[begin translation]
ATTENTION - we deflated one of the tires on your SUV.
You'll be mad, we know. We're not upset with you, but with your car.
We've done this because using a car as huge as this in a city like Turin has equally huge consequences on everyone else.
The auto industry is very good at convincing us we need gigantic cars to get around, but the use of SUVs in urban centers has made cities dirtier and more dangerous. Small particles in the air kill thousands of people every year (60 thousand in Italy alone) and your car unfortunately contributes to these deaths. What's more, SUVs are more likely to kill people in collisions, and not just because of their size. Many studies have shown that SUV drivers are more likely to take risks on the road. Huge cars like this one make those inside them feel safer, but they endanger everyone outside them.
SUVs are useless, pure vanity. It makes no sense to drag two tons of steel with you every time you go out.
SUVs require larger spaces for parking, and their excessive dimensions worse traffic in the city; not only do they make life more difficult for everyone here in Turn, but luxury cars like this one are also a disaster for our climate. You won't believe us, but SUVs are the second largest cause of the global increase in emissions of carbon dioxide in the last decade - more than the entire air transport industry.
Politicians should have limited the use of cars like this to the (few) people who really need them. But given that nothing has been done to limit their impact on our cities, we have decided to act directly with this demonstration, like many other people are doing across Europe. We want having a car like this to be as inconvenient for their owners as their widespread adoption is for everyone else.
We have only deflated your tire (with an innocuous lentil), we haven't caused any other damage. We know you worked hard to get yourself a car like this [translators note: lol, lmao], and we're sorry we had to do this. Unfortunately big business knows how to make us think we need things we really don't.
You've already got this car. But for today you can get around on foot, by bicycle, or with public transit. And in the future, rebel against those who try to convince you you always need more. Living better requires the collaboration of everyone.
For more information visit tyreextinguishers.com
[end translation]
Naturally the comments are full of redditors handwringing about "i hate SUVs too but this is counterproductive" and other extremely predictable lib shit. but i thought you all would appreciate some praxis by our fredo comrades
Death to cars
Death to America
I guess there is some theoretical defense of this in principle, but in practice it seems like just being shitty and destructive to random people. This sort of thing would only be meaningful if you thought individuals had enough impact to make a difference and you just needed to change a handful of people's actions. This is never going to lead to organization or a change in policy. You'd be far better off doing meaningful sabotage against factories or blocking traffic if you wanted results from discrete acts of sabotage.
Maybe I'm just jaded but this seems both performative and counterproductive enough that I am not even convinced it's not specifically to poison people against this conversation.
Assigned SUV at birth.
Bullying SUV buyers is kind of on the spectrum of blaming climate change on personal responsibility rather that systematic factors. I can see how it's cool and funny, but also a bit problematic if you take the logic to its natural conclusion.
Bullying SUV buyers is kind of on the spectrum of blaming climate change on personal responsibility rather that systematic factors.
In the same way that local elections actually matter while federal elections barely do, changing the vehicle composition of your community actually matters.
You and your friends can actually affect your local community. Removing a SUV from your community won't stop climate change, but it'll make your community just a little better.
This sort of thing would only be meaningful if you thought individuals had enough impact to make a difference and you just needed to change a handful of people's actions.
The deflation victim isn't the only person who is affected by this direct action.
The point of the tire deflators movement is to make the city a hostile environment for SUVs. No one is going to park SUVs on narrow city streets if they know that the tires will be deflated when they come back.
I do sort of agree with this idea, but as someone who's fought locally for harsh penalties for illegal parking predominantly by obnoxiously huge and expensive SUVs and more pedestrian zones in my own area, I just don't see a hostile environment for those kind of owners being effective. These genuinely needlessly wasteful vehicles are nearly always driven by culture war or deliberately anti-social worldviews who get off on the hostile reaction. Maybe I'm just a pessimist on this particular tactic.
It's in all likelihood very cherry picked but they do ocassionally post hate mail on twitter from people saying they don't feel safe parking / using their SUV any more and have been forced to look for a different car (amongst the expletives).
Vis a vis the tactic: I'm not so sure it doesn't work, this is basically pulling the uno reverse card on how car supremacy is enforced societally every day
That's something at least. Maybe I'm just being a bit of a lib on this issue but it feels like the inverse of the 'arguing on the internet' rule: even if one person changes their car it doesn't move them on the issue and the overwhelming majority watching will absolutely be ingrained against it. I also think it doesn't help when the Tyre Extinguishers own guide about the vehicles to target is mostly based on aesthetics rather than which vehicles are actually the worst offenders. Saying that, as someone whose personal transportation is a bike in a congested area full of Range Rovers I'm not going to cry for them either. I think the tactics could be better but whatever.
Let me preface this by saying I'm sort of on the fence about the whole thing, too, if also not full of grief for people with wankpanzers
even if one person changes their car it doesn't move them on the issue and the overwhelming majority watching will absolutely be ingrained against it.
Yeah but which solution to changing traffic is gonna be received with open arms by car users? I mean sure, there's people that would take different options, would they exist, but at the heart of it the car user is insanely privileged as to the degree the world is built to accomodate them, why give that up?
I think you're right about the intense privilege of car users in terms of how much the world caters to them (although I acknowledge that things like the cost of running a car for poorer people is a massive burden) which is why I'm kind of split on it too. I also think there's a lot people who drive even crossovers, smaller SUVs, or electric cars, who also hate the kind of entitled wankers who park their Range Rovers on double yellow lines or across two parking spaces because don't dare risk a scratch because they're too big. But if some mum in a lifted hatchback gets her tyres let down before the school run in the local paper those people are going find themselves in the open arms of monster truck owning culture warriors.
I don't think there are any easy answers though. It's such a systemic issue to do with the incentives to reduce Co2 emissions, public planning, and the lack of public transport.
Edit: But I do think there's a well funded, media-backed minority of car brained culture warriors that would love to get ordinary working people with cars in their reactionary camp. There might be groups screaming about 15 minute cities being fascism, but most of these ULEZ zones and anti-congestion changes have been either supported or just accepted and gotten used to by most people.
I also think there's a lot people who drive even crossovers, smaller SUVs, or electric cars, who also hate the kind of entitled wankers who park their Range Rovers on double yellow lines or across two parking spaces because don't dare risk a scratch because they're too big.
There's really not that much difference between a smaller SUV or Crossover to a regular sized SUV as per how much space it takes up. We're talking like at most 2m² here. Sure, if you go to the extremes of Smart Two Seater or Renault Twizzy vs. Fordodge SuperRam 3000 you'd get some meaningful numbers out of it but it's not like either of those are common cars in europe.
By the same token there's not much of a difference between traditional hatchbacks and these small SUV/crossover things. I see Vauxhall Mokkas everywhere here and they're smaller than a VW Golf apart from the higher seating position but meet the lazy guidelines of 'how to spot an SUV' in the Tyre Extinguishers' website and leaflets. I just think that if you're going to adopt a strategy with such a high potential for backlash you better make sure it's well targeted and based on their UK literature at least they seem sloppy and unserious at best.
Aaand right on cue the UK Tory government is making this stuff a central culture war issue, with Sunak promising to be pro-motorist and bypass laws that ban councils from lowering speed limits.
I've lived in many places with harsh winters and i'm used to people owning suvs for actual practical mobility reasons. Idk what my point is, i guess i'm just struck by how climate can change why people do things?
I think this tactic is best suited to places where large cars have not already become the norm. In the states, this would only enrage and antagonize people -- more than likely, the culture-game backlash would end up with SUV sales spiking because it's the 'patriotic' thing to do. Somewhere where the roads and the cars are narrower, where there are already other options for locomotion? This action prevents the beeeg car from taking root.
Yeah, I'd definitely agree that it'd be more effective in places they're not already not already the norm. It's very similar here in the UK to the US, although not quite as comical (but with smaller roads).
Yeah I agree with you on the fact that this isn't a productive way of changing behaviour.
They've been fairly active here in the UK for a couple of years and may have popped up in the US originally.
While I do think they make some good points on both excessive car use and downright anti-social size of some popular vehicles, I also think it's a pretty terrible strategy, but I'm not going to condemn them or cry for Range Rover owners either.
My main issue is that while framing the problem as a purely individualist consumer issue (a strategy I don't think is that useful to start with) they don't seem to demonstrate much understanding of the reasons for the proliferation or sometimes even the actual environmental impacts of these vehicles:
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Their own SUV spotting guide and leaflets frequently misidentify small crossovers (lifted hatchbacks) as SUVs despite some not actually being bigger or worse for the environment than the traditional hatchback models they replaced. It seems to basically be based on aesthetics.
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US government subsidies for heavier vehicles have massive incentivised by SUVs and trucks which not only affects America, but creates more demand for those vehicles from all international manufacturers. Which in turn reduces the availability while increasing the expense of buying something smaller.
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The EU's increasing CO2 emissions standards are a good idea, badly implemented, in part because they've pretty much eliminated the city-car and small hatchback segment which were lighter and more eco-friendly than the new crossover and mini-SUV segments. This is because the emissions standards are harshest on what were already the best environmentally performing cars, that small car segment. These cars also have the lowest profit margins, so manufacturers were reluctant to pursue more difficult CO2 reduction in already more efficient cars at much higher expense, rather than making more polluting, larger cars more efficient more easily and keeping their profit margins. The same is true of the cost of safely and practically electrifying smaller cars.
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They explicitly reject electrification on some grounds which are reasonable (anti-social size of big SUVs remain the same, larger vehicles are still more resource intensive to build etc) but also some pretty spurious ones. For example, the carcinogenic and polluting brake dust caused by heavier electric vehicles - despite the fact that basically all electric vehicles have regenerative braking abilities, which uses opposite force on the electric motors to slow the car. This adds power back into the battery while not using the brakes that would otherwise produce the polluting dust. Electrification of the car industry in general is a mixed bag with problems and advantages, but they don't seem to show any interest in or understanding of any of that.
The chicken tax being a direct cause of trucks becoming massive is so very something.
Agreed on crossovers. At least in the us they're generally not any worse than sedans.
And attacking individuals to try to derail car culture in the us is just cruel. No individual person can fight back against literally a century of megacorps strong arming the entire country in to being car hell.
[Redacted] car dealerships would seem more effective.
Yeah and dealerships in particular actually do have sway over what the manufacturers produce and are also a massive, powerful right-wing political lobby.
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its self defense & communal shaming. i don't think it's a viable strategy in the USA, we've lost this battle but i highly doubt this sort of activism would see the same amount of reaction in Italy as the US.
medieval streets that could barely fit the old tiny cars getting blocked up by an SUV would be intolerable
Back in the 90s in the us an environmentalist burned a handful of suvs in a california car dealership. The fbi used it as a pretense ofr a massive campaign against militant environmentalism.
"I want to feel safer, and these cars are big and comfy" is an easy way to sell a SUV. And if they're being made, this wish translates to sales.
Also here in Northern Bavaria there's a bunch of US Military bases and occasionally you see some of DA TROOPS (or some bozo who went to an adjacent car dealership) drive fuckhuge Dodge RAMs and the like, causing noise pollution and being a deathtrap to anyone crashing into it or the other way around.
Probably an even bigger problem in Italy because their city streets aren't built for normal sized cars, nevermind huge SUVs.
A lot of it is systemic. Perverse incentives stemming from, I shit you not, a German tariff on chicken imports lead to the proliferation of giant trucks in the us. Small utility pickups and trucks are very difficult to procure now, which is a constant pita for tradespeople. I know so many people who would buy and use a toyota hilux or an old school ford ranger pickup, but for a variety of tax and tariff reasons you just can't get them here.
Turin's streets are incredibly tiny, It's ridiculous that SUVs are even legal there
I don’t know how useful this sort of action is, although I don’t see any harm in bullying rich arseholes other than the danger that the activists expose themselves to. And at least here it’s targeted. Which makes it a lot better in my mind than the sort of stuff that groups like Just Stop Oil do, where they basically act against the public in general (things like holding up traffic, interrupting public events and so on) and which might as well be a psy-op for all the good it does
good
hope this continues so that it's as inconvenient as humanly possible to own a suburban assault vehicleYou won't believe us, but SUVs are the second largest cause of the global increase in emissions of carbon dioxide in the last decade - more than the entire air transport industry.
Is this real? If every SUV was instead a compact car it would meaningfully change the amount of CO2 emitted? We need to stop car transportation until we can get to the bottom of this
If every SUV was instead a compact car it would meaningfully change the amount of CO2 emitted
absolutely. they're much heavier and less efficient, and now they're the most common manufactured/used type in the US
I'm starting to think this "United States" place isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Yes. As an increase they are because they are heavier and less efficient than the often smaller, more efficient vehicles that used to be more popular. The car market also continues to expand, particularly in 'developing' or formerly considered 'developing' nations. So it is one of the largest growing causes, even if it's not quite near thr top causes of CO2 emissions in general.
Cars as a whole are the problem and I don't see this as much better than adventurism, but I'll be damned if I'm not tempted to start doing this myself as well. However, I feel like for me it's just being perpetually pissed off at large truck/SUV drivers being the most insufferable on the road (followed closely by bmw/Audi owners).
But yeah, encouraging people to get smaller more reasonable vehicles is not actually a solution at this juncture. I guess getting people to stop using these cars will lower needless traffic deaths though, which is a net positive
we are not talking about deflating SUVs sitting in Walmart parking lots, we are talking about deflating SUVs sitting in tiny european city streets hogging up all the space and endangering everyone else
if you park your big ass SUV in a tight city street and it gets deflated, you really had it coming
in these european cities, there is no excuse to drive a SUV downtown. you can park your car at the edge of town and ride a train downtown. you are interpreting the tire deflators movement in an American context, when this is just absolutely not the case.
fair enough, sorry I was having a big case of being impulsive without thinking
You won't believe us, but SUVs are the second largest cause of the global increase in emissions of carbon dioxide in the last decade - more than the entire air transport industry.
Is the first cause bitcoin?
If the PR team was more advanced then maybe it would be less useless.
Tire deflators isn't going to convince anyone, ever. And that's okay, because the whole point of tire deflators is to inspire terror.
People who fear tire deflators are not going to drive their SUVs downtown. There is no need to convince anyone of anything other than to fear tire deflators.
See, in the US I would generally agree, but given that this is in Italy, where the streets are barely wide enough for a Fiat 500 to pass another Fiat 500, anyone driving an SUV is essentially just a wandering traffic jam. While most people will probably disagree with tire deflation as a principle, most of them will change their tune the first time they have to drive behind one of those Burgerbrained idiots who thought driving an SUV through a medieval town square was a good idea.
ayyyy im deflating tyres ova hea
