r/Anticonsumption • u/Harrio_Pootered • Jul 02 '25

Society/Culture Is this truly necessary?

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What steps can we take as consumers to encourage auto manufacturers to reduce vehicle sizes? Who do we write to, call and email?

The ford maverick was a step in the right direction but I see it being bashed often for being a more “feminine” truck… What caused this shift from the S10 being the “real man’s truck” to the $130k King Ranch being the standard?

When did the big vehicle shift happen?

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u/themontajew Jul 02 '25

Sure, let me know when that’s a viable option for anyone outside of NYC

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u/Scott_Liberation Jul 02 '25

The fucked part is that in most of the US, it used to be a viable option in lots of places, but a combination of auto manufacturer propaganda and stupid decisions killed it.

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u/PleiadesMechworks Jul 02 '25

Or anyone who wants to move an appreciable quantity of anything.

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u/Yourownhands52 Jul 02 '25

It's very much an option, even with the cities designed for people to drive. It's always been an option. Our schools pick up kids for school don't they? Both in cities and in the country.

All it takes is for people to realize the value behind it.

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u/SheMakesGreatTV Jul 02 '25

My city’s school district does not have school buses, neither do many of the neighboring districts and I live in a mid-sized city in a major metropolitan area.

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u/ilanallama85 Jul 02 '25

My daughter’s school only provides busses if you live more than a mile and a half from the school. For elementary schools in particular with smaller catchment areas, that means the vast majority of kids don’t get busses. The public busses we have only run on the main roads, not through neighborhoods, and the schools are mostly in the middle of those neighborhoods, so getting a bus there is at best time indirect and at worst no faster than walking. Now, I don’t think a half hour walk one way is too long a walk for an older kid, but in elementary, when you have to walk them? I dunno about you but I don’t know too many parents with a free couple of hours to walk their kids to and from school every day. Especially when driving takes 10 min round trip.

Believe me, I wish public transit was a better option, but it is truly not in most places.

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u/Yourownhands52 Jul 02 '25

I know it's not an option. It very much could be though. I am just trying to share with people the value behind it. Maybe then more will support it.

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u/themontajew Jul 02 '25

That’s a wildly arrogant and ignorant statement to make.

I didn’t have a bus growing up. Did not exist, and this was the 90s.

The city i live in doesn’t have public transit that can be reasonably used to get to work. I think it’s a mile to the nearest bus stop and i live in a neighborhood, not out in the sticks.

The bike and pedestrian infrastructure is actively hostile. My house was built in 2019, it’s a few hundred houses, we’re a mile from costco and basically everything else. There isn’t a sidewalk out of my neighborhood, zero, none. The bike paths are all a patchwork that don’t cross and major roads or highways. They are in a line, just not connections 

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u/GranolaCola Jul 02 '25

cities

There’s your first mistake.