This is just my opinion but

Cars drivers are considered the problem because, fair or not, we HAVE to take more responsibility for those around us while we’re driving. We’re way more PHYSICALLY protected if a collision happens. So I don’t care how unsafe a pedestrian or cyclist is behaving. As the person in the car, I most likely can prevent hitting them by driving defensively and paying enough attention to everything happening.

It’s not fair, and I’m not excusing people who behave unsafe just because they’re on a bike, scooter, atv, or whatever. Obviously they can cause huge, unavoidable collisions. But driving a car is a privilege not a right. And unfortunately that comes with more implied responsibility than being a pedestrian or biker.

Motorists are operating a superior piece of machinery: superior in terms of size, weight, comfort, power, safety, convenience, and ease. Flex your ankle a bit and a 3500-pound machine jumps forward.

As such, motorists are seen as being at the pinnacle of responsibility when moving amongst a complex mix of pedestrians, cyclists, and other vehicles. On a bike, I can almost always stop quickly enough to avoid an errant pedestrian. In a car, this is possible but only if traveling at lower speeds. The consequences of a collision are much worse. And yet motorists complain about speed cameras and refuse to pay infraction fines, saying "catch me if you can."

Public policy has been to build and maintain an extensive infrastructure for motor vehicles. It's now become obvious this is not sustainable. Pedestrians and cyclists are asking for improvements, and motorists are pushing back. See for example bike lanes on 6th St, 17th St, K St, and Connecticut Avenue. The pushback is seen as a giant middle finger, and indifference to the carnage.

Motorists aren't always the villain, and of course there are thousands of considerate operators, but a select few really need to pick up their game and become responsible. The same could be said for cyclists I'm sure, but the consequences of their recklessness is much more limited.

ETA: btw thank you for your post. I am encouraged this might start a meaningful dialog.

I don't think the frustration is against cars generally. It's the crappy car-first infrastructure that pits cyclists/pedestrians against cars and resulted in numerous deaths over the years. I think over 7,000 cyclists/pedestrians were killed in the United States last year alone, along with over 40,000 motorists? Absolutely huge number of people are dying on our streets due to our poor infrastructure.

We have the highest traffic fatalities of any developed country. The Europeans realized this and have segregated a majority of their roads from sidewalks/bike paths as much as possible.

A pedestrian has never killed anyone by running into them

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a car and motorcycle enthusiast; I LOVE the art of driving and riding, and I practice skills and take driving/riding courses as often as I can.

That said, driving is a PRIVILEGE and NOT a right... And too many drivers (ESPECIALLY out here in DC; y'all CRAZY) have an entitlement to the road.

It doesn't work that way.

My honest opinion is that we should do tiered licensing, like they do in Germany. But I also understand that until we fix our nationwide public transportation system, that tiered system would put undue burden of people of a lower SES, especially those that HAVE to commute to work.

If we had a better public transportation system, a LOT of people who would otherwise drive (out of convenience, skill level, or fear) would be off the road and in a bus or train.

That said, I get why the average person would be pissed off at drivers around here... its an utter shitshow... I can't count the amount of times that I've almost been flattened while riding my motorcycle.... Like the dude in a RAM 1500 who was doing 50 in a 15 on the opposite side of the road (i.e. headed right towards me) to get around a double parked car, and I had to go ALL the way into the bike lane (lucky it was unprotected) and still almost got hit....

• Car owners are looked down upon because they kill people. In this city, you're more likely to get killed by a driver than a bullet, particularly if you aren't in a gang. Reckless drivers are hardly ever brought to justice. A careless truck driver ran over and killed a 5-year old kid in Brookland and the city blamed the 5-year old for it.
• As for accessibility, we have some of the most accessible public transit in the country. For trips that can't be made through a transit route, there's even paratransit. Many disabled people can't drive at all, and benefit greatly from having effective public transit.
• The places that people look down on car drivers have efficient public transit. You can always take a highway to a metro station and go from there.
• Food delivery in many parts of this area can be accomplished through the use of bicycles, electrified or not. It is in many other cities, and to a limited extent, is here as well. Virtually everywhere in this city, it's faster to use a bicycle than drive unless going an extensive distance.

As a driver, I look down on most other drivers in DC. The aggression many of them display to other road users (particularly peds and cyclists) is disturbing.

Too many people with "me first" attitudes that are unwilling or unable to recognize that you're never going to get anywhere fast here. The infrastructure design and the number of other road users doesn't allow it.

Probably because your personal vehicle pollutes, requires a massive waste of space to use and store, and when mishandled can result in the death of others.

We got public transit. Use it if you can. Most of this country is designed specifically around cars, and is not walkable. DC is one of the few precious places here that is walkable and has very accessible public transit.

Not saying DC needs to be completely without cars, but they definitely aren’t the heroes of urban living.

Dude if you want to be a car owner, move out to the suburbs and rot on the beltway everyday; let those of us who want to be around other people stay in the city and develop infrastructure that makes it easy and pleasant.

Car-centric infrastructure makes the world worse for everyone, but it makes it additionally worse for people with disabilities. These people may still need cars in some circumstance, but having those cars be the exception rather than the rule makes it much better.

have you considered further whining about what people say online, while at the same time society totally caters to you/car owners at the expense of everyone else? Like this is such a made up problem. in reality, DC is an insanely car centric city in a way that makes no sense considering its density and street layout, but we privilege car ownership at every intersection, pun intended. No one is taking your car away, or your streets away, or your parking away, even though they should, and doing so would create a better and safer city for everyone, absolutely including the differently abled. Such an absolute victim mentality from you, totally disconnected from real life/our policy reality.

Please don’t call me differently abled, I don’t know anyone who likes that. It screams fake ally.

It's not "car owners" in general. It's car owners who behave badly - car owners who want to speed through residential neighborhoods and busy commercial districts, who want to run red lights and stop signs, who don't use their blinkers, who cut people off, who make illegal turns, who drive aggressively or otherwise drive badly, who double park or otherwise park illegally, who don't pay any of their bills and fines, who are the cause of congestion, and so on. And I'd wager a big percentage of the drivers are just doing what they do as creatures of habit. I'd wager a big percentage of them never actually tried alternatives, like park and ride on metro, didn't try to get their workplace to do telework, or anything else.

thread tl;dr: people give you well-reasoned points, and you agree with all of them, but you just keep harping on about imaginary people who blindly hate all car owners personally

anything I'm missing there?

(before responding, please consider: disliking people who continue to advocate and reinforce our current inequitable transit system is not the same as "hating car owners")

This sub hates cars. And they’re right, it makes sense to encourage as many people as possible to use public transit or bikes. But I think its bad that we ignore taxi/rideshare/delivery vehicles in these conversations.

So much street parking has been eliminated in the city, meanwhile these services are at an all time high. I’m all for bike & bus lanes where they make sense, but I think ignoring taxi/rideshare/delivery vehicles when urban planning is dumb.

We don’t need long term street parking, but I think short term or pickup areas could help with congestion around popular bar/restaurant areas.

OP, have you ever been to a house party at a rural college in the Midwest? Because so many drivers can surprise you and turn into villains in my experience.

I'm no puritan, but once you move away to an area where people take the Subway or an Uber out to the bars, and you come back to the Midwest, the drunk driving will turn your stomach.

Nearly every single one of the kids will drive home drunk in a truck or SUV their parents bought for them, many of them solo. Kudos to those who actually DD.

Guess where Dad is? He's also driving home over the limit after a night at the bar or out with friends, because "Uber is too expensive" and people who aren't poor or disabled don't take the bus in Ohio.

"I'll have to Uber all the way back here tomorrow morning to pick the car up! That's like 40 bucks that I don't have!"

You’re not going to win this battle on this sub.

Car owner here - I haven’t felt looked down on. Maybe get new friends.

I love cars, they've always been my passion and I couldn't imagine ever living without one, purely from an enthusiast perspective. That being said, first time he took me to a parking lot n taught me to drive the first thing my pops told me was "you are now in control of a two ton killing machine". That's important to remember.

Car owners are (usually) not evil. Car dependency is evil. We should design our city so that everyone can get around safely without a car. This will definitely require expansion of public transit reach and frequency, and expansion of safe sidewalks and safe bike lanes. In some cases this may require reducing the convenience of driving, an activity which the city and the country currently heavily subsidizes.

The dehumanization of non-motorists, particularly cyclists, is for a lot of people fairly polarizing. Of course not every motorist does this, but enough do this to make it a pretty disgusting stance. I understand cyclists have a certain degree of responsibility to follow the rules of the road, and to ensure their own safety, but the viewpoints of a vocal minority is so far out of line with the rest of the population you can’t help but feel like there’s a lot of silent resentment among the many. The fact that on any given “cyclist killed in traffic” news story you have laughing emojis and plenty of comments supporting the murderer and laying responsibility on the cyclist, even if it’s a clear cut case of driver aggression, it’s pretty fucked up.

This might be more prevalent in rural/ suburban areas but that mindset poisons the masses.

Nobody is against car owners. I own a car and drive sometimes myself. However the majority of car owners cannot follow the rules. DC issued over 1.6 MILLION tickets last year for speeding, red light running, stop sign running. That is over 5 tickets for every vehicle registered in DC. In an ideal world everyone would get along. However until car owners can generally learn to behave themselves we will have to keep taking lanes away from them to provide buffer space and protection for everyone else because car owners can’t follow basic safety rules.

I don't know a single person who looks down upon car drivers. I do look down on people who prioritize car infrastructure, especially fast car infrastructure over everything else. People who live in the suburbs and want to drive through the city at 40mph. People who oppose bike and tram infrastructure because it may mean reducing car lanes. People whose only solution is to have more cars and make them go faster.

I have a car. I drive. But I almost get hit by a car 20% of the time when running. And I'd like that not to happen.

Cars contribute more to climate change than biking or walking.

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Hey, disabled person here, don't say differently abled. Differently abled is harmful to our community

Because when I think of cars I think of suburbs

I think it's the shitty drivers that are the problem. The ones that watch where they're going and follow the laws of the road, and don't drive aggressively around civilians are not a problem. It's the assholes that aggressively drive like they're special and/or own the road, and let's be real, there's a LOT of these. I personally primarily drive and ya there's way more asshole drivers here than anywhere else I've driven, both domestically and abroad, so it makes the rest of us look bad.

Of course, I see my share of idiot bikers that jump in front of traffic, run red lights, etc, but they're pretty much just putting themselves in any real danger. If a car hits them, the worst that happens is a few scratches or dents on the car, the idiot biker obviously will be a lot worse off.

Cool story, bro.

People with disabilities are less likely to be driving around and more transit dependent.

One big trait of villainy is to just make up whatever justification you want for doing what you want to do even when the facts aren't even close to backing you up.

Lol this has to be a troll. It’s as intellectually lazy as saying “but I can’t have white privilege because something bad has happened to me.”

Btw, a majority my food deliveries in DC are delivered by people on bikes, and thank god for them because you’re right I would not survive.

I’ve gotten plenty of deliver from bikers……

There’s a bunch of asshole drivers out there but you’re also talking to a subreddit full of sheltered transplants who can’t fathom that 70% of the DC workforce don’t live in this city or near a metro station so of course they’re going to drive in because it’s still cheaper to own a car than to live here. Or they live just out of walking distance from a metro. Or they don’t feel safe taking public transit where they live.

Blech. Cars in cities suck!

I think that a lot (not all!) of the worst drivers in dc are simply carrying the driving practices and driving expectations they learned wherever it is they learned them into this city, which is a very different driving environment and where they are fundamentally maladaptive. I can understand how they would be frustrated but really it’s on them to adjust.

I think it's because the DMV car culture is highly toxic, and as a result, drivers bear the brunt of the blame in the city. metro has options for differently abled people. If we had a better metro, and we invested less in a losing mode of transportation, the city would function better. We know this is the case because the city was so much more pleasant during the lockdown.

Car "accidents" are the leading cause of death for people under 40 in the US. Maybe we should start giving a shit.

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I don't quite feel like we're looked down upon I feel like I'm DC there's a consistent clash of multiple cultures.

Im from the south(GA, but not Atlanta) where things are spread out and public infrastructure is bad. I'm used to driving 12 miles one way and it taking 10 minutes. Here I'm ok with driving 40 miles a day and it taking two hours.

On the opposite end you also have the people who have an almost cult-like love for cyclist/pedestrian friendly infrastructure because large city centers in some parts of this area can be reached and it's easy for them in their every day lives, they assume that can be the be the same for everyone and it should be forced on them for "the better of the world"

Other issues that confound this more are the aggressive driving style that's commonplace in northern cities ( I'm defining north as North of North Carolina) which MAY sometimes endanger pedestrians, high publicity surrounding driver-cyclist or driver-pedestrian deaths, the way that DC enforces through cameras, the predatory nature of DCs camera enforcement to gain revenue, and lastly the lack of available area in DC.

Ideally, we could change the infrastructure to something which is amenable to all parties but DC can't shrink all the sidewalks for bike lane while keeping roads the same size and can't add bike lanes effectively where space was not alotted for it. There's also the high population density that clogs all the roads.

I'm not qualified to suggest what the differently abled should do, I wonder that question everytime there's a fire drill on the 8th floor of my office building and I see this guy in a wheelchair.

People without easy access to public transportation have no choice but to drive, walk or bike. For me the last two don't make sense. I'm in DC for a young black crowd so driving works and I ignore the pedos and their complaints. They can move to Arlington or Herndon. (Or Europe since biking works so well there)

This has almost become a rant but I do think the city should revise it's version of vehicles as cyclists are vehicles and in my experience are just as bad as some drivers and not following all the traffic laws designed to keep us and them safe.

Tired of the hate. Thanks you to the few willing to engage. For the rest, I’m over it.

Everyone in the city has access to efficient public transportation. The differently abled are covered and many probably aren’t using cars in the first place.

Car owners are villains because they are reckless and uncaring at best, self centered murderers at worst.

Just because you’d cry without Uber and delivered food doesn’t mean you can project that into the rest of us. Our feet work and public transpo is top notch.

I love to drive in DC, the last time I took the metro was in 2019.

Thank you for mentioning that goods are delivered by vehicles to peoples homes…Not to mention having your trash removed by truck, groceries delivered to the store that some people walk to… we need infrastructure that supports cars and protects pedestrians. Some people also have jobs that require them to drive and the notion that there isn’t some work around via car sharing and public transit that we haven’t thought of is privileged and tone deaf.

bike riders in DC are assholes, i’m saying this as a former bike rider. I felt entitled to the roads, but cars off, and never stopped at stoplights nor stop signs

I’ll keep my car and I’ll keep living in DC. I’ll also keep avoiding small-minded people like you who think an ideal can be made real by complaining and throwing metaphorical eggs at the other side.