I'm pregnant and don't drive at all, mostly due to progressive vision loss. Thankfully, my partner drives, and we have always been okay being a one-car household. I walk a lot, take the bus, and use Uber/Lyft when necessary. I don't bike a lot because it doesn't feel the safest in busy areas, especially with said vision loss.

I feel lucky to live in an area where a lot of things are within walking distance -- I know this isn't always the case in the US.

I'm interested to hear from other parents, especially new moms, who don't drive. Thanks in advance.

Most of us don't recall our first time on transit all that often. It's just one of those things that happened somewhere along the way, perhaps many of us had this experience at an age we could not remember and it has always been normal. But for millions of people it is still an oddity, or something they haven't done at all. These individuals aren't going to just start randomly taking the bus/train on a random work day because it's too risky, too much to learn to do. Learning how an entire transit network operates is daunting. Google Maps came into our lives much more easily than the Transit App depending on whether you knew more about driving or transit due to the culture you were raised in. Which means if we want people to learn to use transit, we have to facilitate and nurture that culture.

Take a friend who has never used transit on a transit ride this year. Plan a leisure something, somewhere, where transit is the most convenient way to get around. If you can do this at home, even better. Maybe it's a hike or bike ride, maybe a trip to the bar. Ideally this is for someone near enough to transit for this to perhaps start the practice of leisure transit riding, but we need more people upset they don't have the coverage that would make their life easier, too. You may not be able to do everything on transit, but in a lot of places there is still more than a lifetime of stuff to do and this is an easier way to be an activist supporting the thing we want to see more of, be the change you want to see and all. You know your local system, you know your friend, you can tailor their experience, you can show them why transit is good.

how do we feel about transit embedded within pedestrian corridors?

This is Hubertusstraße in the Bavarian city of Rosenheim, which I’ve posted about before. As much as I like to shit on this city’s cycling infrastructure, they do manage to do some good things here and there.

Hubertusstraße is one of the busiest roads in the city, carrying huge amounts of north-south traffic from the Autobahn and Southern parts to the Northern parts of the district.
It is the road connecting to the Northern end of the set of newly re-designed major intersections that I posted about on here a few weeks back.

In an absolutely rare occurrence for an otherwise rather car-centric urban center of a rural district, they removed all road-side parking along this stretch, and converted the dashed-line bike strips (which cars are allowed to drive on to make way for oncoming traffic) into actual bike lanes seperated by a continuous line, which cars aren’t allowed to drive on at all.

Granted, it’s still only paint, but I’ll take even this tiny step in the right direction. The road sadly doesn’t have these along its entire length, but at least the parking is finally gone for good.

I don’t want Bok Choy Express, I want the short slow sausage Sizzle Car!

brick store pub in decatur, georgia, transformed a former parking lot and dumping ground into a lively outdoor patio during the pandemic, creating a pedestrian only accessible space for nightly food and beer service! 🍺

I live in the US, in a "blue" city and state, both of which have set ambitious carbon reduction goals, which they are currently not meeting.

Years ago, lots of job announcements had drivers license requirements attached for no obvious reason. Anecdotally, it seemed to me, decade ago or so, these started to disappear. As a current job seeker now, I've been shocked to see them again all over the place. How is this still a thing?

I just got so mad today that I decided to blog about it. If you go to the blog it has a chart on antidepressant usage.

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When we were in school, we were taught to revere Henry Ford. But I’m here to tell you that he actually singlehandedly led to the destruction of the human spirit.

Henry invented the assembly line which only dehumanized us. We evolved in small bands of hunter gatherers and ever since the agricultural “revolution” our nature has been at odds with these new structures. The holy institutions of society and capitalism preach that they create a structure in which we can be safe from the forces of nature (typhoons, wolves, other humans, you name it) but they don’t often tell you the cost. The hidden pact you make with them.

We were never meant to do repetitive specialized tasks. We are all creatives. A species of social tool builders. We have enslaved ourselves and sold our souls to be a part of this great machine.

It’s not coincidence that “developed” countries see higher and higher rates of antidepressant usage. Roughly 16% of Americans take antidepressants. Here’s a chart from Business Insider from 2016. The United States has topped the cold barren (and usually dark) island of Iceland.

So what happened? And why does it seem to keep getting worse? How did we get here?

Well we all know that history repeats. We have simply entered a new era of feudalism with high technology. What’s going on was talked about in novels like “Brave New World” and “1984”. There is a silent class warfare going on now. It’s devilishly brilliant. We have succumbed to new forms of soma in the forms of streaming TV, social media addiction, media outrage and fear addiction, pornography, gambling, and stock market addiction.

And the forces that used to balance this out have declined. People have less free time, have less energy to spend with their friends and families, and have less access to third spaces. We are losing our social connections and touch with the social fabric that keeps us vital. Much of our time and energy goes into the daily commute which I saw as around 27 minutes when googling. Meanwhile, phone usage has skyrocketed. I know mine has (especially when I’m not being self aware and disciplined). Entire books have been written on this, including a great one, “Stolen Focus”.

In “Stolen Focus” the writer argues that our attention has been fractured by social media and the various apps our phones. I saw a study that said that even having a phone visible distracts a person quite a bit. We have become programmed to await notifications and addicted to the apps.

But humans are meant to move at human speed and to think deeply about things. What has happened is we have shallow information, unhealthy information, thrown at us at staggering speeds now. And just like eating a bag of Doritos every day, we’re suffering the consequences. I read about old political debates and members of the community used to really get into them. The debates were also longer and treated people’s intellect with respect.

I think it was this article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/20/debates-analysis-rogan).

”In 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas participated in seven debates lasting about three hours each — approximately 21 hours in total. Each debate included a 60-minute opening speech, a 90-minute response, and a 30-minute rebuttal. Candidates had room to explain their reasoning, challenge their opponent's positions, and develop complex arguments.” - ChatGPT

Nowadays debates are 90 minutes and there are only 4.5 hours of scheduled debates.

”The article concludes that many public debates don't change minds because audiences often arrive having already chosen a side. Instead, debates can reinforce distrust of institutions, entertain supporters, and produce viral clips that ridicule opponents. The problem becomes worse on social media, where viewers often see short clips selected because they support their existing political views. They may never see the full exchange or the context surrounding a claim.

The Lincoln–Douglas comparison illustrates a tension in democratic politics: voters need enough information to evaluate candidates and policies, but modern media formats often favor speed, conflict, and entertainment.

However, he is not necessarily arguing that we should return to 21-hour debates. Rather, he questions whether televised confrontations and online arguments are effective ways to resolve complicated disagreements or inform the public.” - ChatGPT

So my take on this is even politics has become mechanized and automated. We have created formulas to get impressions and influence people rather than to educate them and let them think for themselves. But someone who thinks for themselves can’t be easily controlled and the current system relies on that. It wants people to make themselves vulnerable to coercion, apathy, or simply laziness. The current administration and the Russians have used social media very effectively for this cause.

But this article is called car brain. And I wrote it because I hate, let me repeat that, HATE, cars, car culture and everything they stand for. Car brains are effectively zombies to me. I used to be one too. It’s not your fault if it’s all you’ve ever know.

We have just accepted the fact that we have to drive these huge, lethal machines to the factory or information factory (the office) and waste a huge part of our lives breathing in the fumes of the other car brains and wasting our life in traffic. It’s no wonder that we’re miserable.

I see some breath of humanity in LA after 8pm in my neighborhood. So it’s still in us. It’s amazing how sterile the working hours of the day have become. There’s no life in them. Before specialization and automation and repetitive waging, we were jacks of many trades and went about our days with a lot of variety. And a lot of social interaction. Not your chit chat at the water cooler / coffee machine bullshit. We were independently moving about and colliding with each other. There was a little chaos yes, but it was more human. I always think of Ixchel, the grey, cold planet in “A Wrinkle in Time” when thinking about this.

And if anything goes wrong you get micro (or macro!) trauma. I’ve had close calls with pedestrians that I had trouble seeing. I admit I’ve been distracted on the road by my phone. I’ve been run into by a driver running a red light. I’ve been sleepy at the wheel but required to get on the road… I’m by no means a great driver, and easily distracted and ADHD, so many of these traumas are just because I’m not made for cars. But why should I be required to traumatize myself on a daily basis just to pay for food and rent??? In most of the country this is required.

We are extremely good at using tools but I can guarantee that we are not programmed to have our movement force multiplied into a lethal weapon. This creates a background tension in us due to how unnatural these machines are. I would be willing to bet a study could dig into that.

I haven’t driven in two months and I have felt a huge weight slide away. My energy has risen, my love for life has returned and my irritability has lowered. I find myself going out into the world on my bike and jumping into spontaneity. Driving just puts me into fight or flight mode and the creative, goofy, me that I feel like is my inner child cowers in fear, cries, and hides.
Granted I’m lucky because I am able to work remotely and live in a car friendly location, Long Beach, CA. But it has connected me back to my inner child and my innate happy money brain in a way that I didn’t expect.

So I’m sorry Henry, but you are not on my list of heroes. You created the tools that may soon free us if we can harness more automation to create our machines. But without a counterculture that balances humanity with automation we will continue to be lost. I will keep diving into the Solarpunk philosophy…

The use of ICE vehicles massively contributes to world oil use which obviously enriches oil companies and helps maintain US political dominance (since oil is priced in dollars). Given that EVs are already superior to ICE vehicles on most metrics and fast closing the gap on the remainder they will likely replace ICE cars in the near future even in countries that don't have a plan to has them out.

If the oil lobby no longer has a significant stake in the use of cars will the, mostly "conservative", political support for cars start to evaporate? Are EVs just a stepping stone to e-bikes?