“But the thing is, a car isn't just an inanimate object,” Kea says. “It's a machine around which our entire society has been literally rebuilt, at the cost of trillions of dollars and over a million dead people on roadways every single year, and it is not an exaggeration to say our literal planet is dying in large part because we did that. It could be a neutral technology that helps people get a little further than they could on a bike or carry a little more than they could on the bus, and I hope someday it is! But right now, it's not; it's a thing that most of us are forced to use whether we like it or not, something that dominates and shapes virtually everything about our world.”
Kea also noted that Twitter accounts like this aren’t just poking fun at vandals with cartons of eggs or “sensitive snowflakes” who throw fits over a photo of a kid's toy car set. “They're people with disabilities who are struggling desperately because they can't drive in places where driving is the only option,” Kea told Bored Panda. “People whose loved ones have been killed violently and suddenly by car crashes that didn't need to happen; people who are questioning the costs and death count of car dependency and finding that when they speak out about it, they aren't just ignored, but ridiculed and subjected to ableist slurs like ‘insane.’”
Kea points out that pages like this don't discuss “even the most basic facts about transportation-related climate change and car crash totals, which are only the tip of the iceberg. The people the authors of this Twitter are making fun of aren't ‘insane’; they're people who don't accept that things have to be this way.”
If you’d like to learn more from Kea and the rest of the team at Streetsblog USA, be sure to visit their website right here!
We know you might find these posts annoying, but please remember that cutting down on car use doesn’t have to be this extreme. The planet will thank you if you reduce your emissions; you don’t have to do it for these people. Keep upvoting the pics you find most amusing, and then if you’re interested in checking out another Bored Panda article discussing why many people want to stop driving cars, look no further than right here!
