I was recently held up in absolute dead stop traffic. We were sitting on the tarmac with no movement for well over an hour, in the 80 degree sun, before I felt obliged to leave my car and go see if it was because of roadwork or an accident or what.
I joined a small crowd of onlookers after reaching the head, spectating a row of sit-in protesters. One driver had tried to get around but a few protesters moved tactically so that he couldn’t go any further without injuring somebody.
I didn’t wait around, although there were people phoning the police and some tempers beginning to flare. So I head back to my car. The dairy groceries that I picked up on the way back from work had begun to spoil.
I was late home by nearly three hours, so no time to unwind. Just enough to pack away some old leftovers before heading off to sleep and restart cycle all over, -1 hour or so of sleep.
Previously, I had no opinion whatsoever on whether cars=good or cars=bad. But after being held up in traffic, wasting money, wasting gas, losing sleep and perhaps a bit of my sanity I am now totally on board with the Fuck Cars movement. I couldn’t imagine a more convincing strategy to bring people over to your perspective. Excellent thinking. Good job.
So some jerks made a traffic jam and your takeaway is to blame cars?
You know they’d be doing the same to busses/light rail if it gave them the same 15 minutes of fame.
Lame take. Not smart. My uncle got held up by the local gay pride parade and he blamed gay people as a community.
Funny thing is, you can get off of a bus or train and walk past protesting people pretty easily. You wouldn’t be held hostage by the $30,000 toilet that is preventing you from abandoning it and the situation.
What? An organized parade is nothing like a disruptive sit-in. Heck, there is advanced notice even when bicycle events take over the city here.
When a pedestrian jumps in front of a train to end it all, the entire line shuts down for a heck of a lot longer. Can’t just walk 50 miles to work. Every mode of transport has its vulnerabilities.
I think you’re missing both the point of what I said and protest. Pride started out as a riot. No protest, no parade. Maybe you can protest protesters, and one day, there will be a chud pride parade. Dream big.
There are inherently more solutions in place to situations like that with public transit. They’re already in place, too. You just get off the train and hop on a bus. That’s not exactly a novel concept.
Ehhhh the whole thing is sarcasm and you changed your post’s meaning. I ain’t spending energy to hit a moving target like this. Sheesh.
The sarcasm isn’t conveyed well, but it is an attempt to highlight to *checks notes anti-car protesters just how poor their strategy is. For example, I’m probably not the only person to have been moved from a neutral position to a strongly opposing position.
But maybe their goal was never to sway people to their side, like you say? Maybe it is literally being done exclusively for the thrill of the spotlight. Or they’re actually pro-car activists, who are subtly portraying their opposition deliberately poorly in order to sabotage anti-car sentiment?
Yeah. See, the real 1984 is when a guy in a tweed coat beats you up while saying things like “2 plus 2 is 4” and “5 times 9 is 45” because then you learn to hate correct answers.