What silly inconvinient stuff would you outlaw if you could?
I'd outlaw sauce bottles which make getting it all out harder, especially the ones which don't have the opening at the bottom and make it impossible to put the bottle with the opening facing downwards.
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Displaying any price other than the final price I have to pay inclusive of all fees and charges. I don't care about a number that has some mathematical relationship to what's going to come out of my bank account, just tell me the price. This always annoys me so much when I travel to the US but it's probably like that in a few other places too.
And lying about why something is charged, although it's not silly. A takeaway website I worked for adds "service charge" which is literally just a delivery charge, but hidden, because you only see it during finalization. It doesn't apply to pick-up orders, only delivery. Many websites seem to had adopted it so they can lie about the free delivery.
In the USA, companies like Ticketmaster now have to show the full price upfront, including all taxes and fees. Airlines have had to do it for a little over 10 years, too. I really hope this is enforced for more industries in the future.
If I'm at a physical store, they know the tax rate, so the listed prices should include taxes! Same with a restaurant, more and more of which are hiding nonsense fees.
And the price per kilo written so small I need my glasses to decipher it.
And multiple different unit prices across brands. It's easy when one product uses per kilo while another uses per 100g, but it's more annoying in the US when one product shows unit pricing per pound while another shows it per ounce.
Came here to say this! At least if it was metric it'd be an easy conversion. But america still clings to it's stupid units and I end up just not buying stuff rather than trying to do math in my head a hundred times in the grocery store.
So do you hunt and forage your food then?
(Good natured sarcasm 😁)
I'm grateful that US food/drink packaging at least has both American units and metric units. I'm an Australian living in the USA so I always just look at the metric units.
Another European easy win 😎
Also when print on extremely faint letters.
If it’s not significantly smaller than the cost it becomes confusing though.
That's not even silly. That's some real shit.
touch-sensitive controls in vehicles need to be outright illegal. All controls, regardless of how esoteric, should be operable by feel.
Also on stoves. "Oh, you wanna turn off a burner? Sorry, your fingers are too wet. Also, I hope you remembered to read the 300 page manual because we've never even heard of intuitive controls"
The controls on my stove are those weird flat buttons you'd see on a lot of late 90's appliances? Like they don't "press" at all but they do respond to pressure so I could preheat my oven with the end of a spoon or something. Those are superior to capacitive touch controls.
Also, every car should use standardized bays for things like the stereo. Like, seriously, why can't I upgrade my car stereo anymore?
We've had that, it was called 1DIN/2DIN, kinda like the 19" racks but smaller
I have a Citroen Berlingo and everything except the Android Auto stuff is operated by buttons. What cars don't use buttons? And for what features?
My dad's Toyota Avalon has a touch screen for the infotainment center, and the climate controls are a touch-sensitive panel rather than mechanical switches. Which means if you go to wipe dust off the dashboard, you fuck up the air conditioner settings. I don't know what's worse, all the touch controls, or all the chrome on the dashboard scientifically aligned to glint sunlight into your eyes.
Speaking of, the trend of absolutely blinding headlights should be outlawed. It's especially bad for those of us who drive tiny sedans and live in the US, where seemingly every other car on the road is a lifted F350 with the headlights pointed straight at eye/side mirror/rearview mirror level. There have been more than a few times where a car coming towards me or sitting on the other side of an intersection at a red light has blinded me to the point where I literally can't see anything else. Recently at a stop sign, I couldn't tell if the truck across from me was about to go or not, and I was needing to turn left. They are SO fucking dangerous. And yet, cops will pu people over for having shit hanging from the rearview mirror, or for a big enough crack in a windshield?? We have our priorities so fucked up.
Also that type of reflective tint on back windows that makes the sun go straight into your eyes when driving behind someone who has it. Wtf is that and why. I had no idea that regular window tint needed to be "improved" / re-engineered.
Teslas and cars that are trying to copy Tesla (Mustang Mach-E for example.)
Literally every EV
My car is a EV so not every. So your saying Teslas don't have buttons for example?
Tesla is the worst offender.
Well apparently some company had to try this on the vehicles 🤣
Billboards. Get them out of here! Everyone gets to put their name on the side of the building in at most 2m tall black or white Time New Roman.
There is so much unnecessary advertising in my country. Billboards, commercials on a screen at fuel stations, placards on park benches. None of it has any tangible benefit to regular people. None.
Fuck that. Banksy wrote:
Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
The longer quote is here.
Wow that's really solid. I feel challenged at implementation but that's a me problem.
Huh it would be nice to walk around the city with less advertisements
In the US there are 4 states that have outlawed billboards: Vermont, Maine, Alaska, and Hawaii. I absolutely would not complain if it became nationwide.
Some states also seem to prohibit billboards on certain stretches of highway. There was a state highway I used to take daily in Connecticut and there were no billboards anywhere.
I will never understand the Pay Attention to the Road type billboards on some highways here
Times New Roman is my one disagreement here. That font is not my favorite.
Calibri supremacy
Liberation Sans supremacy
Though DIN 1451 would make an acceptable alternative.
Broaden this to any ads on the streets. Billboards are the most egregious, but I'd actually kill for a society where I can get from my home to a grocery with nothing trying to sell me something.
I am okay with the business itself having signage on its property visible from far enough away for travelers to make navigational decisions. I'm also okay with those state-issued signs on large highways that point out things like lodging, fuel and food which must conform to certain guidelines. And in this case, I'd prefer using clear and distinctive logos which are recognizable by color and shape so that motorists can recognize them faster and spend more of their attention on the road.
I think those could be considered less ads and more just informational postings, particularly the food and fuel lines a la the signs at each interstate exit that tells you the amenities available near any given exit. Considering, as well, that they usually have several competitors on the same sign, and it feels even less ad-like
It's closer to the scale of what "advertising" should be if it wasn't the bloated cancerous mass that it is today. I want businesses to exist and I want interested customers to be able to find these businesses, but I don't want to be told "I'm not a dish, I'm a man" nine times an hour. Signs along the interstate that say "Hey at this next exit there's a McDonald's and a Denny's, an Exxon and a BP truck stop, and a Holiday Inn" are genuinely useful.
I'm ambivalent on this one. If the ad on a building serves to keep the charges from tenants lower then I don't mind (given the ad is somewhat tasteful). Ads for the sake of ads? Yea, fuck that.
Lol. That's just bonus money for the building owner and tenants will probably get a rent hike just because.
Funny joke, that. Passing on savings to the end user.
Passing savings on to the tenants, eh? What incentive does the business owner have to do so?
I disagree with the requirement for plain labels. Trademarks exist for consumer protection as well as business protection; I want Gatorade to hold a trademark on clear bottles with lightning bolts on the front and orange caps, because I don't want to be fooled into buying Negligent Uncle Greg's Geterade. If anything, I would force companies to use fewer of them; no hosing Amazon with 900,000 differently branded permutations of the same product.
Single-use plastic packaging! All packaging now comes in a set of standard ISO sizes and satisfying some engineering constraints and requirements. You get a Coke from a convenience store - it comes as a 0.5L glass bottle. You finish with it, put it on a rack inside the store with all the other empty 0.5L bottles to be taken back to the factory to be washed and inspected for chips and reused. It could be filled with Pepsi next time! Just slap on a new paper label.
I wouldn't call it a silly issue myself. I'd ban all plastic packaging unless proven to have no alternative. I'm also infiuriated with countries for making easily recyclable materials actively hard to recycle: speaking of glass. They make it so you have to take it to a recycling point, which can be sparse depending on your idea. Glass and metals are amazing for recycling. But no, make everything plastic and actively push people away from purchasing glass by making them have to go out of their way to recycle it. Plastic bottles frequently aren't even better. I had multiple plastic sauce bottles break akin to glass and leak out.
Yes! Which is why my idea is to have a collection point at every point of sale. And the first aim will be to reuse the packaging, not even recycle it (melt it down)! This is why ISO standardization is necessary - you don't want to keep track of Coke bottles and Pepsi bottles, they need to be identical. The same truck that delivers a pallet of bottles from the factory to your store will take the pallet of empties out.
I cannot agree on the reuse. The amount of CO2 emited from the extra transportation and water wasted on cleaning, plus the possibility of lower sanitary quality all add into it making less sense than recycling, but perhaps I'm wrong and those are of lesser negative value than the process of recycling.
The numbers I heard is that reusing a bottle is less energy intensive than melting it down. It's sanitary if you sterilize it properly by heating to >100°C, which is still much less energy than heating it to 1723°C to melt. As for water, I try to think on a 100 year time scale, where water is a renewable resource, but plastic is not.
It's true that the energy savings will be wasted if you end up trucking the pallet of glass soda bottles all the way across America! But you shouldn't be trucking bottles that far anyway - you should be sending rail tanker cars full of syrup to a bottling plant in each state and use local water to mix it.
Here in Finland we have a really extensive and efficient plastic bottle and aluminum can recycling system. Every bottle and can has a deposit (0.40 € for large bottles, 0.20 € for small bottles, 0.15 € for cans) and you can cash them by returning them at any store. Just toss them in a machine.
There's even some hypermarkets where you can just pour in a giant bag full of bottles or cans and the machine sorts and prices the things automatically.
It's super annoying we still can't really do the same for rest of the single use plastic, but at least trash sorting and recycling what can be recycled is a thing everywhere. We have a lot of projects that aim to reduce those. Probably the coolest recent thing was that someone came up with all-carton coffee cups. (I hope they catch on so we can get rid of the cups that have the Sad Turtle Warning. I don't want turtles to be sad, they're awesome.)
Ugh. Damnit Finland. Why do you have to be so SENSIBLE??
That's great! Our supermarkets have bottle deposit machines too, and even at only $0.05 deposit per bottle they are widely used. However, the poor people using them mostly obtain the bottles by rifling through apartment complex recycling bins on garbage day (all residents are already required to separate plastic from garbage).
Moreover I don't believe plastic is actually recycled. My city has started burning 90% of its incoming plastic stream and still calls it "recycling"! That's still fossil carbon coming out of the ground and ending up in the atmosphere, you doofuses! The minor fraction of plastic that IS recycled is either downcycled into lower quality items like plastic planks for outdoor decks, or mixed with at least 50% virgin plastic material if making new plastic bottles. There is currently no way to 100% recycle plastic into the same type of item AFAIK, because the polymer molecules chemically degrade.
When I think about recycling I want to think in terms of "is this kind of lifestyle sustainable for 100 years? for 1000 years?" Taking fossil carbon out of the ground is not sustainable. Aluminum and glass are recyclable 100%! Can we do even better with reuse?
There is a store near me that sells illegally-imported African coke. It comes in a bottle that looks beat up to shit, but that's because the bottle was probably used hundreds of times, since in the African country they actually reuse the bottle. It's still perfectly fit for purpose though! We just need to relax our expectations for how "pristine" we want our product packaging to look.
Single use plastic in general. I skipped bagging my veggies at the grocer today because it felt wasteful.
I heard a great talk with Sian Sutherland on plastic reduction recently, specifically around brand agnostic standardized metal bottles: https://youtu.be/jTs6KejhSg4?feature=shared
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Everything should be glass or aluminum. Preferably aluminum since you don't really have to worry about mixtures and cleaning it, you just melt it down and reshape it. With glass, you have to separate out the different types, and it still breaks down each recycle, I believe, since they mix silica with other compounds to make different kinds of glass.
I honestly don't understand stand why plastic beverage bottles are still a thing. Cans work perfectly. And if you insist on bottles, they can make aluminum cans too.
Aluminium cans need a plastic lining to prevent corrosive drinks from eating through them and/or to prevent the aluminium from leeching into your drink.
you should check how much energy is needed to melt and reshape aluminium..Thick PET boxes plus cleaning them uses far less energy
While we're on the subject of plastic packaging:
I want the recent Dutch law on single use plastics to be significantly rewritten.
So they passed a law, requiring sellers to charge people for single use plastic containers. Sounds cool, right? Well, the law has some problems:
So effectively, they'll set the surcharges to be as low as they can, and don't bother allowing anyone to use alternatives. If you go to a snack bar, ask for a serving of fries, and offer your own bowl to put them in, the seller can just tell you "NOPE"
So I think the law should be retooled to cover these issues. The prices should be set from above, the money should go to the state, and the seller must honour customers' requests for using their own packaging alternatives.
Preposterous! How are we expected to reduce our consumption of single use containers if we are not allowed to use anything else?
I've had great success bringing my own sealable glass bowls when I want to get takeout and they eyeball out the regular size portion for me. But here currently it's only possible on an ad-hoc basis, by asking as a favor as a regular, since it's just not part of custom. It would be great if bring-your-own-container was protected and encouraged by law!
My city passed a plastic bag ban recently and I was skeptical about it at first but it actually has been a great help. Not even so much in banning the bags themselves, but in changing the culture and expectations. Now it feels perfectly normal to bring in your own canvas bags to shop because everyone does it, whereby before you'd look like a weirdo for doing it.
Some countries (at least Australia, USA, and many European countries) have deposits on bottles and cans where you pay a deposit of somewhere between 5 and 40 cents (depending on country) when you buy the drink, and get the deposit back when you return it to a store or recycling center for recycling. Reusing instead of recycling would be the next logical step there.
There are actually some companies in the USA that reuse bottles, Straus Family Creamery being one of the more well-known ones at least in my area. They charge a $3 deposit per milk bottle. When you return the bottle to the store, you get your $3 back and the store returns it to Straus. They put the returned bottles in crates and the delivery drivers pick up the old bottles when they drop off the new ones.
Asking for or even suggesting tips of any kind anywhere. Also gratuities, service fees, and any other kind of made up fee. Show a price, end of story.
Also outlaw not including taxes. Show full complete prices.
I agree. Pay the people a livable wage and price the product accordingly, with taxes included.
But I do want to still know how much of the cost is tax. Basically an all in cost, but as transparent as possible
Fine, but me personally, I don't care how much is tax. Do it like gasoline. Tax is already part of it.
The last part is made more complicated by having different tax rates on different items in different places at different times.
You see a national ad for Walmart with a widget on sale. Depending on what city and state you buy it, the price will change because the tax rates are different between and even within jurisdictions.
Maybe the Walmart you go to has a development agreement where they pay higher local tax as a way to cover the infrastructure project the City has to complete to support the building. Or maybe it's the opposite and Walmart built a bunch of streets an utilities they dedicated to the City and now they don't pay sales tax to the local jurisdiction.
Or maybe on September 1st sales tax rates changed in the middle of an ad campaign. Or maybe there's an additional tax exemption due to a Development Agreement.
Or maybe that kayak is no longer taxed at the time sale because you bought a trolling motor at the same time and now it's classified as a motor boat and the customer pays state sales tax when they register it with the state?
It's really, really difficult to predict taxes when you've for so many wacky jurisdictional issues that affect the tax rate.
I think if a company gets large enough to cover multiple jurisdictions, then you can expend the cost to figure that all out. If anything it might make it harder for these mega companies. Screw em. They make plenty of profit. They'll adapt.
Separately, more consistent taxation would be nice.
Half of the scenarios you noted are not ones I have ever heard of (and I would bet are totally made up). Why would WalMart shoppers be exempt from sales tax?
You are right that advertising price with tax may be unreasonable. That does not preclude the store from putting the price with tax on the shelf. Out of all the scenarios you described, the only one that this would not cover is having an item be taxed differently if bought in conjunction with another item, but that can be noted in the same way that stores note a bundle or a bulk sales price ($1 each or 5 for $4).
There is difficulty in the case of a charge in tax rate (how often do those happen? Once every few years) or if there is a tax holiday (I see plenty of clothing stores have a sign for "15% off the marked price"). Those can be handled by having computer controlled shelf prices, which have existed for at least 20 years but never caught on much.
Tipping.
Just kidding. Tipping isn't silly. It's downright racist, sexist, and prevents fair working wages for many.
It also leads to worse service. US dining is fuckin tedious. Every 5 minutes someone harasses you, doing the fake smile thing, etc
In my country you just shout if you need something, or there's just a bing-bong button on the table. they leave you alone unless you ask, and you pay only what's on the bill
I do appreciate when a worker in a restaurant has a legitimate conversation and is social, if they can see when it's appropriate and welcomed. And to add context, I'm not talking about the waiter hovering like you're describing, I'm talking about something I've only ever seen from immigrant family restaurants where they've come from a culture where eating is still a social community activity, or possibly when a chef takes pleasure in knowing you're enjoying their experience. The always transactional nature of eating in society has started to annoy me. But it's very different to when someone is being paid to try and make your experience good, that's inevitably plastic and coerced.
It's a fair point that it can be racist and sexist. I'm sure the attractive get paid more. After all, strippers are the ultimate in tipped workers. They have to pay for the opportunity to work for tips.
We do need to get over this "poor tipped workers", though.
There's a reason why no tipping restaurants end up failing and returning to tips.
It's because you make much more in tips than you'd make otherwise.
It's like no one has ever worked for tips and honestly calculated what they made.
I worked for tips in high school. I didn't make that much money again until people started calling me doctor.
Yeah, you can't have tipping and no tipping side by side. Customers will like the appearance of lower prices and many front house workers will make bank. I've worked back of house and front and worked twice as hard and actually used culinary skills in the back and made less than I did receiving tips in the front. I think that's pretty messed up. The post was about making things illegal. I think most forms of tipping should be. That levels the playing field.
Illegal?
This place is so toxic.
*This place is so different to my outdated opinions ftfy
That article says the workers are unhappy with their $30 per hour because the restaurant is only open part-time so they're not getting the hours they need to make a good wage. The restaurant plans to open full time though
It doesn't support your argument in any way whatsoever
How do restaurants in every single other country survive then, according to your theory?
So what you're saying is that they would get more money by being tipped?
Because there is not a tipping culture in those countries, and they wouldn't make more money from tips?
I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand.
He's saying the restaurant in the article needs to be open more, and asking how come restaurants in places where tipping is not the norm are doing just fine.
Also, blaming things on "culture" is a handwaving non-argument. I am certain there are some systemic things that make tip-free restaurants work, that could be replicated in the US. Like, as the article describes, raising staff wages. And keeping the hours reasonable.
Yeah, we have 0 restaurants here in western Europe. It's a bummer. Should have adopted tipping culture.
As there is no culture of tipping there, potential employees don't have the same opportunity.
In North America, wait staff have two options. Restaurants where they work for tips and restaurants where they don't. Logically, they'll choose the ones that pay more, which are invariably the ones that work for tips.
This is why European wait staff make an average of 12 euros and North American wait staff make vastly more.
I don't recall a recent meal where I haven't tipped more than that, and the staff will have several tables.
Wage overall are higher in the us, you can't directly compare because you don't have social srcurity, work security and number or other benefits.
I never went to the us, but in canada where people tip there's very few small restorants and they're expensive in general. Compared to france, there's no tipping and a shit ton of small restaurant where the food is easily 3x less than in canada.
Also I think they were refering to the origins of tipping culture in the us, which was a way to continue slavery by not paying a wage to the black workers.
Smokers smoking near non-smokers. Even outside. Go pollute your own air, not everyone's.
I’m on board with that as soon as we ban scented laundry detergent, dryer sheets and perfume.
You're probably not serious, but I wrote this it out, so I'll post it:
The difference is that smokers actively blow smelly air out, whereas perfume is just a passive (if smelly) thing on one's body. To ban perfume would be more similar to banning people who smoke (even if they're not actively smoking) because the smoke lingers in their hair and clothes, and that opens up the door to banning construction workers because they might smell sweaty, farmers because they might smell like manure, or preschool teachers because they might smell like baby spit/vomit. Let's just ban smoking as an activity.
I'm quite serious. I have allergic reactions to perfumes and scents that are in many products - at first it's uncomfortable, and with continued exposure, my eyes turn red, nose clogs, my lips swell and I start sneezing. For some reason it's okay for people to blow huge amounts of these scents from dryer vents, and wear them and clothing exuding the fragrances in public. It's not about the odor or some judgement about which fragrance people use. Like cigarettes, it's chemicals in the air which cause problems for me and many other people. In many areas workplaces have adopted fragrance-free policies. It's not something I can control in public, though, such as on airplanes or stores, and as your post illustrates, most people don't understand or take it seriously.
Anything that exudes a fragrance, which includes roll-ons or sticks. Body spray is worse, probably because it ends up covering more area. I had a GF who used Secret brand literally in secret after she went to work. I'd tried to replace it with half a dozen scent-free ones and she was worried it wasn't enough. So, she'd come home and I'd be like hmm, you smell odd... it's an very inconvenient thing to have because I have to ask people close to me to use fragrance free things too, so I can stand being near them.
Got it. I really did think it was just a judgement of those who wish to hide their body odor. I'm sorry it affects you. Maybe both really should be banned.
Perfume designers should design hypoallergenic perfumes.
Oh, right on. I do understand the body odor thing - my problem is I can use antiperspirant but not fragrances. Probably some people think I'm a heathen. I'm sure more people hate BO than are bothered by perfumes. One thing that gets me is people have scented shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, hair spray, laundry detergent, fabric softener, even hand lotion, and they all have different scents, so they end up smelling like 10 different fragrances at once. I have issues with things like scented dish or dishwasher detergent too, and fragrance free ones - no problem at all.
Essential oils are easier for me to deal with, but they still get me after a while. Makes sense since lavender essential oil is not just one thing but actually 100 different chemicals. Natural scents are easier to deal with than synthetic ('fragrance' and 'parfum' in ingredients), for some reason, maybe because synthetic scent products often have a carrier like pthalates. I'd love to figure out what it actually is.
They actively apply it to attack me all day. The fuck are you smoking? It's made to constantly perfume the air.
Counter-point... sweat, manure, and baby spit don't mess with my allergies like perfumes do. Perfumes should be banned (and I also wouldn't cry if smokers smelling like smoke were banned too).
And coffee. Seriously, I don't like the smell.
Can't wait until they pass a law banning "smoking within 10m of another person outdoors" so we can play "chase the smoker!" game and they have to run away from us or face a fine.
The fine won't matter when they get arrested for assault.
Make it illegal in all public spaces. Do that shit at home.
Please don't. I live in an apartment building and my neighbor loves to smoke in his flat which blows into my flat. During the summer I have the choise between being baked alive or second hand smoking two packs a day. Take that shit outside, away from people
Bottled water in every country where the tap water is safe to drink.
I'd shift that slightly.
Bottled water can be useful in emergencies and disaster situations, but they should be treated like other emergency items/rations. People should use reusable containers as much as possible, and the companies should NOT get to suck up all the water they want for free.
Good feedback!
Even in area where it's slightly unsafe, you can get a water filter that installs onto your tap, or even a whole house water filter.
All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey
OP said inconvenience, not acts of terrorism.
That song should be ruled llegal torture under the Geneva Conventions
So you're neither singing nor hearing those sleigh bells ringing?
🤣 classic trolling
Sirens and emergency vehicle noise in songs or advertising on radio.
I'm not advocating for capital punishment, I'm just saying that if we lynch a couple of daytime pop radio hosts for siren-like noises then it will probably go away pretty quickly.
The other day I had a song come on Spotify in which a part of the beat sounded like the cars warning beep. But it was not the right speed to be door or seat belt alarm, so I figured it had to be some else like tire pressure or engine warning... Mother fucker was part of a song and kept me looking for warning lamps blinking for a good minute or so.
I feel that lost minute in my soul my brother in suffering.
I want to throw in doorbells with this (but only as a misdemeanor)
I use Pluto.tv for background noise at night. Amazon is now running some 'Prime Deal Days' ads and one of them has a very prominent doorbell sound that wakes my ass up everytime.
Bluetooth speakers on hiking trails.
That crime should be punishable by caning.
Is it that bad? I mean, whats wrong with loose calm music?
Plenty of time, it's not calm music. You'll have people blasting TikTok pop, rap, hardcore techno, or other attacks against ears. In a place where the whole point to go there is to be in nature.
Headphones are a pretty cool way to listen to music without disturbing others.
Christmas creping into October. Like it already dominates all of December and November, leave Halloween alone.
People at work were talking about going to a store that already has Christmas stuff set up. It's getting ridiculous...
I feel like Halloween sections of stores are smaller this year to make room for Christmas stuff
I was in Walmart yesterday and they had kids holiday clothes on the racks just down the aisle from the Halloween costumes. WTF?!
A popular hardware store put up Halloween lawn decorations in Sept and just swapped them for Christmas lawn decorations this past weekend.
All of them make noise. Can I just get soil in peace?
Oh yea, I was at the store today to replenish refrigerator and there were December stuff being sold already. Bit odd. ^ ^'
Dude, the local Costco had Xmas stuff up ON MOTHERFUCKING LABOR DAY WEEKEND.
I also thought infringing on Halloween's sovereign retail space was going to far, but this is literal insanity.
Winter is coming
Or just xmas in general. Perfect shitstorm of bullshit religion and runaway, dangerous capitalism.
I'd make it illegal to park in no parking zones, bike lanes, and turning lanes...
radio chatter from an inexplicable earpiece
What do you mean that's already fucking illegal??
Up the ante:
Create a legal mechanism that legalizes vandalism on illegally parked vehicles.
So if you wanna park illegally, go for it. The odds of a cop seeing you and stopping to cite you may well be in your favor.
But now anyone you inconvenience can, legally, key the shit out of your car, bust out your windows, and knock off your side mirrors.
I heavily disagree, because it puts judgement into the hands of the masses.
But a photo should be proof enough and if the government (whoever is responsible for issuing fines) confirms it is illegal then the owner of the vehicle gets a fine - and whoever reported it gets 10% of it! Imagine how much money could be raised that way to improve schools and stuff!
Also parking too close to a street corner. Technically illegal but very rarely enforced. It is a real safety hazard since, instead of being able to stop at the stop line and see perpendicular traffic, and driver has to enter the intersection to see (and then have their line of sight blocked by a parked vehicle in the perpendicular direction).
It also makes large vehicles like large trucks and busses take turns very wide.
So many people are unaware of this rule. I would that all no parking areas like this and for hydrants have the curb painted a bright colored with the words "no parking". Why make people guess?
Car locks that trigger the horn and lights. Whatever asshole engineer decided that was a good idea (instead of just making the key fob blink or something) clearly has never had neighbors.
The keyfob doesn't actually know if the car received the signal or not, which is why the car has to react in some way.
The keyfob already has two way communication for the challenge-response protocol, so it is perfectly possible for the car to send a signal back saying it was actioned.
Huh, TIL. I didn't know this!
Or the stupidly sensitive car alarms that react to the slightest movement (ahem BWM and Audi and Mercedes)
Everytime I take a ferry those vehicles are blaring their alarms for the entire trip and they need to announce on the P.A for the owner to come back and turn the alarm off.
Life pro tip, if you leave your car on the ferry, don't turn your alarm on!
This can be turned off on every car I have ever interacted with by holding specific buttons on the key fob
You and I may be the only two people in the world who do that.
Most cars I've experienced announce it only visually, using the blinkers.
It doesn't trigger the horn on UK cars, which I definitely appreciate. Although it was amusing to watch my partner jump every time I locked our hire car in the USA, the noise pollution is unnecessary.
Ha, I was thinking that I never recalled the sound going off on any car in the UK, but regularly and obnoxiously goes off in China. But nobody gives a shit about noise in China.
Paywall logins that don’t load until you’ve already started reading the article and scrolled down a bit. Show the paywall IMMEDIATELY or don’t have one at all.
Same goes for ads that appear and block the text.
In Firefox, switch to reader mode. THEN refresh the page. You get all the text, but the JavaScript to yank it away doesn't run.
Ah. Thanks!
Plastic fasteners on socks. They are too short to use scrisors and often damage socks if you don't. Too many times I ended up with damaged brand new socks because getting them out od that plastic trap is too hard for me.
I always choose socks held by cardboard only if available.
Try nail clippers for it
I LOVE my Flush Cutters. I got them for vape stuff (making coils and cutting cotton) and now I use them for everything. I have four of them. I don’t know why.
As the joke goes, I got a free 3d printer with my purchase of flush cutters. Good stuff.
Gawd I need to get off my bum and get an Ender…
If you like tinkering, go for it! If you expect hassle free setup the first time, might want to look elsewhere. I’ve got mine dialed in so that I only need to wipe the bed clean with a cotton pad and some rubbing alcohol. Took a while and some upgrades, though. ;)
Any chargeable device that you can carry needs to have one standard charging port.
Apparently Its called 'type C'
Still a decent amount of micro-USB and mini-USB devices around, not to mention iPhones took until 2023 to transition
🤣 they did use type C a while back, buuut; like every good deed, they thew it into a bin, slapped lightning back in ( just to skip paying loyalties 😂👌🏿), a perfect way to be a multi trillion dollar company
This
Junk mail. All that paper and ink wasted just for me to throw it straight in the trash.
Stores having loud speaker boxes pointing to the sidewalks, playing music and announcing products. It probably is illegal in well developed countries, but not mine. It's annoying af
That's indeed the case here! I always found the wording of it cute:
New York City Administrative Code, Title 10: Public Safety, § 10-108 Regulation of sound devices or apparatus
Doesn't mean it doesn't happen ALL THE TIME in some parts of town.
I'd outlaw drive through.
No longer will that fucking line up for coffee reach down the road and over the horizon in the morning. The sitting there for twenty minutes, idling your car as you watch the person in front of you park in the middle of the intersection like an asshole. No.
Go, park, use the magic of being a biped.
Now there's no excuse. You either drink the coffee at work, or face that Starbucks barista you know secretly hates you. Biped your way in the door, get your morning fix with confidence because fuck mark, no barista is going to ruin your day.
Not while I'm there banning drive throughs to ruin it for you.
Edit: Barista. I don't even know what a batista is but could potentially be a bad ass.
Ooh! Packaging that is deceptively large. For example, it should be illegal to sell a 6 inch tall tube of deodorant that's only got three inches of deodorant in it.
Potato chips are the worst for this
Potato chips are the one case where it's valid. The air pumped into the bag protects the chips from being crushed in transit.
IT's one thing when the bag is inflated to act as an air cushion around the chips. it's another to make the bag twice as tall as it needs to be.
There's also a reason for that too. The bag not only needs to be inflated with air to protect the chips, but it also has to have plenty of room for that air to expand and contract due to atmospheric pressure changes. For example, if you made the bag just big enough for the chips and enough air that when pushed or squished a bit it doesn't cave in on the chips. And your manufacturing plant is at sea level. When those chip bags go on a truck and arrive at 8,000 feet in Colorado. All the bags would be popped because the air inside expanded far beyond the left over capacity of the bag, so POP!
It’s amazing that people still don’t understand why there is air in chip bags.
Yeah, I mean, we all know it's to keep the chips in suspended animation until the bag is opened and their lives concluded for snacks, right?
Man, I feel like that used to be true--maybe. I feel like the bags are only 1/4 to 1/3 full now. And the chips are still mostly crushed. I feel ripped off even buying chips, so I'm trying to stop entirely. Win?
Huh TIL
As are christmas presents sometimes
Manufacturers not taking responsibility of their waste not just of manufacturing but after what they produced hits the garbage dumps. I think if you make something, you should be responsible for un-making its physical world impact.
People just dumping their shopping trolley on the nearest bit of pavement to where they parked their car. Put it back you lazy fucks.
Cart narcs assemble!
In Hungary you put a coin the cart that you get back when you take it back
We do this in Australia too, and it only helps a little bit. Lazy and inconsiderate people will still be lazy and inconsiderate.
You don't get people taking the carts back to claim the money?
In NZ I've never seen it. And I'm glad. My kids love taking all the stray trolleys back, it takes so long to get them back into the car. I can't imagine how bad it would be if my kids were being paid to take longer to get in the car.
We used to do that, but it seems to have gone away again, at least at supermarkets near me.
Back when I was a teen my first job was at a grocery store. One of the best parts of that job was getting away from all the chaos and collecting carts. Just my 2 cents.
Ah, see, there's always another angle to be considered :-)
Going off OP's thought--the pump or spray bottles whose design and/or straw length makes it literally impossible to get the last bit of product out. I've had some where the straw just plain ends about 1/2" from the bottom so there was never even a chance to use all the product you paid for.
The worst part is I've also used spray bottles that--through very minor design tweaks--enable you to get virtually every speck of liquid. So it's not like it's even hard problem to solve, but fuck you just throw out the last 10% and buy a new bottle!
I had that with some medication. It was a pain killer and muscle relaxant that was in a bottle with a drip opening. The last ml refused to stop out so I took the bottle and sucked the rest out. Well that was more than the usual dose of that medication. I was lying in my bed barely able to move. But I never felt so relaxed
Clamshell packaging 10x the size of the item inside. Thing is wasteful and turns into a razor blade when you try to open it.
I have a lot of medications like this: huge boxes containing one pill bottle and 60% air. Why??? Also, injection meds that have "display boxes" like they are high end Samsung electronics.
I'd like those "essential oil vaporizer" machines fucking banned. Turn that stinky shit OFF Karen...no one wants to smell your "Eucalyptus and Menthol" fighting it out with Patricia's "Orange and Coconut" and Jenny's "Lilacs and Lavender".
It's a terrorist attack on everyone's nostrils!
Scissors in packaging you need scissors to open.
Not trivial, but health care providers should be forced to publish an easily accessible price list of all their services and procedures so we can comparison-shop. I'm so sick of being told I can't know the price until they find out what insurance will pay.
It should be illegal to scan or redeem your lotto tickets before 9am. Some people are just trying to get to work, but nooope, gotta wait behind the superstitious lady who only wants every second scratch&win with a serial number that ends in 2 or some crap.
Ban corporations from being able to interpret the law as they see fit.
They either follow the law according to their customers and the government's interpretation or they don't get to operate at all and the company gets nationalized.
The fact that corporations are allowed to do that is the root of all of our legal problems.
Just preemptively nationalize all corporations — would be much faster and would get the same result
Fossil fuels
Oxygen. That shit causes too much rust. And spoils my chips.
Public trash cans right next to public benches.
I don’t want to sit next to a smelly trash can! Why do they do this?
Why do people throw trash on the ground if a trash can is out of reach?
It would be less awful to have the trash strewn about the area as litter, than to have it all collected and plopped right next to the people.
URB can't come soon enough imo
Where would people take trash then? Home with them? Most people would just drop it on the beach.
I feel the exact opposite of you: more trash cans in public spaces.
Just put the trash cans a couple meters away from the bench.
Afaik that's the norm in Japan.
Order online, call to cancel subscriptions.
People who pull out of parking lots onto roads without stopping. Pedestrian deaths are on a steep incline and this recent behavior is absurdly impatient and unsafe.
If I were a traffic cop, I would go fucking nuclear on this shit. I would exaggerate the fuck out of those tickets. I'd aim for you to never have a driver's license again.
Same with people who don't properly use passing lanes, and same for people who tailgate.
All of you are fucking ridiculous, and I hope you lose your privilege to drive an automobile over something small so it makes you as irrationally angry as your behaviors make me.
Just to add, you should never have less than 1 full car length per 10mph you're traveling between you and the car in front of you. Generally it should be like, double that.
While I agree with your point, OP specified “silly inconvenient stuff”. I think behavior that can result in serious injury or death is a little bit outside the scope of the question.
Can you please clarify what you mean? I just want a better understanding of what driving conditions we're talking about. Are these parking lots where it's like a strip mall with one row of parking spots directly in front of the building and you back directly into a road, or are we talking about people gunning it going forward without looking?
Yeah, sure. Like, someone finished fueling up, and they are driving toward the gas station's exit into the road which the gas station lives on.
As they approach the exit, they realize that if they dont stop, they can beat the incoming traffic, so they high tail it out of the gas station to beat the incoming cars without stopping.
You are required by law to stop before entering a motorway to ensure entry is safe. People are skipping the stop and making a judgement call as they approach the place the law requires them to stop, and are instead treating it like it's a highway on ramp/yield.
This has been the cause of a fuck ton of pedestrian injury and death (especially since ~2010 when Obama kinda by mistake made huge heavy cars the most appealing option for automakers when he was trying to force automakers to make more fuel efficient cars [thanks, Obama!]), as these impatient fucks are generally looking at the road and not the sidewalk.
Doesnt have to be a gas station. Any similar circumstance.
Good analogy!
Yeah I've seen people do that and it's terrifying. In the strip mall case tho I was gonna argue for better civil engineering and fewer blind spots in vehicles when backing. But nope you're definitely talking about pure driving like you own the entire planet.
You encountered karen recently?
Yes, but also if you are in the left lane on a highway it's also your responsibility to get out of said lane if someone is becoming closer than this behind you.
No, it is your responsibility to get out of the passing lane once you have safely passed the traffic you are passing, provided the left lane is a passing lane. It is not a passing lane when there is a left exit ahead.
The driver behind you should never have any bearing on the decisions you make as a driver unless they've got flashing lights.
If you are passing a miles worth of traffic and someone behind you wants to pass that mile of traffic faster, move over temporarily to allow that person to pass rather than making them slow down to keep an appropriate distance.
Nope. And if you begin to tailgate, then I will make sure to increase my safety by slowing down to a safer speed.
You sound like an unsafe driver.
What you are suggesting is actually illegal in many states. If you're being overtaken while in the passing lane you are required to make way. People like you are why they had to make such laws. Quit fucking up traffic for everybody.
Didn't say anything about tailgating. You sounds like an entitled driver.
Yes you did you illiterate dolt:
Again, it sounds like you're an unsafe driver, thinking normal and law abiding driving habits are "entitled."
Cheers. Maybe read a book.
Postman must knock and wait 5 minutes for you to answer the door by law. If you have proof that they didn't knock or wait the required time they must redeliver the parcel by way of barbershop quartet at a time that is convenient for you.
I'd much rather ban home delivery for most parcel (stuff like couches and fridges excluded) and have them put in one of those package vaults.
The postman drives all the packages to the vault, chucks them in, you pick them up when you've got time (they work 24/7), everyone wins.
We've got these things everywhere in Poland. Nearest one is a bike away.
Would maybe work in some places. I at least get the angle of encouraging people to order online less, if this were the situation I think more people would prefer to buy things from brick and mortar stores if they could find it. But in areas with car dependency problems it'd make life worse, particularly if the company decides it's not profitable enough to put a package vault in a town or in reasonable distance of it, which I could absolutely see happening in rural areas of non-densely populated places.
Postmen tend to be extremely overworked and underpaid. Many are paid per parcel delived and your idea would probably kill the job of delivery all together. Unless you plan to increase the postmen workforce by 700% and also reintroduce slavery I see no way why anyone would do that.
Mass produced Knick knacks. Those useless ornaments that just seem to accumulate on bookshelves, fireplaces and cabinets.
Existing without my consent (consent can be revoked at any time).
Since you said silly and inconvenient I'll keep from more serious propositions and say:
App/login pestering. Large fines for each individual exposed to it. Even most corporations would hesitate to do it.
Also every narrative work (book/movie/game/comic/whatever) would have to have a legally registered "estimated number of installments" with a set ending written the moment it gets published. Going past the limit and publishing more installments to that media would incur fines that would start high, and grow by powers of ten with every extra installment.
You wrote a trilogy of movies with a nice satisfying ending? Good good. Enjoy making money off of it. But if you make a sequel or prequel you'll have to pay 1 billion dollars. Extended universe? Ten billion. One hundred billion. A trillion.
Microtransations.
I wouldn't ban them, though. I would enforce a law that forces any cash sum for an in-game item to be reversible. If you pay $5 for a hat, you should also be able to sell a hat for $5, and have that money arrive within your account within 24 hours. Any company with a market cap that allows for payment to occur for at least 10 people that are operating microtransations would be forced to oblige.
That way, we either see full in-game currencies where effort is rewarded with real money, or the immediate erasure of microtransations.
We'll also see the "rental" market for videos disappear overnight, because suddenly you can trade in that copy of Shrek 2 you rented from Prime Video for a crisp $15.
Hell, any item you pay for should be returnable within 30 days, at least. Good luck selling a fucking Ultimate Team pack to children, EA! Once they see that pack is full of shite they'll sell the contents back to you. Even worse, the lucky bastards that get a shiny Cristiano Ronaldo will sell for thousands.
Either you build a legitimate financial market, or you don't make money off of shit people don't want.
Oh, I would require measurements in inches (or cm) of waist, hip, rise, inseam for women's pants. You cannot just call it a "6" or whatever, I am outlawing those sizes.
Changing products and pulling products of the market.
Launch a new flavor of chips? Cool, but you’ll have to keep selling it until the end of time.
Want to change the flavor? Fine, sell it under a new name and also keep selling the old flavor.
Pleather or faux leather or whatever they call it. You have about a year or two before it starts rubbing off on everything you own. Sometimes you don't even realise you're buying it. I wish it didn't exist.
Winter.
Summer
I'd outlaw touchscreen keyboards. I demand tactile feedback
Money and commerce.
Money implies poverty.
Only in a capitalist society
People who make fun of my augmented vision
Stop signs. Turn them all into yield signs
Done right a stop sign tells you that the yield sign was not enough and that you have to be careful.
Using stop signs by default is the traffic planning equivalent of "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!" There are other ways to make junctions safer.
Yes, 1-2% of American stop signs should stay.
Reading the comments, smiling at the fact that so much people complaining about is already illegal here and not a problem.
Personally. I'd make it illegal to start small talk about the fucking weather. I can see that's raining too. Yes that is annoying. Haha, no I won't put shampoo in my hair on my way home. I don't know when it will stop. Do I look like a meteorologist?
Cars
I'm fine with someone having a car.
My problem is with everyone needing a car, even to run errands round the corner.
The problem is not cars. The problem is car dependency.
That said, any "car" where you cannot see a six-year-old right in front of the vehicle should require a license for an eighteen wheeler.
Take the bottle in your hand such that the cap is close to your index finger and thumb and the bottom of the bottle is across from the on your palm. Grab it tight and make sure the cap is on tight. Then use your whole arm to swing the bottle. You want to hold it in front of you and with a lot of force (don't let go, lol) swing it downwards, passing your hips. Use your shoulder a bit, but mostly your elbow joint for movement. Put as much speed into the movement as you can. Repeat five times. The centrifugal force will push the content of the bottle towards the cap. Then you can squirt out the remaining sauce, or take off the cap with all remaining sauce on there e.g. ketchup is non-liquid enough to stay on the cap pretty good.
Crime: Slow moving vehicles on main roads during rush hour.
I live in the countryside and tractors, backhoes, harvesters and front lifts, which are all restricted to 30 or 50 km/h, have no business on the main roads during rush hour. Take the back roads or wait until rush hour's over!
It's not uncommon to see the following at 0750, and we're about 15minutes from everything here, a tractor pulling some equipment followed by two semis that are too slow in acceleration to overtake, and too big to squeeze by, followed by 50 or 70 cars of people screaming.
Theoretically slow moving vehicles have to pull over and let the queue behind them pass, but too many don't.
Punishment: I propose that we legalize lynching to some degree. I mean the fear of a roadside beating by a mob armed with travel mugs and fistful of small change, that's sure to keep some of the problem at bay. Further I propose that should the miscreant die from the beating, then nobody should be charged. Unless someone brought larger items like snow shovels or tire irons to the party, in which case the snow shovel wielder could be charged with involuntary manslaughter.
Cringey Boomer-esque joke about murdering people simply cause inconvenience.
Cringey gen z'er calling everyone older than them self boomers
Cringey boomer-esque guy doesn't understand the esque suffix.
That sounds more like an infrastructure problem to me, your anger might be a bit misdirected. If reasonable transport isn't available you should be angry at your local government instead, if it is available and you choose not to use it then it's a problem of your own making and you should be angry at yourself. You really can't blame someone for using the infrastructure available to move heavy equipment since it's almost certainly not their fault that you're stuck using the same road.
Speed limits on motorways.
Speed limits in school zones because kids think fast cars are cool.
If parents could drive faster their kids would get to school quicker and they could start learning earlier
And stop learning earlier. Much earlier. And forever.
I've always joked that if we up the speed limit in school zones we'd end up with kids who are either smart enough not to run out into traffic, or strong enough to take on a speeding truck. In either case it would be a win for natural selection.
He said "motorways" which I'm pretty sure is just a British word for "freeways." He's not talking about school zones.
I'm English, I know. I was taking the piss.
You may be talking about the same thing I am, just using terminology more common in other parts of the world. By "motorways" are you only talking about highways/interstates? I can absolutely agree with THAT, but if by motorways you mean any roads, that might actually be a nightmare for side roads, residential, etc.
"Motorway" is UK English for a controlled-access highway like a US Interstate, German Autobahn, etc....
Cool, cool. That's what I thought, but just making sure.
Then we agree.
Awesome, just wanting to make sure. Yeah I don't think that's a spicy take at all. Here in the states we already drove as if speed limits on highways don't exist, it's just a convenient revenue stream extracted from the ones unlucky enough to be picked out of the pack lol
Highway is just another word for a road between places, and interstate is obviously a term local to the few countries that have states and name motorways accordingly. It's that more than one country? Motorway is the more international term.
Yeah, I was thinking that was the case, just wanted to clarify before I made a point that didn't actually address anything the OP said.
Drag is proportional to the square of speed. Driving fast is very inefficient.
because it isnt. Accident rates on no-speed-limit strips are much MUCH higher than on restricted ones. There is a popular segment, where 120km/h was introduced, and lo and behold, accidents dropped dramatically. Populist politicians then REMOVED the limit again since "there are so few accidents, the limit is apparently nod needed". Guess what happened? Duh.
Plus having everyone at roughly the same speed makes driving moe efficient. I got fasther through the netherlands where everyone drove exacly 100, than back through Germany, where you have everything between 80 and 160 and constantly have to switch lanes.
Fuck no speed limit!
I'm getting downvoted because people are dumb hermits. Had they ever driven across Europe they wouldn't be downvoting.
Having said that - autobahn is not safe because of its design alone. Driving is an actual skill acquired in Germany in, I believe almost a year. UK, for instance, gives out drivers licenses to any schmuck who bothers to show up for the test.
I am implying making driving a skill that's required to drive on the roads here, but the question was about a single item.
Oatmeal raisin cookies. No longer would I bite into what I think is a chocolate chip cookie only to be unpleasantly surprised.
Oatmeal chocolate chip is the WORST.
A good chocolate chip cookie is AMAZING but not in oatmeal.
Only raisins/dried fruit belong in oatmeal. Oatmeal is a chewy cookie and raisins are a chewie addition they go together PERFECTLY.
I don't trust people who don't like oatmeal raisin cookies. And they aren't even really hard to tell from chocolate chip, the texture is completely and visibly different!
"oatmeal no raisin?"
"I'm sorry to have wasted your time"
If you know you're about to bite into an oatmeal raisin cookie, it's fine. The bigger problem is the fact that they look like chocolate chip cookies and they suck because of disappointment that it ain't chocolate chip.
On another note, white chocolate & cranberry cookies are a fucking delight.
Raisin anything tbh. I sometimes had them put into my salad. I don't hate myself, I just enjoy healthy stuff sometimes. No need to bully me via raisins. :c
This is the kind of low quality shit that needed to stay on Reddit
Bringing your bicycle into public transportation. Ride your fucking bicycle or leave it at home. Nobody cares if you're too lazy for that steep bit on your way to work or if you don't want to walk the last bit from the station. You're using up unnecessary much space, gtfo.
Do buses in your area not have the bike rack on the front?
Not OP, but it's more of an issue on trains/subways.
It's for both in our city.
No they don't. They just stand at the space where the wheelchairs and the strollers go.
Your annoyance at them makes more sense then. I figured most buses had the front bike rack, as my small metro area buses have them.
The bike racks on buses seems to be a North American thing. I've never seen them where I live (NL) or any of the countries I've been to in Europe.
Counterpoint: sometimes your start and destination are too far apart for cycling.
Counter-counterpoint, in such cases it'd make sense to arrange for a second bike or a bike share near your destination.
This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but my answer is bicycles. They slow traffic, cause a driving hazard as cars dodge them, and bike lanes take up space that could be used as an additional lane of travel for cars. Some cities around the world are laid out so that bike travel works; American cities are not.
Bikes are great for exercise and should be allowed on tracks and off-road. No vehicle that cannot maintain the speed limit should be allowed on public roads, though. Bicycles should be for exercise, not transportation.
As a Dutchman i have to say you are insane and need to be admitted to a psych ward/s
Bicycles are not only healthier and more renewable but also safer.
Here in the US, traveling by bike is significantly more dangerous than traveling by car. They'll designated a non protected shoulder of a 55 mph road as a "bike lane". It's ludicrously dangerous and ridiculous and I refuse to bike in them, opting for the sidewalk instead. Commuting by bike is not safe here. I'd like to see bike lanes here in the US that are divided from the rest of the road via a physical barrier. I've only seen that on one occasion and I wish we had more of that here.
Entirely depends where. I'm my US city cycling is by far the fastest and most inexpensive transportation option and the whole route is bike lanes and paths. The very best traffic day would be as fast by car but that never happens and would cost me more than $500/month. Train takes 70% longer.
Where at? I'd love to see protected bike lanes in my city but unfortunately we do not have that.
Boston area. It's far from perfect here, but has been improving rapidly. Cambridge and Somerville especially, which are part of the contiguous urban area. I've had bicycle congestion at some intersections, with ~30 other bikes at a light. Downtown Boston has many fewer riders but a fair number.
My 7 mile commute is about 75% segregated paths, most of the rest in a lane beside motor traffic.
Unfortunately the general Boston ethos is that rules are a curiosity, not given much thought, even when formulating them. So riding the segregated lanes is a frustrating exercise in avoiding pedestrians who are allergic to the footpaths, drivers turning across you into drives and side streets, etc.. A lot of drivers don't even believe that they are supposed to yield when crossing a bike lane and will even argue things like "I had a green light [therefore I didn't have to yield when turning across your path even though you also had a green light]"
You right. That's a pretty spicy opinion. How's about we ban cars inside city limits? Self-powered vehicles and mass transit only.
Edit: can->ban, though it does kinda still work.
I actually believe personal use cars should be banned completely (so not affecting ambulances, taxis, public transport and so on). I don't think it's a silly inconvinient topic though. I spend 20 minutes commuting to work by bike, by a car or a bus it can be even over an hour, due to how inefficient that type of transit is (not to mention it's ecological and health issues).
Glad you live and work in a place where biking is a viable option, but it’s the complete opposite for me. It takes me 20 minutes to drive to work on a route that would take three hours by bike just because of the sheer distance, and there simply are no bus routes out to where I live. Not saying we should stop advocating for better mass transit and bike-friendly urban planning, but just bear in mind your situation is not representative of everyone else’s.
I don't have other options. It's frequently dangerous and very exhausting as it's a hill-ridden area, but due to the amount of personal use cars, commuting by a bus goes from 20-30 minutes to over an hour as personal use cars create massive traffic. I think it should be mandated for there to be adequate long, mid and short distance public transport with adequate bike lanes and they should also add e-vehicle lanes for e-bikes and so on, since they're very dangerous on bike lanes from my experience. Banning cars is not an overnight feat, but it would resolve many issues. Of course, alongside it housing and remote work issues should need being resolved, to both provide people option not to live near work and to even be able to live near work. There is no simple issues with simple solutions when it comes to society and its planning.
I think the point is, it'd benefit everyone to work TOWARDS this thing being a reality for almost everyone. Just because it isn't doesn't mean it can't be.
Uphill both ways? 3 hours riding is 36 miles if you're taking it very slow.
Gawd I would kill to bike to work when I’m not WFH. But I’m in the same situation as you, the timings work out about the same (my bike timings are only 1hr30 each way) but that’s an extra MULTIPLE HOURS I don’t get to be home with my cats and partner. Then I imagine how much earlier I’d have to get up… Absolutely untenable.
I think realistically you'd have to limit the ban to cities only, at least in the states. We're just too big to not have ANY personal automobiles. There may come a day that changes, but until we're entirely connected by rail or something similar, it's just not a reality.
By your argument, people should not be allowed to live in rural areas. I'm going to use myself as an example. It's about 10 minutes to the nearest grocery store, and a 35 minute drive to the nearest hardware store that carries lumber and sheet goods. Let's say I'm doing improvements on my workshop and I need 20 4x8ft sheets of plywood. I would drive to the store in my full-sized pickup truck, load up the materials I need, and drive them home. On the way back I'm dodging cyclists on my small country road, and the log trucks are driving right down the center of the road because if they stay in their lane, they'll run over a pair of cyclists side by side who are out for a leisurely ride.
What's the alternative when personal automobiles are banned? Should public transit carry all my building materials for me? The cyclists on the road I live on are less inconvenienced by my truck and the log haulers, but at the expense of the people who live here. How do I get my groceries? How do I get to work?
I gather that you haven't ever watched NotJustBikes on YouTube or City Beautiful or "Oh the Urbanity" or "Life Where I'm from" or "Nimesh in Los Angeles" or any of the hundreds of other channels? Please pick one (or many) and watch a few videos. There's so much to learn that you are missing out.
You mentioned youtube channels with "urban" and "city" in the name. I hate cities. I hate the filth, the graffiti, the constant barrage of people invading your personal space, the endless rows of concrete and steel buildings covering what used to be nature. America is a beautiful country that still has plenty of rural areas that people like me can call home. For people like me, cars are a necessity.
As far as cities go, I strongly believe that part of problem with traffic congestion is a lack of space for automobiles. Remove the bike lanes, remove the sidewalks, and convert them into extra lanes of travel for cars.
Stay away from the cities if you hate them so much! Let the people who live in them have the bikes, busses, trains and the like. Problem solved! Everyone's happy, it's a win win actually.
You've mentioned in another comment that cyclists make your rural life inconvenient. It's same with cities, your car's presence makes city dwellers' lives inconvenient. Are you willing to have a compromise that cyclists will not use the rural roads as long as you don't drive on city roads (I am only suggesting this because you wanted cyclists off the road)?
I also have to point out that you really speak like a guy who haven't watched any of the channels I mentioned. The problems you mentioned have been already solved elsewhere.
Your belief doesn't align with data. It's been shown time and time again that no matter how many lanes you add, congestion levels always return to original levels. On the other hand, when lanes are dedicated to buses and trams, congestion is reduced. But you must have known this already if you've watched NotJustBikes' video titled "The best country in the world for drivers"
Guys, poster above is just answering the question as posed! They are wrong of course, but the downvote button is for non-constructive contributions, not for disagreement 😊!