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Every Reason to Hate Cars

Not Just Bikes

714,925 views

Made by humans for humans. No AI voices or generative AI was used in the making of this video.

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References & Further Reading

Car harm: A global review of automobility's harm to people and the environment
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.20...

Crash Not Accident
https://crashnotaccident.com/

Life After Cars Book, from the War on Cars Podcast
https://www.lifeaftercars.com/

Segregation by Design
https://www.segregationbydesign.com/

Rave DJ mixes available at djnumbernine.com

The number of references far exceeds the maximum length that YouTube allows in descriptions, but you can access the full list of references on Nebula or at this link:
https://notjustbikes.com/references/c...

This video uses stock footage from Getty Images and other licensed sources.
No generative AI or AI voices were used in the making of this video

Script by Nicole Conlan and Jason Slaughter
Thanks to Simon Clark, Henry (The Closer Look), münecat, and Ray Delahanty (CityNerd) for voicing quotes.

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Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:38 Car Harm
3:00 Vehicular violence
6:23 Air pollution
8:14 Other pollutants and tyres
11:10 Noise & light pollution
12:57 Climate change
13:59 Sedentary lifestyle & isolation
15:59 Motonormativity
17:01 Advertising and propaganda
18:53 Disproportionate harm
20:04 Children
23:04 People with disabilities
24:28 Low-income households
27:47 The costs of automobility
30:08 Parking
32:08 Housing
32:55 Infrastructure costs
36:07 Land use and habitat destruction
38:09 Small businesses and retail
39:10 Everyone hates cars
40:51 Reducing car harm
42:14 People want fewer cars
43:48 Concluding thoughts
46:06 Nebula & Day Pass

20 Comments

@NotJustBikes Creator 6 months ago (edited) Pinned

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@barawalk 6 months ago

"My car is transportation. Everyone else's is traffic."

@Julian_in_London 6 months ago

I hate it when it's suggested that car dependency is essential to accommodate people with disabilities. I have visual processing issues that effectively mean that I can't drive, and making me walk amongst loads of car infrastructure with cars moving at high speed is objectively dangerous to my safety and causes considerable anxiety.

@lyndabethcave3835 6 months ago

One reason to hate cars not listed: I have to drive the thing myself. If I was on public transit I could be reading a book or crocheting. It's ridiculous how much collective brain power is wasted on paying attention to traffic; so many individual car drivers all have to focus on the road when we could pay a bus or train driver to do that focusing for 20+ of us, and free up the collective brain power for other pursuits of work or leisure.

@aka_zandiie 6 months ago

i love to see this evolution from "but thats a topic for another video" to "and i have a previous video on that here"

@rhysdhys 6 months ago

Urban planning student here - the paper you cite is an absolute gold mine tysm I will literally be using this in every paper on the environment and social wellbeing

@Codys_Welding 6 months ago

22:54 I’m currently that teen. It sucks. I have to ask my mom to drive me every single time I want to go somewhere. I can’t go anywhere and I can’t walk anywhere bc there’s no sidewalks. I can tell you NJB that it is horrible.

@donho1776 6 months ago

My feelings exactly, "the freedom not to have to use a car".

@aquaticko 6 months ago

I am a car enthusiast; I am an urbanist. I HATE car-dependent urban places! Cars are NOT mass transit, but in a lot of places, that is EXACTLY what we use them for. Cars aren't special if you have to use them for everything, and they SHOULD be. My shorthand for this is: "No one should NEED a car!"

@jakehood7463 6 months ago

Deleting destinations so you can have freeways and parking lots for those cars, which are supposed to get you to destinations. Peak stupidity.

@tobiasheal 6 months ago

Whenever I get into an argument about this with massively pro-car people, they almost always argue "yeah, but some people will always need cars" to which I've started responding "yes, and some people will always need tractors, but we don't use that as an argument that everyone should drive a tractor"

@xaviere.3299 6 months ago

Noise pollution is deeply more toxic than we believe, the damage it creates is not psychological or superficial only.

@Yavin4 5 months ago

My radical take on cars. They should be primarily used for recreational activities like boats. Use them for long drives on the weekends to get away. They should never be used as the primary, daily source of transportation.

@baconlabs 6 months ago

"I don't hate cars, I just feel like Pixar set a higher standard with their other films"

@tapashalister2250 6 months ago

Jason being a rave DJ was not on my bingo card

@Foojaleeckalikeelamaka 5 months ago

If I had lived in North America and had to ask my abusive parents to drive me places to escape my abusive parents then without hyperbole I would not be alive to share this message today.
Freedom from cars isn't just a nice to have, for some it's literally life or death.

@tomselek1000 6 months ago

My Dad passed away 3 months ago from a head on collision. He and the other driver died. My mom, passenger in the crash, was hospitalized for 2.5 months and is now home, but is falling regularly due to nerve damage in her legs from a spinal injury. Car infrastructure took my Dad from me and has left my Mom physically and emotionally damaged. I don't understand any push back for things that make roads safer to save people from the reality my family is now dealing with. Appreciate you laying this out in such a well researched manner Jason.

@CharaVerKys 6 months ago

this joke with upside-down Australia will never get old

@grapefruittango 6 months ago

over time i've slowly come to realize that the point about "kids not being able to go anywhere without being chauffeured" is likely one of the major causes for my own mental health decreasing. not being able to easily leave my house contributing to agoraphobia, not having experience being alone in public while i was younger causing social anxiety, and now i'm in my mid-20s and can't drive independently (or learn to drive for that matter) due to discomfort learning to drive in heavy traffic. i don't know anybody my age in my city because i still can't go anywhere without my mother going with me, and nobody wants to strike up a conversation with someone sitting with their mom.

@somethingfunny9341 6 months ago

You forgot to mention the multi thousand (or multi million) dollar liability insurance you need to operate a car. No other task in human history has been considered so dangerous, yet so vital to so many.