Lockdown - has it made driving slower and drivers more courteous?

[DuncanM]

How old actually are you, Bludger?

28.

I've grown up ...

Doesn't seem like it on reading this thread.

[bludger]

Yeah of course not wanting to die, how immature you sure showed me 



Of all the greasy tactics of the can kickers, tone policing amounts to one of the most shameless and predictable. Because "tone" is more important than actual life and death. Just an easy way to avoid the real problem which has been drop kicked down the road.

Anyway, it's no better blaming older individuals

Literally my entire point is that "blaming individuals" is absurd. However when the dynamic becomes "well I recognise the problem but really your proposed solution (banning cars) would inconvenience my lifestyle" that changes. Because that's you just outright expressing that you don't care if I die or not. Let alone "well I want to drive my car to a bike race".

[Hot Flatus]

I know you struggle to understand things outside of your own highly limited experience, but removing cars from everybody would result in a little more than "inconveniencing lifestyle choices".  I have a neighbour who has no fucking legs. No car=his house becomes his prison.  But of course thinking this is a bad thing is the same as literally not caring if you die 

Because it's all about you.

[DuncanM]

Anyway, it's no better blaming older individuals

Literally my entire point is that "blaming individuals" is absurd. However when the dynamic becomes "well I recognise the problem but really your proposed solution (banning cars) would inconvenience my lifestyle" that changes. Because that's you just outright expressing that you don't care if I die or not. Let alone "well I want to drive my car to a bike race".

is supposed to show it was a joke. I was making it because you are literally blaming all individuals on this thread older than you.

You are ignoring all the other people who have said that banning cars is a fine ideal but can't be done in practise right now. And in doing so, you are being equally unreasonable as anyone who is unwilling to change anything. Banning cars in this country tomorrow would cause an enormous amount of problems for a great many people. Aside from the jobs of >800,000 people who work in a motoring related industry, it would render the second largest asset most people ever own (in many cases, the first) valueless, mean that millions would be unable to get to work, massively impact the >500,000 people who rely on motability vehicles, and have a significant number of other knock-on changes, big and small. We would need a rescue budget from the Chancellor, just from that 1 measure.

Here's how we work toward a car free future = intelligent debate. Ban cars != that.

[bludger]

If posting "ban cars" is what's needed to actually make people centre that then I'll happily keep doing it 👌

The way to straighten a stick is to bend it over the other way.

Ban cars.

[De Sisti]

Ban cars.

I am not convinced you will pass on your concerns to your MP or the Secretary of State for Transport. They will be in a much stronger position to make your dream* a reality.


*dream/wish/aspiration/whatever you want to call it.

[bludger]

Barricading roads off using modal filters works a lot better.

[DuncanM]

If posting "ban cars" is what's needed to actually make people centre that then I'll happily keep doing it 👌

The way to straighten a stick is to bend it over the other way.

Ban cars.

Just writing "Ban cars" is idiotic. Thankfully I'll never have to read you write that again.
I assume you count that as a success?

[TimC]

If posting "ban cars" is what's needed to actually make people centre that then I'll happily keep doing it 👌

The way to straighten a stick is to bend it over the other way.

Ban cars.

If no one else will say it, I will: I don't care particularly how or when you die. You will die one day, of something or other, and the likelihood is that you'll be a lot older when you die than your grandparents were, and their grandparents were. Life expectancy, despite a wobble recently because of obesity and related illnesses, has relentlessly increased over the last couple of hundred years, cars notwithstanding.

Whether you like it or not cars are essential for many people because of the way life has adapted to their availability. To ban them without making any arrangements to replace them (and good luck with that) simply condemns many people to a life that is impossible to live. I am perfectly willing to contemplate a life with fewer cars, and/or with only electric cars, or some other solution that improves life for as many as possible. As one of those who lives in a genuinely rural setting (and has all my considerably longer life than yours), the phrase 'from my cold, dead, hands' springs to mind.

So, Bludger, you individually are of no importance to me, and I suspect you're diminishing in importance to may others as you deploy your less-than-subtle persuasive powers. Claiming we are killing you is unlikely to raise much in the way of sympathy or protest on your behalf.

[bludger]

Not really about me individually is it though, my dear tone policing friend. The necks if any children, grand children or nephews etc are on the line.

(This is you side-stepping the problem by centering an individual "tone complaint" as the matter at hand by the way)

the phrase 'from my cold, dead, hands' springs to mind.

I've long felt the obsession with cars is comparable to the American obsession with guns since you bring it up... Ignoring that their own children go to schools which are liable to being shot up by roaming gunmen while just kicking the can down the road and ignoring the problem because banning guns is "unrealistic" and would "damage industries" etc. In the same way guns are fetishised in culture from action movies to video games or whatever.

It isn't on me to "develop a realistic plan" to accommodate your lifestyle when my neck and millions of others' is on the line. That's on you.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Barricading roads off using modal filters works a lot better.

That's far more sensible than "ban cars". And even better, it might lead to a situation in which cars are still legal and available but are neither necessary nor attractive to most people, leaving them to those who really benefit such as Flatus's neighbour.

[TimC]

Not really about me individually is it though, my dear tone policing friend. The necks if any children, grand children or nephews etc are on the line.

(This is you side-stepping the problem by centering an individual "tone complaint" as the matter at hand by the way)

the phrase 'from my cold, dead, hands' springs to mind.

I've long felt the obsession with cars is comparable to the American obsession with guns since you bring it up... Ignoring that their own children go to schools which are liable to being shot up by roaming gunmen while just kicking the can down the road and ignoring the problem because banning guns is "unrealistic" and would "damage industries" etc. In the same way guns are fetishised in culture from action movies to video games or whatever.

It isn't on me to "develop a realistic plan" to accommodate your lifestyle when my neck and millions of others' is on the line. That's on you.

Actually, it is up to you - and anyone else who wants to change the status quo - to come up with a plan as to how to do so. 'Ban cars' simply prompts the answer 'no'.

[bludger]

Rubbish. If you walk into a bar, drink 5 pints and then when the barman tells you to pay your tab, you demand they draw up a plan for you to source £27 to pay for what you've done, that would be absurd. The same applies here.

When we find someone doing harm to another by e.g. dumping chemicals into a river it isn't on us to remediate the harm and redesign their operations to stop the pollution. We demand that they stop. Figuring out how is on them.

[TimC]

Bludger, go away and grow up.

[Greenbank]

*gets popcorn*

[Cudzoziemiec]

Whether you like it or not cars are essential for many people because of the way life has adapted to their availability.

A bit like electricity or clean running water. We lived for hundreds of thousands of years without either, and hundreds of millions of people still do. Their availability has brought huge changes in where we live, how we organise our lives, how we work, play, eat, travel, learn... We could live without them if we had to, but it would be a very different life, because life has adapted to their availability.

[bludger]

Bludger, go away and grow up.

[Greenbank]

Whether you like it or not cars are essential for many people because of the way life has adapted to their availability.

A bit like electricity or clean running water. We lived for hundreds of thousands of years without either, and hundreds of millions of people still do. Their availability has brought huge changes in where we live, how we organise our lives, how we work, play, eat, travel, learn... We could live without them if we had to, but it would be a very different life, because life has adapted to their availability.

And electricity generation, for example, is a huge cause of pollution.

Ban all non-clean electricity production! (and see how well the country deals with rolling blackouts)

I'm all for a long term plan of getting rid of ICE cars, but a simple outright and instant "ban" is farcical. The disruption and loss of life it would lead to until things did eventually adapt would be impossible to sell to anyone, and the active choice that would result in the death of many people, even if it would be fewer than those that will be killed by anthropogenic climate change, isn't one that any politician or majority of voters would go near.

We've shown that major disruption can happen [could anyone have imagined the UKs lockdown situation of the last few weeks, along with furloughing of millions of employees, etc] but it's come at quite a heavy [human] price.

Note that replacing all ICE cars with fully electric cars only lessens and shifts away the pollution elsewhere (which isn't a bad thing unless you live right near the associated power plants) until all power generated in the UK is 'clean'. Until that point the supply of 'clean' energy is limited and finite and so any shortfall in demand is made up for by extra 'unclean' generation. Increase the demand (by replacing ICE vehicles with electric vehicles) and that shortfall increases and so non-clean energy production increases to fill the gap.

In the long term the human race is likely to be wiped out by non-anthropogenic climate change although this isn't a reason to do nothing about anthropogenic climate change, but the action doesn't need to be as drastic as "ban cars!"

[Jaded]

bludger, out of interest, what do you actually mean by "Ban cars"?

[bludger]

We've shown that major disruption can happen [could anyone have imagined the UKs lockdown situation of the last few weeks, along with furloughing of millions of employees, etc] but it's come at quite a heavy [human] price.

This is where I strongly disagree. The lockdown has not in itself inflicted a heavy human price. The lockdown has *saved lives*. If it was done sooner it would have saved even more.

What has costed lives is this toxic system which death-marches people into danger. And indeed disproportionately the worst-off at that. It's the vice grip of a system that demeans and degrades the worst off and the vulnerable that inflicts the harm, not the 'lockdown' per se.

What's really getting the shits up the government is how this situation has openly thrown into question how we live our lives in this country and around the world. The majority of wealth that this system creates isn't equally distributed. It's carved up for the betterment of a minority and spent on superyachts, mansion eatates, BMWs or whatever else (https://www.oxfam.org/en/5-shocking-facts-about-extreme-global-inequality-and-how-even-it) with crumbs kicked in meager portions to the majority. And the absurdity of this cycle is starting to make itself apparent to more people than ever.

[bludger]

bludger, out of interest, what do you actually mean by "Ban cars"?

In the same way that the Dutch campaigned on "stop the child murder" I think it is important to firmly centre the problem in the campaigning - in our case, cars. Getting caught up in detailed policymaking is a trap. Much better to firmly centre what needs to happen and campaign on that instead.

The detailed policymaking about how to supplant cars isn't my job here. In the same way that Plane Stupid, and other anti third runway groups (rightly) didn't accept responsibility for providing a "detailed plan on how not to build a third runway". Actual detailed chat (e.g. shared mobility, low traffic neighbourhoods etc) is something to have in the context of a wider understanding that cars as we know them have to go.

[Cudzoziemiec]

We've shown that major disruption can happen [could anyone have imagined the UKs lockdown situation of the last few weeks, along with furloughing of millions of employees, etc] but it's come at quite a heavy [human] price.

This is where I strongly disagree. The lockdown has not in itself inflicted a heavy human price. The lockdown has *saved lives*. If it was done sooner it would have saved even more.

Human price is what Greenbank said, not that people had died because of lockdown.

What has costed lives is this toxic system which death-marches people into danger. And indeed disproportionately the worst-off at that. It's the vice grip of a system that demeans and degrades the worst off and the vulnerable that inflicts the harm, not the 'lockdown' per se.

Generally I'd agree with you. But saying "ban cars!" as an answer to this is like saying "ban soldiers!" to stop war.

[Hot Flatus]

Bringing up wealth inequality is just argument by association fallacy. Nothing to do with cars.

[Wowbagger]

The problem we have, and it's one which our leaders are very reluctant to face up to, is that we have to come to terms with the simple fact that the industrial revolution, and with it, fossil fuel dependency, constitute the biggest mistake that our species collectively has made. We are up a blind alley and no-one has found a way of engaging a reverse gear. If the human race is still documenting its history in 100 years time, and I think that's quite unlikely, people will wonder at a species that so blindly was led to its own destruction by the corrupt leaders, both political and industrial.

[ian]

Name-calling aside, what are the actual benefits of vehicle ownership?