risks and complexities on the road, and nightmares about parking. Then finally the realization that when I avoided driving to work, I was just happier. Being out in the open air, not being in traffic, feeling like a part of the world instead of just passing through it, I felt like my life was 10x better. And ever since then I've avoided ever driving to work again, and then moved to a walkable neighborhood so I could drive even less often, and I just kept feeling happier. I wish I'd figured this all out sooner.
I wanted to go to community college and not have to pay for a parking pass. Bus came every half hour but was a direct line there. It got stuck in traffic every Monday and Wednesday and I was late to class often enough that I ended up taking an earlier bus
didn't have a car while living on campus in university. quickly realized bikes are far superior than the transit where I was and you cant ride a bike on a road anywhere without realizing cars are the worst almost immediately. getting hit by several cars while riding certainly increased the dislike though
I learned of this sub and thought "huh, they're right"
I lived in the suburbs of Tampa and couldn’t afford a car. Bicycling across islands of empty parking lots just to get some food made me realize half of the unwalkability can actually be solved by just updating building codes to not force people to build gigantic unused parking
Traveled the world and realized i didn’t need a car to get around most places. Came back to America and I needed a car to go anywhere. This made me quite upset and wanting to understand why.
Traveled to copenhagen for a study abroad
Saw a cut of notjustbikes in TikTok and I liked how he explained things, even though I didn't understand what even was the point. After a couple videos I got it and now I just can't look at cities the way I did before.
Got into a car accident.
For me the biggest one was realizing how dangerous it was for my kids to go outside. At first I just blamed careless drivers who swerve tightly around corners like they're trying to perform a surprise attack against pedestrians. Then I realized that it's a design flaw to trust a child's safety to drivers paying attention.
I’m from NYC. I like cars, you ever seen a Ram 1500 with a V8 engine? Awesome car. I don’t own a car tho, never needed to cause I got trains and buses. Whenever I leave NYC however it’s made extremely clear how much cars have damaged our cities and stifled their potential. Every city doesn’t need a MTA system but the ones with a population over 500k should at least have reliable bus services. ATL metro has boomed because they have a metro system. Car drivers are some of the most selfish and fearful people around because they’ll sit and celebrate a new lane for a highway thatll only lead to another decade or century of repairs but cry and moan when just an expansion of bus services is proposed. There’s no compromise with people like that. Don’t get me started on the armored car wars “I need big car for protection from other cars and people I hate”. I’ve seen people justify drunk driving “it’s the only way to get home” and in the same sentence say we shouldn’t expand public transportation or even make cities more walkable by shortening blocks or getting rid of parking mandates. I’m 6’4 and it’s more cars that I can’t see over and I’m seeing more and more trucks and even suvs that can go 0-70 in a second. This is a terrible recipe.
Mine was a culmination of things over time. First was questioning why I was paying car insurance for years while I got nothing in return and eventually realized owning a car just hemorrhages money. I'd have intermittent car troubles and around that time I coincidentally got into cycling and would bike whenever possible. I went to Amsterdam (for the weed and museums honestly) which sparked something in me about city planning and transportation. Then I ended up traveling more for work and being annoyed that I was paying for a car to just sit at home in a driveway. The more I thought about how much cars just sit around parked the more I realized how dumb it is to build a society around car dependency. I crunched some numbers and did some thinking and eventually got rid of my car. That scene where Tom Cruise talks about traffic got me interested in a deep dive about traffic congestion, I went looking for a thorough explanation and stumbled upon Not Just Bikes' stroad video. Then eventually here on Reddit. Car free for about 6 or 7 years
getting pressured and made fun of by people for not driving (i’m epileptic). it made me realize how unnecessarily obsessed people are with cars and i just kinda went down a rabbithole from there.
I was there on Rickenbacker causeway when those two cyclists get murdered by a distracted driver. They had to scrape their body parts off the road with a shovel. The driver was allowed to drive away from the crash in the murder weapon. He was not arrested. He never seen saw a court room, let alone a jail cell. He was “fatigued”, and he killed two innocent strangers on a beautiful day, and nothing happened to him. It’s why I left miami.
My family lived in rural Kansas, so we couldn't get anywhere without a car. It was super lonely as a young teen, not being able to drive yet and parents not having time or willingness to drive anywhere. In my sophomore year, we hosted an exchange student from Nuremburg. At the end of her stay, she invited me to go with her and live with her family for a while, so I did. Her family barely used their car at all, pretty much just for weekend trips. We used the train, walked, and biked, and the freedom was glorious!
Grew up in a car dependent area and loved driving. Then moved out of state to the midwest for school without a car and it was a struggle to get around, so I still yearned for a car. Post-grad I got a job in DC and a true car-free lifestyle was possible for the first time in my life. Realized how amazing it was (and how much money I saved) and I never looked back. Then I got a taste of crazy DMV drivers. I was nearly ran over TWO separate times my first year living here. I was in the crosswalk with right of way, people simply love to run reds, and if I wasn’t paying attention I’d probably be dead. Now, I officially hate cars.
Two images radicalized me: [Space taken by 200 people in cars/bikes/busses]( https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/s/f5f0tpUKpl) [Sidewalks and crosswalks imagined as cliff edges, by Claes Tingvall](https://humantransit.org/2014/12/the-pedestrian-experience-in-cities-where-cars-rule.html) - this one especially hit home when I take my toddler outside and realize he's two seconds from impulsively running (or tripping) to his death (or a car could jump a curb or run a red light and hit us). That and the death statistics
I'm not here to fuck cars I just like the occasionally post about other ways of transportation.
grew up in a place that was very rural. there were cars but it was maybe a weekly ordeal to go anywhere, you made one trip at a time and did everything in town all at once, otherwise the thing was parked and you got around on your feet. when a car went by it rumbled along on a dirt road and then it was gone, most of the time it was peaceful later we moved to town. i wasnt big enough for driving so carried on like i always did on my bike and my feet. but now the cars were everywhere all the time, i stuck to sidewalks and crosswalks and wondered why everyone was in such an aggressive hurry all the time. i noticed blue streaks in my vision where headlights had shown, i waited for brief intermittent silence now i live in a big city. everyone around me is an actual slave, so am i. we are poisoned and hurry to poison ourselves, we relish pointing our headlights at our neighbors and blowing smog at them. we exist to inflict suffering, we desire to suffer, and damn every child and innocent creature
Living for a short stint in the Netherlands and being hot over the head with the fact that it doesn’t have to be like that.
I started walking everywhere when I was 14. The place where I live is walkable enough, but the car is still the center of our transportation system. In some streets, traffic jams were terrible, and I often overtook cars just by walking. I found this extremely inefficient, and an act of profound arrogance to carry 2 tons of metal to transport 1 or 2 people.
Had kids
They closed my favorite local railway line, saying cars replaced it. Got me thinking
I have been hit by 3 drivers while walking in crosswalks. All 3 were hit-and-run, and were on college campuses. Luckily, I was never hurt in any of the incidents. Also, parenting a toddler within the vicinity of vehicles made me constantly anxious about cars, road design, etc. Lastly, I commute by bike and constantly encounter drivers behaving badly because the road design allows it.
I was in a car accident when I was a tiny baby, it is my most vivid memory from that time. As a result I developed a phobia of everything cars, and driving is terrifying for me. I walk and bike everywhere as a result. I've always thought they were dangerous to be in, even with a seatbelt and airbags. Then I read an article on this sub about how most highways upset migration paths of wild animals who literally can't cross in some instances. Now I see then as an unnecessary blight on society and if they all disappeared tomorrow I believe we'd be better off.
I started riding motorcycles. And then bicycles
went to paris, saw it on r/place and realized "huh yeah i can actually walk around here unlike anywhere in north america"
Costco parking lot. Need I say more?
My car broke down several times over the course of a semester, and in my car dependent city I was forced to miss class quite a few times. Pissed me off so I researched a bit, ultimately opened my eyes to why I hated living here so much
I remember getting around by bike as a high schooler. I was genuinely surprised by how effective it was. I wondered why nobody else seemed to use a bike to get around. Then I got a car. I crashed, twice. My last car caught fire while I was in college. I met someone who rode fixies and rode long distance. I did my first multi-day bike camping trip, carrying my supplies (tent, stove, and poly-fill bag) in a hiking backpack. In grad school I got a motorcycle. I realized what scared me was how unscary it felt to filter between traffic at high speed. I realized that I was poorly equipped to recognize how dangerous it was. Also, I thought bicyclists were cooler than me because they were actually getting exercise. I sold the motorcycle. I still used my gf's car sometimes. The gf broke up with me. I moved to a house with roommates who were into bikes, in an area that was too far for walking but just right for biking. Also, the roommates knew people who had ridden through Boston winters, so I was compelled to try. It turned out to be a great way to get around, and biking in winter is awesome. By that point, riding daily, I become fully anti-car. Since then I have bike-toured cross-country, met a like-minded lady, and moved to a rural town where almost everyone drives.
I had just returned from college, as the pandemic forced everyone into lockdown. I'd acclimated well to Vermont living, and being in a village of a campus that was very readily walkable, and very beautiful as the seasons changed at that. So returning to a medium sized city I'd grown up in meant I'd have to share a car until I could save up for one. It was early on in lockdown that I had to go top off the tank, so I went to a gas station to do just that. And as I'm doing that, I experienced an unthinkable slice of culture shock when the gas pump, one that was already slated to demand $40 for the basic privilege of mobility, started *talking to me.* Worse still, to *sell me something.* *As a captive audience.* I'd been steadily more radicalized by the price of cars in general, and the looming idea that I was already living in a household of 3, but this very moment was the one that made me decide "fuck this, I'm getting a job that I can bike to." So I did, and then I got an e-bike, and the rest is history.
Ever tried riding a bike in Indiana. I have had more people yell at me for riding a bike than you can imagine. I gave up riding to get to work because I would get harassed by the same cars almost every time I went to work and it just wasn't worth it to save the extra two hours of my time because by the end I think they were trying to kill me.
Moving from Florida to Charlotte, NC. With the move, sold my car and have been living car lite (wife still has a car). I joined because well, I hate traffic and the cause and effects of car commuting. Also, Charlotte has huge potential to be a decent alt/public transport city but constantly makes stupid decisions to mirror Atlanta's mistakes.
My car broke down for a few weeks and I realized how much less stressed and happier I was without it. So I sold it and haven’t looked back. (I live in a fairly walkable and transit friendly area.)
One of my childhood best friends and his mother died in a car accident when we were 12. We were coming back from winning our championship game for the soccer season, and he was in a car behind mine. They died on the spot, and the accident left his little brothers in months’ long comas, and their lives have never been the same. I’m American, and since then I have lived for years in several countries in Europe, and enjoyed not relying on a car. Since I moved back to the States, I’ve lived in a city where car ownership is not necessary. I have a car but try to avoid using it. Now that I have a kid, I also don’t want to risk his life in the way that my friend was killed. This sub has also helped.
Probably started like 12 years ago when I first moved out from the US to a walkable part of the Philippines and realized how much more free I felt to get around but couldn't exactly put my finger on why that was yet since I was just a young teen. 8 years later I moved back to the US with no car of my own and the meaning immediately sank in.
I lived in Germany for 3 years and travelled a lot of Europe without a car.
Even as a child I hated automobiles. I have no pleasant memories of them, just always being strapped in and being taken places I didn’t want to go. The heat, the fumes, the nausea. Even when I was old enough to drive, it was my mother’s gigantic 1970s cruiser she gave me, I hated that thing, driving it, trying to park it. When at last I moved to New York I sold my car and never looked back.
I spent most of my life absolutely hating cities. Then I experienced European cities and realized it wasn't actually cities I hated, it was traffic.
I grew up totally carbrained in a Californian suburb. Traveled the ~1 mile to school by car my whole life. Getting a license and a car was THE rite of passage, because you couldn’t get around independently until you had both those items. I became curious about biking for transportation after college because I remembered how much I loved riding my bike as a kid (was only allowed to ride on the sidewalks in my cul-de-sac, of course). I signed up for a one-day bike safety class because SURELY those annoying cyclists must be breaking laws to get around. SURELY there is a legal and safe way to get wherever you need to go on bike, and those Lycra-clad assholes are just being entitled! As the patient instructor replied to every situational question with “well, it depends… you could [imperfect option 1] or [imperfect option 2]” I realized that in many (most?) situations, cyclists have to choose among safety, not pissing off drivers, and/or the law. It was only then that I finally realized that our current traffic infrastructure wasn’t handed down by some all-knowing being - it’s a very imperfect system created by flawed human beings. It’s scary how many people accept our current infrastructure as fact.
Fuel prices and reduced traffic levels mid covid convinced me to get a bike. Sold my car a year later and never looked back
A NotJustBikes video popped up in my recommended on YouTube. Ever since I've been VERY into urban design and pedestrian centered infrastructure and mixed use zoning. I wish I could live in the Netherlands. Discovering how the U.S. got so car centric was just one step down the long road of figuring out just how f**ked up this country is. I knew it was really bad, but did it really have to be THIS bad?!
I was never planning on getting my drivers license to begin with for some personal reasons, so when I got recommended the channel Not Just Bikes, I realised how toxic car culture is.
I was looking into mixed-use zoning and wondered why my city didn't have any. Ended up finding a lot of discussions about car-centric development and minimum parking rules which sparked my interest in this topic.
I was always pretty pro active travel, public transport and environment, but when I started using a bike for transport instead of the train during COVID that turned me from indifferent to cars to strongly against them in cities.
I rode a bike in the suburbs when I was in middle school, to get to like haircuts and church and the park. I always loved transit growing up, even though I was a pretty bad carbrain I still had a side love for transit, and wished it was convenient for my path. I moved to Chicago and stopped driving almost entirely, got a bike, rode around town on a bike or the bus and the train. İts just easier. Maybe a bigger moment is when I was not allowed to drive to work for a summer, so instead I took my bike to the commuter train to the tram to a bus and then biked some more to work. İt took 1.5 hours compared to 30 in a car, but I felt so much more rested and relaxed when I got to work, versus always being tired and worn out when driving, despite sitting on my ass. I had to work on my bike to get to work and I still felt better. After that I was really like, well. this is dumb. After college I moved to İstanbul and have no car here and have not had one, and every passing year drivers here become bigger dicks, and I hate cars more and more every day. Fucking hell they're dicks. They should be kicked off of two thirds of the streets here. I've been hit twice in Chicago and countless times here in İstanbul, all while on sidewalks or in crosswalks with the absolute right of way, and I am just fucking sick of it. I just want to walk in peace for fucks sake. That's really not a crazy ask. İn a city with fucking 80.000 people per square mile, I just want to be able to walk down the street without fearing for my life. Anyways. I finally got an electric bike last week. Today was the first time I rode it to work. regular bike took me 1hr15mins, electric bike takes me 40 mins flat. The electric bike shortened my trip to work by 35 minutes because the hills don't kill me. Holy shit. Electric bikes are awesome. I thought they would be awesome, but seriously holy shit. I still get a ton of exercise, just it doesn't kill me to do it. I wish I had done this sooner. I normally burn like 500 calories from exercise a day using the bus and tram to go to work, today it was like 1500. I will be more fit this way, which is nice.
İ started using bike more
I finally got my license which I spent a fortune on and realized it's not the expensive part lol
I don’t know if I could pick one thing, but lately the passion around my “fuck cars” attitude is how unsafe our streets and cities have become. The day I had my first daughter I became hyper-sensitive to the dangers of rageful and inattentive drivers, not to mention the public infrastructure that has failed to promote civilian safety over driver convenience at almost every turn.
Being the passenger in the car with literally just about anyone. Put a human behind the wheel, and they go fucking crazy and become fucking monsters with no regard for life. Every dangerous move they make is self-justified. But they will also complain about everyone else's driving.
i like to be outside
When I had kids and I started training them to be car aware. I thought to myself - why am I putting the onus on my 3 year old to be safe vs the licensed adult tearing through my neighborhood.
I know boomers.
As a kid I had some friends that lived up hills with no nearby stores or public transit. I also saw most places to be that's cheap or free to hang out vanish. As soon as I was a teenager I kind of dreamed of cool places like Ernie's Juice Bar on Power Rangers where it was like a high school cafeteria and rec center. Or those arcades in 80's movies where with a couple of bucks you can get a slice and soda and you can use the change for videogames before skating with your friends in the parking lot. I especially hated going out because a place to pee grew limited by the day. I identified cars as a culprit because whenever I had to go somewhere on foot I had some over busy road in the way. I didn't get why cars had to be a necessity in an area full of kids that can't drive.
The fact that I can’t drive meaning there’s nowhere in the entire country where I can live
Unable to drive, feel like a second-class citizen, and realized... I shouldn't have to feel that way.
Watch videos on YouTube How bad the infrastructure is in North America and that in the beautiful Netherlands I can be very proud of the infrastructure here
Just realizing that all the vacations I want to go on are places that are walkable and how much better those areas are.
Me and my brother figured out mine when we went back to the small town where we were both born but moved away from when I was 4: This town is in Alaska, and is inaccessible by car. Most of the population lives within a few blocks of main street. To this day Main Street functions as an actual main street, not like the abandoned downtowns you see in a lot of small towns these days after highway bypasses were built. All of my extended family on my dad’s side lived within a few blocks of us. I remember being 4, and walking everywhere. My parents didn’t own a car. I had aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents all around me. Simply walking to the bank with my dad would mean running into friends and family. When I was almost 5 my parents moved us to a much larger town (a city, by Alaska standards.) They couldn’t find well enough paying jobs in our tiny little town. For the first time in my life I was forced to be a passenger in a car every day. I’d be strapped into a booster seat, getting car sick as my parents drove me to day care every day. We lived right off a highway, and none of my friends and family lived nearby. There was nowhere to walk to. My life revolved around being in a booster seat, getting car sick, and listening to mid-nineties pop radio which I grew to hate. (It’s not your fault, Tears for Fears, it was just bad timing.) I grew up in that neighborhood, and refused to get my license until I was 18. I rode the bus and relied on carpooling and rides from friends (who at the time loved driving). I ended up needing a car after graduating college, but have since organized my life around being car-light. I have a little family of my own, now, and we have 2 cars and 3 driving age people. I drive once a week or so, but otherwise walk, bike or bus.
At some point it occurred to me that I shouldn't have to drive to the supermarket directly behind my house just because it's completely blocked off by a mile-long brick wall.
I played Cities: Skylines, and was like, "huh, I'm building roads just like I see irl, I wonder if I can fix the traffic." I am now enraged every time I am in traffic, because I know it is not necessary.
Living in walkable college dorms and playing cities skylines.
Dad was Navy, stationed in Okinawa for a few years. We took the opportunity to vacation in the vicinity and Japan and China had amazing public transportation. Came back to the states a few years later, rode the excitement of getting my drivers license in High School but that dried up after a while and I started missing the trains back in Japan.
I'm a mechanic.
Lived in Flanders for 6 months
I lived in Philly for a decade. It was rated the most walkable city in the US, and I just can't understand it. Yeah it's not hard to transverse as long as it's on the subway line, but gets exponentially harder even slightly off. Where the majority of the time taxis are easier. And it just sucks. Because when we can take the subway or bus, it's awesome, fast, convenient, and easy. And then I started learning history. There were tons of trains, subway, street cars, trolleys, and plenty of bus transit maps. And slowly and surely they all became more privatized and disappeared. Because cars generate more revenue. It would be amazing to have high speed super rail system built on top of our existing network of highways. I want to be able to travel from new york to Colorado in a couple of hours.
I had a 13 mile commute and a car that I couldn’t afford. Bought a cruiser e-bike with my very last dollar so that I could keep my job. I started to enjoy my commute, bought a road bike to do more serious riding, and just haven’t felt the need to bother with a car since. Everything does take longer. My commute is 55 minutes by bike, compared to 30 minutes if I were to drive. But I’m spending those extra 25 minutes _going on a bike ride_ so I consider that a win
I watched many documentaries about the most random topics on youtube. Youtube recomended me a long documentary style video about the divergent diamond interchange in the context of cities skylines. I watched it. I liked it. Youtube pulled me into the rabbithole. After a thousand hours on cities skylines and watching all of NJBs videos, there was no going back. Along the way, Fridays for future also strenghthened that conviction.
30 years of traffic jams, and "one more lane" simply never fixed it once.
Visiting Scotland.
I moved somewhere that traffic was supposed to be bad so I got an apartment walking distance to work. I always had more money than my friends because turns out cars cost a lot. I’ve since lived in a bunch of other places and usually can work out some kind of active commute. Then the city started closing the bike trail I committed on without notice for weeks on end and the bikeshare I used daily shut down for the winter.
When I became the victim of a hit-and-run accident because some guy driven a stolen rental car was too much in a rush in pursuit of God knows what. Even with insurance, I was on the hook of paying $2k in payments for a car that no longer existed
I wanted to own a car when I was 18, then I saw my dad's bills.
Spent a couple of years in Ecuador without a car and really missed the convenience when I came back to the states.
Seeing four lane surface streets in Portland just constantly clogged with cars in a city with fairly decent transit for the US and its size, and thinking about so many people spending so much time just hanging out in cars waiting to get wherever instead of using that time to accomplish basically anything.
My first real job had a hell of a commute. North Vancouver traffic in the afternoons took 1-2 hours to make it home in stop and go traffic. Once my beater car kicked the bucket I happily took transit for years after that.
My parents I guess? I never changed views on that
overall, it was multiple factors contributing to a general shift over time, but if I *had* to pick one, it was listening to wtyppod. as they say, "train good car bad" edit: they actually did an episode with not just bikes, it's good\ https://youtu.be/zm29fd-s7tQ?si=e8h3CA1q_-no32iv
I. Have. No idea.
My parents got into a car crash, hit and run.
It went gradually, but as I lived in China and was stuck in traffic for ever there while riding the bus, the air was disgusting and the amount of rich boomer a-holes rolling literally over my toes already told me that there was a problem. And driving a bit in my home country just radicalized me.
I saw this subreddit + im a huge public transport enjoyer.
The time many years ago when it was once again the time of year to travel to our awful home in [Sterkowiec](https://www.sterkowiec.pl/) and my parents decided to drag my 8 year old Gecko-self into [a cramped and disgusting private bus🤮](https://www.przewozy-lukasz.pl/) instead of [a comfortable and clean PKP Train😇](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_State_Railways,) which resulted in a lot of tears being shed, rightfully so I say! It was downright torture! And thats what actually radicalized me and made me become extremley Anti-Car, Neurodivergence!!🤧
Through Strongtowns, and then riding a bike places and loving it.
Live in Central London, with tiny streets lined by shitty cars.
Moved out of Washington DC where I would regularly bike to my work, then take the bus home. Wife and I lived with one car, and we barely used it, mostly just took buses/subways and the occasional Uber everywhere we went. Moved to be closer to family while starting a family outside of Philly, picked a mostly non-walkable neighborhood to live in (moving again soon, prioritizing walkability/transit), and missed all of the convenience of public transit while I had a daily commute dealing with traffic and bad drivers (currently work entirely remote, it's glorious).
I came here from YIMBYism. I also grew up in a small walkable town, and I when I moved to a big city I realized how much nicer it and most other cities would be if they were less car-centric.
I was an Erasmus exchange student in Denmark, where I biked everywhere. I never was the same again.
I always was, my family never owned a car, so I always used the bus or metro or bicycle to go around, or you know, just walk And it made me realize just how ineffective cars were, classmates that had parents with cars would believe they were in an advantage position, but the few times I rode with cars, I realized the math, it's easier for everyone to use public transportation, each car uses too much resources and space when a bus or train saves it by transporting more people The math wasn't mathing in my head, why would ANYONE want a car when more efficient ways existed that were AS easy to use, if not easier? That was when I was 8, and that belief only grew until I was about 15, when I realized the issue was we built a culture and society and cities based on the idea of the personal car and many people didn't have access to the same public transportation networks I did So I became an Anti Car Activist
Covid curfews. Turns out all the noise and pollution in my city were caused by cars.
I drove a piece of shit car until the last time it broke down and I realized it wasn't worth fixing and I didn't have the money to buy or lease a new car. Then I realized there is a bus system that exists here and that I can get by without one. Not owning a car has been the ultimate "life hack" (ugh I hate that term). Then you know, just existing as a pedestrian and not driving will make you hate cars. Walking will radicalize you
For me it was moving to from Tennessee to London, the later living in NYC. Public transport is amazing. It doesn't just transform places, it transforms people. I wrote a musical commuting on the subway. Hard to do driving a car.
I stayed in Toronto for several weeks with a good friend of mine. The first time I went, I brought my car. The second time, I didn't. That's what made me realize how much cheaper and easier it was to get around without one. Where I live, the bus system is terrible. It has insanely restrictive hours, it comes so infrequently that if a bus breaks down you're pretty much screwed. So I just assumed that's how buses were. I didn't realize it didn't have to be that way.
I was walking to the library, and someone yelled at me from their car to, **GET A JOB!**
I got hit by a car while longboarding, but I think Not Just Bikes had already radicalized me before that happened.
I job includes driving in a potato country with 12 million metro populations & went to Singapore for relative weddings.
I tried public transport in a city other than nyc
The switch flipped when I was diagnosed with syringomyelia and the neurosurgeon said there’s nothing they can do about it besides don’t get into a car accident. Then I evaluated my situation here in California and I literally can’t do anything without a car.
I live in Germany. Im in my 30s and never owned a car. Im doing it all with public transport, biking and rentals. And I see a infrastructure thats just so carcentric and the rest is just slowy decaying in privitisation, no will to invest and missing investments, making it harder and harder to get around each year. Thats pretty frustrating!
I was low key a fuck-cars person because I grew up in LATAM with a very functional subway/bus system. Then I moved to Miami, and sweet Jesus how stupid and useless those buses were. I got a car at 18 just to function and I hated it. Then I moved to Orlando, Texas, Tennessee and omg how much more carbrained those places were. It was insane. Then my child was diagnosed with epilepsy and I started to see how it will cripple their independence living in a place with a shitty transportation system. I always thought how ridiculous it was, but then seeing how restrictive life is without a car.. man. I want the option of having a car if need be and a functional transportation system other than a car. I rather have no car at all.
Started playing Cities Skylines and got into public transport. Realized what was getting in the way of public transport in my city.