this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
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This is assuming you live in a walkable town or neighborhood. I remember a reddit post (can't find it anymore) of a guy trying to walk less than 2 miles to an appointment in Orlando. He followed Google Maps directions down the shoulder of a highway that led to a dead-end, backtracked, tried again, and finally made almost all the way to his destination, which was on the opposite side of a 6-lane highway Google wanted him to cross.
I've only ever visited the theme parks in Orlando, but I experienced one intersection I had to share with cars. I spent every walk sign waiting for cars making a turn to yield. Even though I had the right of way, literally none of them did, until I finally had to run across the street because the cars at the red light, who could see I was 1/3 through the intersection, floored it the second their light turned green. Sure, fuck all of those car-brained drivers who refuse to yield to pedestrians, but also fuck that city for not fining drivers for shitty behavior, or at least changing their traffic lights so all cars have red lights when pedestrians have the walk sign.
Anyway, point is, personal choices are important, but they can't overcome the systemic issues created by car culture without collective action. And Orlando sucks ass.
Congrate, your first sentence figured it out.
Maybe you just got here but bud I’m getting so tired of people assuming that people like the person in the post aren’t also the same people screaming for better infrastructure so we can ditch this high dependence on cars. We know that not everywhere is like this and that’s why we also have a MOUNTAIN of examples of even the shittiest places in the US, but also all over the world, doing things to build better for not that much money.
The entire point of the post is to show that people who fight against that change don’t have much of an argument. We know how things are but they don’t need to be like forever. Nearly every city used to be a 15min city before the car and then 50-100 years ago we fucked it all up(because of bribes from car manufacturers) and kept that shit train rolling.
Yeah, that would be a great point if the entire post wasn't a 4Channer framing this as personal choices and not systemic ones. The dudes not talking about how the car industry destroyed railcars, he's dunking on people who drive to the grocery store, and the implication is clearly, "everyone can and should do this," which is bullshit.
Except there are places where that’s true. There are also people in places with the same mindset who buy trucks for twice the price of a reasonable hatchback and act like the extra $30k+ is less than occasionally renting a U-Haul.
You not being smart doesn’t diminish my point.
Yeah, I never said this wasn't true, but again, none of that is in the fucking post. The dude's not making a nuanced point about people who live in walkable areas but buy large trucks over sensible hatchbacks. He's making a sweeping statement about how people who don't walk to the grocery store are idiots, but America has the walking score of a developing nation; if you live somewhere where you can walk to the grocery store, you're breathing rarefied air, and calling other people stupid for driving is entitled.
Like, what are you so pissy about? That I was responding to the content of the post instead of the points you assume the 4Channer would make, but didn't? OK buddy, in the future, I'll try to infer what you presume the OP's hidden beliefs are and tailor my comment to that. Seems reasonable.
So you get to have all the nuance but they don’t? Ok, buddy.
The fuck are you talking about? Yeah, they don't get to have the nuance; it's not in the fucking post. It's a pithy 50ish words about how they're so much smarter than other people for not driving to the grocery store. I pointed out the reality is more nuanced than that for most people, and your whole response has been, "yeah, well, they probably know that, so why don't just act like their response is nuanced?" To which the answer continues to be, "Because that's not what they fucking said, are you high?"
Wahh wahh oh my god, dude. Congrats, you showed up and started running your mouth like you had access to special information and were teaching people that there are places without good infrastructure. We know this already, and I even showed you other extremely related examples.
Yes, you’re a very special smarty-pants thank you for this wonderful and definitely new take that will totally help and isn’t at all the same old tired shit that constantly bloats the discussion.
Wahh wahh I've seen comments like this before, I need jump into someone else's mentions to get pissy about it for 20 hours, wahh. I wasn't even replying to you dude, imagine how much time we both could have saved if you'd just downvoted my comment instead of appointing yourself arbiter of the FuckCars discourse.
The whole "turn right on red" in north America baffles me as a European.
Oh, this wasn't even a right on red. The green light for cars was lined up with the walk sign for pedestrians going rhe same direction. In a situation like that, when a car with a green light needs to turn through the crosswalk, they are supposed to yield to any pedestrian crossing at that time, but apparently the people of Orlando have so much car entitlement that they don't even slow down when a pedestrian is standing in the middle of the crosswalk trying to complete a legal crossing.
I know this is fuckcars, but I personally I think it makes sense. Our brothers in Lithuania are also doing it (tbf there needs to be a specific sign next to the light saying you can do it).
The less people spend waiting on pointless traffic lights, the faster cars get to their destination, the less cars there are on the street. At least that's how I view it.
All of this is of course keeping in mind to always yield to a pedestrian.
American here, this is just as stupid and dangerous as it sounds. The idea is that it's very easy to check for pedestrians before turning but literally almost no one even looks. Even if the crosswalk light is lit they don't notice and just plow right through.
Id argue the idea is that its easy to check for cars as you only need 1 lane of traffic. Traffic engineers don't really consider the needs and safety of pedestrians, they just do the bare minimum to accommodate them. And the engineers that do try to care about pedestrians are told things like "well thats not how its done in this book from the 50s" or "that would reduce our throughput by 5% meaning we'd need to invest in another car lane"
In NYC it isn't allowed and now I think it's insane we allow it everywhere else.
it works great if you just break check the fucker that's trying to turn, if you lack the confidence it works less well