this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Fuck Cars

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

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[–] Mniot@programming.dev 94 points 1 day ago (3 children)

There's a lot of externalizing of costs going on. The trucks are idling because the drivers are operating at the slimmest possible margin under the assumption that idling doesn't cost anything.

What we actually would want to get to is that idling does have a cost (environmental, health, pleasantness of the area, etc). And that cost ought to be passed up the chain so that the various goods being shipped are more expensive.

But without a more centrally-managed economy, the implementation is to put all the pressure on the truck drivers and leave them responsible for passing that pressure to the next step up the chain. It doesn't work out very well in practice because the drivers need to make a bunch of capital expenses for something like adding a cab AC and adding a batter-powered lift, but they've been operating at low margins so they're not in a position to do it.

[–] Headofthebored@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I think I seen some calculation where it said that an engine uses the same amount of fuel to start as it does to idle five minutes. I don't know if that was average, a specific engine, or if it referred to gas or diesel though.

[–] shoo@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago

I think that used to be true on older cars, but with modern passenger cars emissions/fuel use for start up is about the same as 10s of idle. No clue if that's true for these big diesel vehicles tho.

Idling diesel is supposed to be very bad but long haul trucks are better at it because they need to keep refrigeration running. Either way, something like 2 minutes of idle is almost universally worse.

[–] MintyFresh@lemmy.world 65 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Local deliveries should be happening in electric vehicles. And 90% of long range trucks should have been a train. Go back in time a few decades and get the godless MBA having fucks out of the railroad industry.

Boom! Y'all should elect me king of everything, just solving problems left and right!

[–] Mesophar@pawb.social 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

You'll have my vote for king as soon as you provide the time machine to enact your plan

[–] ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Local deliveries can be fixed in a few years with proper regulations, and that's giving a generous time span for businesses to adapt.

[–] Mesophar@pawb.social 3 points 9 hours ago

Oh, I definitely agree on the local deliveries but. But you also mentioned going back in time a decade as part of your plan.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Local deliveries should be happening in electric vehicles.

Including cargo bikes, not only electric box trucks.

[–] Corn@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Cargo bikes kinda suck for very heavy loads and terrain, theres a reason they used to be ubiquitous throughout China, but now everyone uses gas and electric.

*manual cargo bikes, you see a decent amount of 3+ wheeled electric or gas bike things carrying bikes, trash, veggies, w/e

You don't need a centrally managed economy, you just need ancient irish car maintenance wisdom.