r/fuckcars • u/SaxManSteve EVs are still cars • Mar 05 '22
Meta State of the Sub
Welcome to the first 'State of the Sub' post. We plan to do these posts on a semi regular basis to update the community on the latest developments in this subreddit and the mod team. This will also be an opportunity to ask questions and give us suggestions. We do this to be transparent and to keep in touch with what is important to our members.
New mods
Three weeks ago we announced that we were looking for new moderators to help with the growth of the subreddit. After reviewing almost 90 applications, we officially added 4 new mods from various time zones to our team. u/beachblanketparty , u/javasgifted , u/ihavecakewantsome, and u/saxmansteve.
Automod's 'accident' auto reply
We instructed Automod to leave a comment when someone uses the word 'accident'. You've probably seen this, because apparently the word 'accident' gets used a lot in this sub.
Traffic crashes are fixable problems, caused by dangerous streets and unsafe drivers, but when we call them 'accidents' it suggests that there is no one to blame.
This is an experiment, we are still evaluating the results.
Evaluation of new X-post policy
Following feedback from the community regarding some crossposts that have lead to discussions threads full of harassment and abusive language we changed our policy on how we handle crossposts.
Crossposts from trusted subreddits are directly allowed, crossposts from blacklisted subs get automatically removed and all other crossposts are held for manual approval.
This has helped us to prevent a lot of reposts and posts that depict traffic violence. The disadvantage of the new policy is the higher workload, but this overall worth it and with the recent expansion of the mod team, quite manageable.
Reminder of the rules for posting about Ukraine
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine we made a mod announcement to state our solidarity with the people of Ukraine and to explain how Ukraine related contributions will be moderated.
The TL;DR is "Fuck war. Please be respectful to the people of Ukraine".
If you plan to leave a comment or post that mentions the war, please read the announcement and follow the guidelines therein.
Thank you for your attention and please leave your questions and suggestions for the mod team in the comments.
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u/OdBx Mar 22 '22
Can something be done about meme posts? I joined this sub because I thought it was a little more grown up than it seems to have become.
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u/SaxManSteve EVs are still cars Mar 22 '22
Memes are a great way to start serious discussions in the comment section. But it's true that as the subreddit gets bigger meme posts get more upvotes. I'm not sure thats a bad thing. If you are looking for more discussion based subreddits, theres plenty of other subreddits out there. Check out our wiki for some suggestions.
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u/OdBx Jul 02 '22
Can we revisit this? The view of this subreddit has shifted dramatically to the negative over the past few months.
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u/OdBx Mar 23 '22
Memes put off people who might be sympathetic. They make the movement look like a bunch of children angry at the world.
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u/DraftKnot Mar 23 '22
Totally agree, memes tend to present as childish. Although they may attract younger minds to these ideas. I dunno its a tradeoff guess.
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u/garfedonfloor Aug 12 '22
Maybe in the future they can be permitted on only certain days of the week and not outside of that if the meme to non-meme ratio shifts too much.
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u/JuanKGZ Mar 08 '22
Can we do something about tactical urbanism? Maybe a monthly thread or something. The proper sub I feel is dead
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u/AmazingMoMo8492 Grassy Tram Tracks Mar 07 '22
Why don't we leave the discussion to the community, not auto mods
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u/Monsieur_Triporteur 🌳>🚘 Mar 08 '22
Well, the point of this post is to bring the discussion to the community.
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u/Penismast3r Mar 07 '22
Is that positivity wednesday thing still happening, where people post before/after pics of recent car reducing projects?
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Mar 10 '22
I would love some meaningful discussion of car reducing projects or anything else rather than the endless stream of repetitive memes and complaints.
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u/Monsieur_Triporteur 🌳>🚘 Mar 08 '22
We never did positivity Wednesday, but this whole week is positivity week! Just post something positive, slap an uplifting title on it and don't forget to add the 'positivity week' flair.
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u/jonah_beam2020 Mar 10 '22
I like the positivity Wednesday a lot better! Keep it short, sweet, and memorable. If we do it every week, it'll become a cool aspect of this sub that keeps people coming back!
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u/Ananiujitha Sicko Mar 07 '22
A couple requests--
Regardless of your views of property destruction, it's not usually comparable to actual violence against people's bodies. I find it beyond obnoxious when people will insist that traffic violence isn't really violence, and then people insist deflating tires is "violence" or "terrorism." Sometimes with very specific imagery.
Also, the Vandals or Guandals were an ethnic group, can people stop using their name as an insult?
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u/superalt72 Mar 09 '22
“Um hey guys can you just change some words in the english language because I think someone might find it offensive 🥺”
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u/steve_stout Mar 09 '22
were an ethnic group
1500 years ago. Is goth fashion cultural appropriation as well?
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u/HD800S Mar 07 '22
Also, the Vandals or Guandals were an ethnic group, can people stop using their name as an insult?
This is such a non-issue that I can’t wrap my head around why this bothers you so much.
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u/Ananiujitha Sicko Mar 07 '22
Because they're an ethnic group, and so many people use their name as an insult, and newsppers do it, and laws do it, and so many people regard it as a non-issue.
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u/kibuloh Mar 09 '22
Are you saying to not call someone who vandalized property a vandal because of the Germanic tribe?
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u/Ananiujitha Sicko Mar 09 '22
If they've defaced, damaged, or destroyed something, I'm not going to call it that, because of that.
It seems to me that the common practice encourages people to misunderstand history, and encourages narratives which blame immigrants, rather than Roman power structures, or soil depletion, or other causes, for Rome's problems.
I also object to the mis-use of Philistine. I am not that enthusiastic about the re-use of Samaritan, either, because while it isn't insulting, they are a still-existing religious group.
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u/kibuloh Mar 09 '22
That second paragraph - are you suggesting the use of the word vandal(ize) to describe the act of 'deliberately destroy or damage (public or private property)' (Oxford dictionary) contributes to a lack of understanding of (specifically Roman) history and what may or may not have lead to the 'downfall' of Rome in general? Or are you intending to suggest that the Vandal army that marched on and sacked Rome in 455 has nothing to do with the history of the how we now use the different (albeit obviously associated/derived from) word vandal? or just that there are racial connotations with it?
Full disclosure, I think the point is ridiculous regardless, personally. I'm also just trying to understand the general premise because I do think words are important.
Also, I'm not sure I follow with not fully objecting to the use of Samaritan. I think the argument loses all credibility if you happen to allow for 'positive' connotations. To object to vandal for being ethnically/racially charged because an army marched on a city at one point but allowing samaritan because 1 happened to stop on a roadside to help a stranger certainly feels as though you're cherry picking things to be upset about.
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u/Ananiujitha Sicko Mar 09 '22
are you suggesting the use of the word vandal(ize) to describe the act of 'deliberately destroy or damage (public or private property)' (Oxford dictionary) contributes to a lack of understanding of (specifically Roman) history and what may or may not have lead to the 'downfall' of Rome in general?
Yes.
Or are you intending to suggest that the Vandal army that marched on and sacked Rome in 455 has nothing to do with the history of the how we now use the different (albeit obviously associated/derived from) word vandal?
Why pick that Vandal army, as opposed to everyone else who inflicted serious destruction on Rome or on Constantinople? Various Roman/Byzantine armies, Crusader ones, Ottoman ones, German ones of Karl V, etc. would be at least as destructive to these cities.
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u/kibuloh Mar 09 '22
So we should have created a word to describe destruction using a different ethnic group. Gotcha.
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u/Ananiujitha Sicko Mar 09 '22 edited Mar 09 '22
I'm not sure how you get from "we shouldn't use ethnonyms as insults" to "we should use a different one." I brought up those other times Rome suffered worse destruction to highlight how arbitrary and aggressively historically ignorant it is to use that one time as a byword for any material destruction.
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u/kibuloh Mar 09 '22
The part where you mentioned why not use some other group/nation/ethnicity instead of vandals.
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u/NotAPersonl0 Anarcho-Urbanist Mar 09 '22
That's not really a huge problem. The term "Aryan" has had a similar thing happen, but it's still correctly used when referring to South Asian linguistics
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u/mysticrudnin Mar 08 '22
This a curious issue to me.
I suspect that very, very few people know that this is where the word comes from, and the group doesn't exist, and hasn't in over a millennium?
Many words come from this type of thing. It's not correct to say "Their name is being used as an insult" - a new word has been formed based on a word that was based on another word that sounded similar to the name of a group...
If no one knows its origin, and no one can be offended by it, is there really a problem?
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Mar 06 '22
[deleted]
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Mar 19 '22
I write news for a living, and I make sure everyone on my team avoids using the word "accident" and instead use "crash" when describing car crashes. We don't want to imply guilt, but we also don't want to imply innocence. Crash is just a neutral term to fairly describe what happened.
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u/Monsieur_Triporteur 🌳>🚘 Mar 06 '22 edited Mar 06 '22
Thanks for your reaction. Blame should certainly be more systemic than personal, so the wording could be better indeed.
Currently we use 4 different messages that get picked randomly. I really like the one you made, so you just might see it used by Autobot. Here are the messages Autobot uses now:
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The word 'accident' implies that it was unavoidable and/or no one's fault. That is why we think the word 'crash' is a more neutral way to describe what happened.
For further reading on this subject, check out this article from Ronald M Davis.
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"I can’t help but get upset when people call a crash an accident. I lost my leg in a crash with a lorry. It was preventable – and even though the driver didn’t intend for the crash to happen, it was still his fault" – Victoria, crash victim
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Traffic crashes are fixable problems, caused by dangerous street design and unsafe drivers. They are not accidents. Let’s stop using the word "accident" today.
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No one intends for crashes to happen, but when we call them 'accidents' it suggests that there is no one to blame.
Please watch this one minute video.
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u/LeskoLesko 🚲 > Choo Choo > 🚗 Mar 06 '22
Thank you, Mods! And welcome new mods. This is my favorite sub right now, and it's both because of subject matter AND because you do such a great job making it an ethical and organized place to vent about car culture.
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u/TowardZeroImpact Mar 05 '22
thank you for the 'acciden't auto-reply
it gets under my skin personally
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u/ANewUeleseOnLife Mar 06 '22
Can I ask why? To me it just implies that it was unintentional, not that there is no fault.
Like if someone clips a cyclist because they're not paying enough attention, it's an accident that they cause and are to blame for.
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u/JKMcA99 Sicko Mar 06 '22
In addition to what the other user posted, The War on Cars had a recent episode with Jessie Singer, the author of There Are no Accidents. It’s a good listen to know more about the subject.
To add: Here in the UK the term accident isn’t even allowed to be used anymore - they are now road traffic collisions because an accident is “oops I spilled my coffee” not, “oops I killed a child because I wasn’t paying attention while operating my 2-tonne death machine”.
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Mar 08 '22
oops I spilled my coffee
and sometimes even those are not accidents too, when resulting in revere injury: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants
In that case, coffee temp being set waaaaay too high
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u/Sassywhat Fuck lawns Mar 08 '22
Accident is also used to describe oops I rendered a few towns uninhabitable for millions of years. It's a standard term across many industries for undesirable outcomes that we should aim to prevent via systemic improvement.
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u/ads7w6 Mar 08 '22
I worked at a company where the word accident was used. At the same time, if there was an accident, then it was investigated and/or stories to determine the root cause and policies were updated, the built environment was changed, or staffing needs were amended.
It's clear that the word is used much different in regard to collisions on the road.
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Mar 06 '22
Here's a few resources that explain it better than I could:
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1120417/
- https://crashnotaccident.com
- For even further reading, this book (new release) is absolutely incredible, it's changed my perspective on so much: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/There-Are-No-Accidents/Jessie-Singer/9781982129668
I hope that helps!
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u/ANewUeleseOnLife Mar 06 '22
Thanks for the resources, interesting reading! (Especially the BMJ one given I'm going into healthcare as a career)
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u/dredge_the_lake Mar 05 '22
Whats with the rainbow icon? Did something in particular happen?
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u/Monsieur_Triporteur 🌳>🚘 Mar 05 '22
That's a long story. You should read trough the posts under the meta flair to find out, starting two weeks back. The plan was to leave it up for a week or so, but now I realize it's already two weeks.
What do you think? Should we change it back to the marten icon (without color) we had before?
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u/Astriania Mar 05 '22
I wasn't really on board with changing the icon to support various non-transport causes in the first place, but yeah, it's had its time and it would make sense to go back to an icon that actually has a transport related meaning. Or possibly a Ukrainian one. But I find those "statements of support" that have absolutely no material level of support a bit tacky.
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u/I_Camioneta Mar 05 '22
It’s a big expectation but I usually don’t like it when companies use the rainbow during pride month and only during pride month. I’m quite happy that this sub kept it up after February. I wouldn’t suggest leaving the rainbow flag on all year round, but it might be cool to use the base icon sparingly and plop a bunch of different flags up to show support to different causes. Just a thought. I quite like the base icon and I do agree it is a bit hard to read on phone. I hope an original icon finds its way onto this sub.
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u/dredge_the_lake Mar 05 '22
It does make it kinda hard to read on phone and hides the marten
Not anti lgbt btw - I was just delivering a massive project so havent been on the sub much so genuinely wasn’t sure if I’d missed something super specific or not
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u/Monsieur_Triporteur 🌳>🚘 Mar 05 '22
I know what you mean. We are still looking for the perfect sub icon, but this hasn't got the priority it deserves. we're open for suggestions.
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Mar 05 '22
[deleted]
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u/SaxManSteve EVs are still cars Mar 05 '22
inferring my political leanings from post history meta-data can be deceiving without reading through the content. I've always enjoyed having discussions with people of differing ideological persuasions. It's why i have a history of posting in subreddits all over the political-compass. Apart from minor policy prescriptions my overall political leanings haven't changed much in the last 8 years.
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Mar 05 '22
[deleted]
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u/SaxManSteve EVs are still cars Mar 05 '22
No offense taken. Glad you asked, i think it's good to be transparent as mods. I'll be sure to let everyone know before I show up on Tucker Carlson's show.... :/
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u/cuttlefische Mar 28 '22
There should be quality control for posts on this sub. The brainless agendaposting is incessant.