Why do you feel entitled to idle your vehicle where it's bothering dozens of people?
It sounds a lot like you have a problem with your vehicle and should deal with it.
It sounds a lot like you have a problem with your vehicle and should deal with it.
This ignores every laborer that requires heavy tools to complete their daily task. The people that keep your buildings and homes comfortable, for example, can easily have hundreds of pounds of tools.
So who, really, is the common man?
It takes a serious disconnect from reality to make the statement 'There's no reason that anyone should need to use a personal car for commuting inside urban areas.' Either someone remarkably rich or naive.
Steve the Office Manager doesn't need a 2.5 ton pickup truck with a 6-foot-tall frontend that needs a forward-facing camera because the visibility is so shit that there's no way to avoid splattering all of the children on the 2 mile trip through populated neighborhoods between his house and office.
And yes, Steve is a representative buyer of big trucks these days. Actual working professionals want to be able to actually see where they're going, so they buy vehicles with short frontends and high capacity, like the Ford Transit.
A Edwards poll of Pickup owners in 2018 showed that 75% have never hauled anything, and 70% use the bed less than once a year (ie, never). The sales numbers bear this out as well, pickups with actual usable bed space are very unpopular, almost all the units that are sold have crew cabs, with about as much room in the back for hauling as a minivan with the bench down.
Another case of complete disconnect from reality. Many tradesmen use their own personal vehicles. If you want to call it a 'company car' because the commute involves transport of professional tools, then go ahead and play that semantic game.
>And yes, Steve is a representative buyer of big trucks these days. Actual working professionals want to be able to actually see where they're going, so they buy vehicles with short frontends and high capacity, like the Ford Transit.
Something you're so intimately familiar with, that you totally overlooked that there actually are reasons 'anyone should need to use a personal car for commuting inside urban areas.'
>Steve the Office Manager doesn't need a 2.5 ton pickup truck with a 6-foot-tall frontend that needs a forward-facing camera because the visibility is so shit that there's no way to avoid splattering all of the children on the 2 mile trip through populated neighborhoods between his house and office.
And you probably don't need to have your heat set past 50 degrees in winter or 90 degrees in summer, but I bet you use more energy than you need, helping destroy the environment and kill off animals. You don't need to buy lots of things, but won't someone THINK of the splattered CHILDREN!!!
>A Edwards poll of Pickup owners in 2018 showed that 75% have never hauled anything, and 70% use the bed less than once a year (ie, never). The sales numbers bear this out as well, pickups with actual usable bed space are very unpopular, almost all the units that are sold have crew cabs, with about as much room in the back for hauling as a minivan with the bench down.
The change in pick-up trucks to be massive oversized behemoths including those with large cabs is the result of mental illness of those passing CAFE standards which made it effectively illegal to produce a small efficient truck.
A personally owned vehicle used to commute your tools to work could semantically call a 'professional vehicle' if you want to play games, but it's still commuting with your personal vehicle.
And at the end of the day, are you really willing to strip people of the freedom to drive through an urban area?
People who "just want to feel in control" are, essentially, externalising the cost of their choices while having better options available to them. There's not an upside for anyone.
Whereas people who need to drive, where work couldn't be done at all if they didn't, would actually be more efficient if they had clearer roads to get around on. It would save them fuel costs and time.
Really though, I sense that your argument isn't in good faith. A nuanced look at this can easily see that some activities in a city require a vehicle to add value, and others don't. Lumping the two together and citing freedom (to externalise the cost of your choices on to others) is a little like using tradespeople as human shields.
Yes, for exactly the same reason as I'm willing to strip people of the freedom to practice shooting at elementary schools.
The winter temperature extreme in NYC is around -16F, not idling until the engine block warms would be a problem for most vehicles.
Today they aren’t as popular as they used to be, modern cars usually have no problem starting anyway. And most people are lazy to plug a cable so instead use the cars built in pre-conditioner, which sadly also burns diesel and smells even worse than when combusted through the engine.
More modern cars can also utilize the EV charger for this purpose. Another reason why hybrid or EVs are superior to diesel in the city.
So, GTFO with your need to warm up your engine for half an hour.
https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/USA/NY/New-Yor...
That is generally implied by the word 'extreme'.
>GTFO with your need to warm up your engine for half an hour.
Nobody said 30 minutes anywhere in this thread.
The rest was nice stories we told ourselves to not feel our butts freeze.
I learned a long time ago not to put the burden of this specific comfort (warm car in freezing winter) onto my neighborhood. But maybe that is just me being raised with values towards being a good citizen and a potential good ancestor for the next generations to come.
You argue (if one could call you polemic that) to be free of the (negative) consequences of your actions. Free to dump your externalities onto society and burden others with the fallout of you (unnecessary) actions.
That is not freedom my dear fellow.
"Externalities" is a useful economic concept but it's been hijacked by people who use it as "stop doing things I don't like".
If my comment woke you up last night, then I apologize for making it.
we're all entitled to freedom under the law, and some people depend on cars to make a living.
I say this is a car-less NYC resident, bounty hunting culture is dumb.
People are entitled to freedom under the law, but society is free to enact laws that make idling illegal, even if it means some people's vehicles won't start in winter, or restrict vehicle traffic on certain urban streets, whether this pertains to 18-wheelers or a regular handymans truck. Though I'm sure some people will claim there is a constitutional right to getting everywhere by car, and so society is actually not free to do that.
Either way, I doubt there will be significant change. Car culture has a vice-like grip on society, there is no path whatsoever out of this particular local maximum. There may be gestures towards coexistence with other modes of transportation, but never at a significant cost to cars. And that just isn't enough.
state sponsored snitching is dumb
What you are talking about is not freedom. It is the opposite. It is egoism. You want to do as you please without (negativ) consequences for your actions.
Your freedom ends when it impairs the freedom of others. In this case the freedom not to be poisoned by your car's unnecessary (that is the important distinction here) exhaust fumes.
But yeah. Go on denigrating others by calling them entitled.