this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2025
7 points (100.0% liked)

Fuck Cars

13975 readers
289 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It's infuriating to me how often you see car drivers ranting and complaining about things like speed traps, and how common apps and traffic radio report these.

Drivers are probably the only group of people on earth who not only routinely whine about the consequences of their illegal actions, and attempts to enforce those consequences, without any broad pushback, but in fact get broad systematic support specifically designed to help them avoid these consequences.

Imagine if restaurant owners routinely complained about how "predatory" and "unfair" random health inspections, and fines for non-compliance are. Imagine if someone made an app that warned restauronteurs a day or two ahead of every health inspection, so they don't have to bother keeping their kitchen code compliant any other time. People would be outraged. But when drivers make those same complaints about speed cameras or traffic enforcement in general, and get those same systems to avoid them, everyone just accepts it as a completely normal thing.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] paultimate14@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (2 children)

People just like to complain.

I complain about speed traps because ACAB. I don't blame drivers for speeding- I blame bad civil engineering for roads that always seem to optimize high-speed vehicle traffic first and then slap a much lower "speed limit" sign on the side of that road.

If having safer roads was truly the goal, the government responsible would use proper traffic-calming designs. Narrower streets, tighter turns, raised pedestrian walkways. Trees and other barriers at the roadside to make drivers uncomfortable speeding.

[–] Devial@discuss.online 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I 100% blame drivers. People don't appreciate just how dangerous a car is. Driving one is an enormous responsibility, should be treated as such. It is 100% your responsibility as a driver to always ensure you are operating your vehicle as safe as possible. "The road was so wide and I wasn't checking my speedometer" is not even in the same neighborhood of being a valid excuse for excessive speeding.

That's a bit like saying you wouldn't blame someone for leaving an unsecured gun around a child, because lax gun laws encourage unsafe gun handling.

Or you wouldn't blame a corporation for their "fines are just the cost of doing business" approach to dealing with safety and environmental regulations, because the low fines and lax enforcement clearly heavily encourage corporations to behave like that.

If you are doing something that potentially significantly endagers/hurts others, it is your responsibility to that thing safely. Not being legally or structurally forced into doing it safely, is absolutely in no way whatsoever an excuse for not doing it safely.

If you are speeding, you either actively chose to ignore the speed limit, or you didn't notice you're significantly above the limit, which means you aren't paying enough attention to the road, whilst flinging 2 tons of metal down it at upwards of 100 km/h, That's irresponsible and indefensible.

Bad road design leading people to speed more often is a structural, societal problem, not an individual one.

(Also complaining about speed traps "because ACAB" is like complaining about coppers peacefully arresting a triple murderer because "ACAB". ACAB doesn't mean that literally every single thing that literally any cop or PD anywhere on earth ever does is automatically bad and rotten to the core, that's an utterly ridiculous stance to have. Many things cops do are legitimately valuable public services. ACAB is about the systemic flaws of the system, that protect cops who cross the line from any (real) consequences, and the systemic biases and bigotry inherent to police forces, that every cop is at least silently complicit in)

[–] bryndos@fedia.io 1 points 1 week ago

There are still some cunts who'll floor it between speed bumps and down narrow streets. Any copper who bangs one of them up is fine by me. acab is only because mostly they don't.