Work by Ron Cobb
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While I can afford it, I intentionally have the smallest, most efficient vehicle I can possibly get away with owning while still meeting my mandatory social requirement of having a vehicle.
Due to a lack of public transportation, it is required. There’s no other practical means I can use to do the 45 minute commute to work, short of perhaps buying a motorcycle which puts me at risk due to the predominance of huge SUVs. I’ve considered an E bike, but we don’t even have sidewalks on this route.
I just can’t swallow investing in something that either sits outside or sits in traffic. I don’t use half of what that little four banger is capable of.
People don’t buy these cars and worry about the fact that it’s parked in the driveway or that it’s stuck in traffic during the week.
It’s bought because it’s something they want and they enjoy owning, and because they can fully utilize the power in the evenings or weekends.
Just enjoy your life, buy what you want. Stop worrying about how much it gets used.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Spend your money where it makes you happy. I’d feel more sympathetic if I didn’t feel compelled to own one when it’s not something that brings me joy.
I kind of think of it like owning a high-end smartphone. Practically speaking maybe it doesn’t make as much difference as a more cost-effective option, but if it makes you happy, by all means. Life is short. But I can still just manage to get by without a smart phone these days if I wanted to do that. I can’t say the same for a vehicle.
i thought they bought these cars to compensate for erectile dysfunction 🤷
Lmao, no.
People do enjoy fast vehicles. It’s fun.
Still, the culture surrounding spending so much of your money on a depreciating asset just to have fun or maintain appearances is crazy.
Americans are spending $1000/month for 6+ years to drive a car that mostly sits in driveways, parking lots, and traffic.
Most of enjoyment in life is spent around depreciating items that you’ll get no return on: food, entertainment, travel. If you don’t spend your money on enjoyment and focus only on return, what have you done with your life?
Made trillions.
Kidding aside, if the item wasn’t such a significant chunk of one’s earnings and also wasn’t on the never ending purchase cycle perpetuated by advertising and culture I’d feel differently.
Buy a nice car that fits your budget and provides satisfaction. Keep it for long enough that it doesn’t impact your family’s financial stability.
You also are under the assumption that the people who constantly buy new cars can’t afford it. For me, it brings enjoyment (something that is not tangible). I also can afford to buy a new car every few years. I view it as something I take pleasure in similar to eating or traveling.
The other perk about me doing that, is since I eat the depreciation, when I turn it in, someone can buy it for cheaper and drive it until the wheels fall off if they want.
And yet people get so bent out of shape when I point out that most cars are nothing more than expensive toys for adults.
Nothing inherently wrong with expensive toys for adults. Not my cup of tea, but still.
I always wondered that. Like why have 400 hpwr if there is no opportunity to use it.
Fast cars are fun to drive (if you are blissfully ignorant of how dangerous speeding is), but knowing what I know now, it is scary how easy it is to drive a fast car recklessly. I don’t have a source at hand, but I’d bet money that high HP cars kill children and pedestrians at higher rates than small eco cars do.
As someone whose only car is a Honda S2000… yeah kinda.
Do honda s2000s get that bad of gas milage? They’re pretty small, lightweight cars
The engine is pretty high strung so you’re lucky to get 20-24 mpg. If you drive it hard (and it wants to be driven hard) it’s going to be less. That’s still probably better than the kind of huge muscle car in the picture, though.
The other thing is it’s just not a pleasant car to drive in traffic. It’s a manual transmission car (only ever made in manual) and it’s really easy to stall, among other things, so it’s not fun to drive through rush hour.
Ahh, gotcha. Thats a shame, my dream car is a miata which I’ve always wanted to daily drive, and I tend to think of the s2000 similarly since they’re a lot alike in many respects
Miatas are pretty similar, but modern ones have some nice advantages! It’s rated for 25/35 mpg, for example, and unlike a lot of car makers Mazda’s fuel economy numbers are pretty realistic. A Miata isn’t going to be as painful to drive in traffic, either. Not unless you modify it or something.
Also the clutch doesn’t require much force to engage, and 1st gear seems pretty forgiving, at least on the NDs. I can’t say I enjoy driving in traffic, but it’s not too bad
It’s a shame the MR2 isn’t made anymore.
Murica
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Most people live in a city, and are therefore subject to traffic like this.
Wrong. Individually Urban neighborhoods were about 100M. See what you have done is combined urban and suburban populations like it’s a political map. But the suburban population of the US is 175M with rural adding 46M.
So no, most of the US, does not experience this nor do they live in a city. They probably live near a city.
Suburbs are a part of a city.
Look even expanding your scope here, only 40% of them live in early suburbs vs late and exurb. And only the early suburbs from the top 6 metropolis. The vast majority of small metropolis early suburbs look nothing like this.
https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/built-environment/us-cities-factsheet
It is estimated that 83% of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, up from 64% in 1950
https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/the-majority-of-people-in-the-world-now-live-in-cities
cities with more than 50,000 people have become the most popular living areas worldwide, as shown in the chart.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/270860/urbanization-by-continent/
North America as well as Latin America and the Caribbean were the regions with the highest level of urbanization, with over four fifths of the population residing in urban areas.
Looking at counties instead of actual cities is your problem.
Something tells me you drink and drive
Not at all. They are assholes.
You’ve invented such an angry fact about me 😑.
By definition, most people will be in places where most people are.
And in my experience, traffic is just as bad if not worse on weekends, when more people are out of work and enjoying themselves.
Exactly, the comic is showing an urban driver’s problem. Fortunately the USA is massive and we have many more uncrowded roads across its vast and beautiful landscape that drivers can travel freely upon. Traffic jams are rare in my area, but occasionally I visit Atlanta or some similarly large city and marvel at how much it sucks to drive in their traffic.
True freedom includes having room to breathe and roam. For those who haven’t experienced it, my condolences.
I feel like a more accurate (though much less catchy) name for this community would be !fuckcarcentricsociety. Cars are awesome! They’re fun to drive, feats of engineering, and in the right conditions like a rollercoaster without tracks. They just fucking suck when they’re practically required to live. I’m as big a proponent for public transit, you shouldn’t need a car to get to your job or grocery store, but you can’t look at something like F1 and say that’s not exhilarating.
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but you can’t look at something like F1 and say that’s not exhilarating.
strong disagree. perhaps in the 60s and 70s - before we understood that ICE was spewing carbon dioxide and ruining the ecosystem sure.
Today? F1 is a fucking travesty - rich assholes burning crazy amounts of fuel to speed around in circles taking more from future generations every fucking lap.
If it were all electric powered by renewable resources harvested nearby I’d have less of an issue, but anything combusting is a giant middle finger to your own children. “Sorry skippy, even we knew, we still didn’t give a fuck to stop the silly games.”
I agree the environmental impacts are certainly an issue, but the emissions from the sport alone aren’t that bad, the worst is from all the travel done on private jets between locations. They’ve also done some work towards being more eco-friendly. The cars run hybrid V6s instead of V10s and by 2026 will use fully renewable biofuel. There’s also Formula E, which is an entirely electric motorsport.
There’s just some things an ICU can do that an electric motor can’t. It’s simply impossible to get the same amount of power as an F1 car from purely electric propulsion at the same weight.
so you know it’s a problem, you know the sport’s total footprint is the cause, you even point out THEY know it’s wretched and are making half hearted efforts to someday maybe do something.
but you give them your attention.
There’s just some things an ICU can do that an electric motor can’t.
but it’s entertainment, not some mission critical life saving thing, it’s to watch cars go fast driving in circles.
fuck me, our civilization deserves to collapse.
we deserve to collapse because we like to be entertained?
i wonder if what you used to type and send this comment onto the internet uses any sort of battery
we deserve to collapse because we like to be entertained?
when the specific entertainment is dicking around the ONLY FUCKIN’ ATMOSPHERE WE HAVE yeah I think so.
you like the taste of smog? or is it simping for petroleum companies?
Or is the attraction fracking?
Watching the poles melt in real time?
Come on man, which is the part that gives you the entertainment?
the part where the car go fast. DUH!
so why the fuck are you on /fuckcars lol
read the room vroom vroom
You know what, you’re right. Maybe while we’re at it, we should stop going to concerts altogether. Running all those speakers and lights is bound to cause co2 emissions! We should also throw our computers in the trash. Think about all the co2 emissions and our future generations! As a matter of fact, we should go back to living like cavemen.
yeah there’s no difference between art, computation, and FUCKING WATCHING MORONS RACE IN CIRCLES PROPELLED BY TINY EXPLOSIONS
you fucking cannot be that fucking dense
Yeah and songs are just sound. Paintings are just color and paper. Computers are just silicon. Qualia. You may not derive anything out of watching it but for me and many others it is like watching a sport. And the emissions from it are relatively tiny.
Today? F1 is a fucking travesty - rich assholes burning crazy amounts of fuel to speed around in circles taking more from future generations every fucking lap.
While I don’t disagree that spectating races is boring, the amount of CO2 those put out pale in comparison to commutator traffic or the container ships running bunker fuel. We could have EV races and if each manufacturer entered their base models, could help with adoption. We could also make the ICE races run biogas(methane from antibiotic digesters) or biodiesel(tractor pulls could easily adopt that with only a small lowering of performance that all the tractors would share).
but anything combusting is a giant middle finger to your own children.
All consumption is.
All consumption is.
consumption for production is one thing, entirely optional, benefitting only one party entertainment coming at the cost of everyone else?
that’s a dick move.
The emissions from 20 cars driving in circles for a few hours a week could continue until the end of humanity and still be just a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of damage the production industry has done up to this point.
bud the bucket overflowed a long, long time ago. now it’s pouring over the rim, and you’re like: eh, it’s just a few thousand tons of CO2 every year, for funsies, it won’t matter.
it all matters. you’re just too vroom vroom to fucking care.
It’s not even car centric in the US or you would have way more roundabouts instead of traffic lights.
I don’t know what the US is, but it’s shitty for everyone, including cars. The difference is, that cars are comfortable to sit in, but the actual driving is a nightmare compared to Europe. (And walking half a mile in the summer sun from the car to the stadium on a concrete parking lot should be attributed to car centric infrastructure too).
That’s simply the paradox of car-centric design: It also sucks for cars. The only way to actually make driving better is to provide viable alternatives.
Alternative opinion:
Car companies should stop making normal cars and instead only make hardcore vehicles. I’m talking race cars that are challenging and uncomfortable to drive.
manual only, aggressive clutches, loud gears, stiff suspension, non-adjustable seat, no heat, no ac, no radio, etc.Then while they’re making this change we expand the shit out of mass transport and infrastructure!
I can assure you that nobody wants to daily drive my race car. lol
I want all of those things. I can assure you, I want to drive a V8 loud as fuck, manual thick clutched, wide tired, non AC, non radio, rear wheel drive, fucking street menace of a vehicle.
But I also want an absolute rehaul of our infrastructure to include high speed rail for the entire country, and comprehensive pricing that is subsidized by the government with my tax money and provided for free if I need it.
You don’t take responsibility nor pay for the externalities
What? I daily drive a 45mpg Honda fit. It’s the size of a fucking golf cart. But I also tow and have 5 people in my family. I also am in a very high tax bracket. So …you’re wrong?
No
This is why people have a commuting car and a track car. Your track car is often not your commuting car
Easy peasy, let’s simply all own a commuting car and a race car. /s
Why not?
Most people cannot afford it and we’d have to bulldoze tons of space to accommodate the parking.
However for those who enjoy racing as a hobby, I 100% agree that it’s best to go to a track instead of endangering those around you and causing noise pollution.
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