This is my oppinion and I do not wish to impose my believe on anyone else.
BUT, cars totally suck big green hairy donkey dicks!!!
I recently out of necessity had to by a new car, and I wanted something effecient, inexpensive and reliable. It is almost impossible to get anything like what I want. I did not want to spend as much on my new one as I did on my old, but guess what I end up shelling more money a month on it. That ok because my insurance should go down because the car is safer and it had an alarm and kill switch. Hell no, I now have to pay even more for insurance.
I hate being tied down to a fucking car, large payments, higher insurance, more power than I need or wanted. But what I wanted is not available anymore. Everthing is alway more power, more speed Bigger Bigger and Bigger. Hey my dick is big enough,thank you very much, I do not need a motorized extension of it. I swear I would get rid of my autoprison if I live in a city that was at least in someway freindly to other types of transportation, however Houston is one of the least friendly cities for bicycles (my preference). And its bus system is not nearly adequate for me at this time. All I want is the freedom to be car free, apparently in the southern part of the good ole USA, our officials do not want us to have feedom of choice in this regard. At least here in Houston. Idiots (like Tom Delay)are blocking the proposed light rail in Houston, and the city is backpeddling on the bike paths in and around Houston so that the ones we have are inadequate, incomplete and are removing some of the ones that just put in, and the ones that are in don’t take you anywhere you need to go or meander aimlessly through neigborhoods. Even so I may get rid of the damn car anyway.
There, I feel better I hope the above makes some sense
Cars are being manufactured in an ass backwards way these days. I know what you mean when you say you can’t get one the way you want. I like my cars simple. Standard shift, and no extras to break like power windows and such. The darn thing just needs to go where I want reliably.
Seems that all the auto makers want to do is load them up with unnecessary options to make them more “attractive” to buyers. A scathing example of form over substance.
I see this mindset in a lot of things. Heard a guy on NPR the other day who studies these trends. He told a great story about his new alarm clock that somebody gave him. His old one just told the time, and had the setting for the alarm and it worked great. That’s all it had to do. The new one had an A and a B alarm, several time settings, and it was needlessly complicated. It didn’t need all those things, he said, it just needed to wake him up and tell time. He went on to say that the alarm kept going off at the wrong time, and that even unplugging it didn’t help because it had a backup! He eventually threw it out.
I wish manufacturers would see that they are not always doing us a favor by loading up gadgets with stuff they don’t need. Useful tools are one thing, but gadgets are another.
Our country does not have a poor public transportation system. That statement implies that we HAVE one, which we don’t. It’s non-existent. This is absolutely criminal and stupid. While I don’t think we are going to be able to wean people from cars completely, we could certainly remove the need to drive EVERYWHERE with some well thought out public transportation.
But that probably won’t happen. After all, we apparently NEED the money to build a missle defense system…
Rah Chimaera. I have never understood why car owners who complain endlessly about congested traffic, impossible parking, excessive pollution, etc., but who still want to be able to keep their own cars, don’t tumble to the fact that there are actually quite a few of the rest of us who are happy to do without them, as long as we have some reasonable transit alternatives. In many cities, a relatively minor investment in improved public transit and a few bike paths would probably lead a surprising number of people to dump their cars, freeing up vast quantities of asphalt for the remaining drivers. But as you point out, while cars continue to be marketed in our culture as a means of covert bragging about our dicks or our wallets, this alternative is not likely to cross many minds.
I’m from Houston too, and what you say makes perfect sense. But I’m torn. I loathe cars but I like alarm clocks with two separate alarms!
When I was a kid I used to think the sky made noise because when it was really quiet in my backyard, you could hear the freeway(s) nearby.
Buy Julian Cope’s “Autogeddon” LP… it’s a big musical anti-car rant that always makes me laugh and has plenty of allusions to assassinating people to feed your righteous anger.
I feel your pain. Coming from Houston and all. I hate driving there. That place is hell on earth for driving anything. Everytime I have to go there I make sure someone else is driving and we spend as little time as possible on the road. Car’s all look the same to me now. A bunch of unimaginative crap with crappy engines. I think the entire auto industry is dropping the ball. They give us quantity over quality.
Personally, having lived out in the boonies, I can’t imagine living without wheels…That said, I really wish this country would get some good public transportation. I live in a mid-sized college town with awful bus service. I only live a mile and a half from work and walk in nice weather, but drive in the winter. I’d take the bus instead, if it was even a viable option. Not to mention trains. If I could hop the train into Pittsburgh, I’d be a happy feline.
I live in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, which is basically a bunch of suburbs split down the middle by a river. I live and work on one side of the river, and go to school on the other side. My commute is about 30-40 minutes one way and takes me through a tunnel which is congested on a good day. Near my apartment, VDOT is in the 100th phase of a million-phase interstate widening project (I’m expecting a triple-decker interstate proposal any day now), and the state is running out of money to build new roads. We have no light rail, no subway, no trolley, no bike paths, just the bus, which isn’t a viable option for a number of reasons.
It’s horrible. I lived in New York City a few years ago, and for all of their “big-city problems”, I would give anything to have a public transportation system as good as theirs available to me right now.
I believe everyone already knows how I feel about this subject, he said, going back to work on his Montreal Metro comprehensive information, architecture, and trivia page…
Let’s not forget that you have to share the roads with a million other people all going the same way as you are! Sitting there in traffic, you can’t help but think, “If half of you bastards were dead, I’d be home by now!” I think traffic is leading to the moral decay of our nation. All these students taking guns to school? Traffic! Tooth decay? Traffic! Can’t get an erection? TRAFFIC!
So in self-defense, I moved to Chicago. Now I ride the train to work. I walk. Ahhhh sweet stress relief. Now, to avoid being mugged…
I hear ya, Chimaera. I’ve never had a car, and don’t plan on having one, either. ( http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=32092 ) I was very very lucky, though, to find an apartment here in Nashville where I can go everywhere I need by either bus or foot.
Going where I want to is another matter entirely. Especially because the bus route I’m on stops about 5:30 pm - so no fun evenings out… without walking through scary places at night or calling a cab
Well, yes, cars do seem to want a bit of your income. But you can be a lot thriftier about them than many folk are. I can’t think of a good reason to buy a new one.
And I’ve driven vehicles in most of the larger cities in the U.S. and frankly, for a city its size I think Houston is relatively easy to navigate, if you know your way around.
I’ve lived carless before and, if you want to, you can do it. Living as a student in Austin was not difficult at all w/o a car. And I really can’t feel too bad for the folks I’ve known who endure 3 hours or so of commute everyday - if you’re going to live in a large metropolitan area and work 40 miles from your house with lots of city in between, you are going to spend some time commuting. Move, take the Park and Ride or get over it.
29 and I don’t have a licence yet, both due to laziness (of a sort) and a twisted kind of ethics-- I have coping mechanisms set in place, so life is utterly manageable, and I haven’t quite reached the body-type to which I am genetically predisposed. It’s hard to explain to drivers, though, or explaining why I have a state ID instead of a driver’s licence when I go to bars. I’ve been tempted lately just to tell people I’m epileptic or something, as it seems more societally acceptable than, gasp, not wanting to drive a car.
Cars scar the hell out of me in general. Why do we wear helmets biking and such, but not in the car? It’s like we’ve naturalized the danger involved, wiped it out of our consciousness, and then we are surprised at the tragedy when someone is hurt. You’re hurtling down pavement at 60 mph in a huge chunk of metal with hundreds of other people doing the same thing. . .
I have a theory: driving cars is like dating. You need to start doing it while you are a teenager, and not, um, thinking TOO hard (apologies to any teens reading this-- I envy you). Otherwise you would realize how dangerous it is, emotionally or physically. If you don’t start early, while it still seems like a natural step, who knows when you’ll have the bravery/insanity to begin.
I used to live in Houston, and tried cycling to work for a couple weeks. It only took about 5 minutes longer than driving, but I gave up because of the high asshole ratio on Houston’s streets. There is a catch-22 situation going on: if there are lots of cyclists around, the drivers get used to them and learn how to act, but people don’t cycle in great numbers because drivers don’t know how to deal with them.
Now I live in the UK. I walk or cycle to work, the store, and to the pub. I still have a car, but only use it about once a fortnight.
Not that it hasn’t been said before, but, Germany is COMPLETELY accesible through their train system. You hop on wherever you are and can access a connecting train to ANYWHERE in the Country! And it’s cheap too. Of course, I’m sure the government subsidizes it but it’s STILL a lot better then getting stuck in huge traffic jams.
That said, I couldn’t live without my car as I’m basically lazy After ten years in the Army, I’m not walking ANYWHERE.
Calgary is in the middle of a general public transportation strike right now, which pisses me off to no end, because the city is not putting their money where their mouth is. There have been campaigns ongoing for years now to encourage more transit use, and now that they have people hooked on transit, they go ahead and let a strike remove ALL the public transportation that people have learned to depend on. If you want people to value the transit system, I would suggest that the city should also assign some value to it, and not just leave the huddled masses high and dry when it’s time to negotiate with the transit union (oh, to make this scenario perfect, Calgary is in the middle of a really cold snap: -24C for the last couple of nights!)
What does this have to do with the OP? Umm, not much, I guess. Just my take on another side of public transportation (sorry if I wandered too far afield).
I hope the above makes some sense 
