New French Law Requires Car Commercials To Tell People To Walk or Bike Instead (thedrive.com) 116
An anonymous reader shares a report: Whether it's cigarettes or alcohol, many governments have legislated that companies must warn consumers of the negative effects of their products. This is often achieved on packaging or required in advertising. France is now intending to bring such measures to the automotive industry, forcing carmakers to supplement ads with messages about greener transport alternatives, as reported by CTV News. Coming into force on March 1st, the legislation is the product of years of lobbying from French environmental groups. The law requires the mention of one of three statements in any given advert. Roughly translated, these are "For short journeys, walk or cycle," as well as "think about carpooling" and "Take public transport daily."
These messages must be included in all advertising, whether in print, online, or broadcast on radio or TV. The messages must be clearly visible on screen, or in the case of radio ads, be spoken aloud after the ad proper is finished. A hashtag, #SeDeplacerMoinsPolluer, is also required to be displayed in certain contexts, which translates to "Move without pollution." Fines for non-compliance can range up to $56,450. It's part of a wider push to cut down on transport emissions in France, with private cars making up a full 15 percent of the country's greenhouse gas output. The country has already pledged to end the sale of gas and diesel-powered cars by 2040, while the city of Paris has banned older, more polluting vehicles from the city center.
These messages must be included in all advertising, whether in print, online, or broadcast on radio or TV. The messages must be clearly visible on screen, or in the case of radio ads, be spoken aloud after the ad proper is finished. A hashtag, #SeDeplacerMoinsPolluer, is also required to be displayed in certain contexts, which translates to "Move without pollution." Fines for non-compliance can range up to $56,450. It's part of a wider push to cut down on transport emissions in France, with private cars making up a full 15 percent of the country's greenhouse gas output. The country has already pledged to end the sale of gas and diesel-powered cars by 2040, while the city of Paris has banned older, more polluting vehicles from the city center.
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The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Well perhaps 40 years ago. Where right now most of their messaging is is around seeing the problems that we are facing and trying to do something to solve them.
While the Republicans have gone so far off where they are not even acknowledging the problems exist.
So one one hand we get one party offering one option to fix the problems (probably not the best solution) then on the other hand there is a party ignoring the problem all together until it is too late, and it becomes too big to handle.
If you want to so
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Well perhaps 40 years ago. Where right now most of their messaging is is around seeing the problems that we are facing and trying to do something to solve them. While the Republicans have gone so far off where they are not even acknowledging the problems exist.
Problems like uncontrolled illegal immigration, massive inflation, bare shelves in stores, broken supply chains, reduced labor participation rates, huge crime increases. Oh wait. It's Democrats denying those things exist.
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1. The Biden Administration didn't overturn a lot of Trumps immigration policies, Obama on Fox News was called Obama "Deporter and Chief" for his tough actions on illegal immigrants (The GOP was for a long time more open to immigrants, because they were cheap labor which made the cost of goods lower in the US) Trump, however painted undocumented immigrants as some sort of monsters, which the actual facts point out to be overly inflated, as well seemed to pushed to create unhelpful and damaging mob control o
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That's viciously unfair to republicans! Terrorist organizations are filled with armed, delusional people who try to overthrow governments!
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Yeah! And vandalizing statues, and blocking roadways even for emergency vehicles, and trying to burn government buildings! They were Repubs doing all that right? No? Well they were acts of terrorism then right? Oh, not considered that either? Ok makes sense.
Plenty of stupid people on both side.
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The Democrats is the party of the very rich elite and the very poor. The rich feel bad and want to give handouts to the poor but these handouts keep them poor and out of the middle class
The Environmentalists are the super rich. Who have no other problems in their lives and would like to have nice animals to look at. Just keep those peasants and poachers out of the ki
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Republican traditionally was the rich party. Big industrialists, as a stereotype. Democrats were the unions, which were poor to lower-middle class. The middle class was where a lot of the battle was to get the votes.
These days, you get a lot of rich Republicans in office claiming to be part of the common people. So you get an elitist hollywood actor who's pro-Democrat message backfires, but you get an elitist real estate conman who's pro-Republican, or an Ivy Leaguer with a Texas accent, and they eat it
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But Republicans also raise costs and thus require more taxes. Catch-22. Republicans are againt spending, but only spending proposed by Democrats but they love their own spending; the military, pork barrel projects that create few jobs for the poor, etc.
Tax funded CIA agents was long ago in the past, and supported by both parties equally. Reagan was a big fan of them. Of course, these days Reagan would be labeled a RINO. Also in the past we hadn't completed the flip of conservatives from the Democrat pa
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A Republican is a Democrat that has been mugged.
A Democrat is a Republican down on his luck.
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A Republican is a Democrat that has been mugged.
If this were true, there would be a lot more Republicans in San Francisco.
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Re: Add another one (Score:1)
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To every mailer sent out by an environmental group - " This group's funding and our jobs depend on scaring you that the world is ending"
You are soooo going to eat those words in 5 billion years when the Sun goes red giant and swallows the Earth.
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OK, but at least acknowledge the reverse is for the industry in question - tobacco, fossil fuel, opioids, and so on.
Also, a rational threshold for taking action (environmental or anything else) is net positive ROI (after pricing in externalities), not "the world is ending."
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Every mailer sent out by a political party of any stripe is, at least in the US, "your very life depends upon you voting for us!" So you get "your life depends on this!" politicians railing against the "your life depends on this!" NGOs... Meanwhile the people who say "I hate all politicians" end up voting for the "your life depends on us!" politicians.
There's a place in France (Score:1)
Here is their new jingle:
"There's a place in France where Renault would have you prance."
#JePèteBeaucoup (Score:4, Funny)
Obvious solution: (Score:4, Insightful)
You'll never have to think about carpooling again once you buy the car in this ad.
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This SUV can carry Bike racks so that when you get to downtown you can bike. That 800cc city car cant
Think of this SUV as a public transport. You can give lifts to lots of people in the flatbed.
Re: Obvious solution: (Score:3)
Would not work in the US. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not familiar enough with France to know if this will work there.
But this cannot work in the US. We have designed our lives around cars and given practically no thought or funding to other transportation mechanism, except in NYC and a rare few other locations.
Anyone that has lived in NYC knows that it is easy to walk to:
Grocery, Pharmacy, Dry-Cleaner/laundry, restaurants, bars and other entertainment venues in your neighborhood.
This is not the case in the rest of the country. For some god-forsakken reason, city planners have declared areas to be residential, outlawing these businesses from those neighborhoods. As if a grocery store should be in an office park.
Worse, they make cul-de-sacs where you have to drive 20 miles through a maze to get someplace you could walk 50 ft to (if there were no fence blocking you).
This is NOT normal, no city or even village had these rules 100 years ago. It is entirely designed with driving your own car in mind, with zero consideration to any other mode of transportation, effectively preventing them from happening.
And it is the direct cause of the huge traffic jams. More roads make them worse, not better. More sidewalks, bike paths, trolleys, busses, etc. are the things that kill traffic. That and sky scrapers that can fit people inside the city center so they do not have to travel far, rather than pushing to the suburbs where the children can not bike anywhere because the development is 50 miles from a comic books store.
Re:Would not work in the US. (Score:5, Informative)
I was walking everywhere when visiting America, and the experience was frightening. Very hostile if you are a pedestrian with high risk of being run over, never finding a safe way to cross over a highway without j-walking. Also, I was the only person visibly walking, nobody does that there - to get to anywhere, no matter how close or how far.
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About 15 years ago, I did some performance testing work at Sun’s Beaverton office in Oregon. It was the only place where we could get our hands on a roomful of E10Ks back in the day.
Lunch was interesting. There was a Mexican place over the road, we could see it out of the window. Being Brits, we looked out of the window and thought we’ll just walk over there, grab some food and get back to work.
We did it, but it was hard. When you left the office, the only way in was via the car park. Y
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Not everyone is the same as you.
That is why we have suburbs.
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Not everyone is the same as you.
That is why we have suburbs.
No. Suburbs are the reason you have the problems the OP mentioned. It is one of the single biggest contributors to America being designed around cars. Spread out enough to make infrastructure difficult, zoned in a way to make the ability to travel essential. The idea of the suburb, the highway, and the American dream for a free standing house and a white picket fence were all part of the same marketing push to design America around the car.
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Suburbs are the reason you have the problems the OP mentioned.
Really? How does the existence of suburbs affect city planners fucking up the zoning in a city? Because that's what the OP said.
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Really? How does the existence of suburbs affect city planners fucking up the zoning in a city? Because that's what the OP said.
It was all part of the same plan. The idea of a centralised commercial area, and a peaceful place to live and sleep. The zoning laws which effectively outlawed multi-use dwellings came into affect at the same time as a push for moving to the suburbs.
It's just fucked up zoning in what was fundamentally a completely fucked up idea in the first place, all centered around the grand automobile. Shit man the old black and white ads talking about this even called it "the grand automobile".
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This is NOT normal, no city or even village had these rules 100 years ago. It is entirely designed with driving your own car in mind, with zero consideration to any other mode of transportation, effectively preventing them from happening.
100 years ago you either lived in the village within walking distance of everything, or you had a horse.
Not as much has changed as you think.
Re:Would not work in the US. (Score:5, Interesting)
The "city planners" you are talking about are all Real Estate Developers and Car dealerships. They understand the local city, topography, population very well, use advertising effectively.
The real estate development company finds a parcel of land, sometimes agricultural, that is really cheap to buy. After they buy it they put their minions in the city council to demand roads or connections that will swing by their parcels of land. Suddenly value appreciated, they pledge this land, and raise loans and start building. Car dealers constantly donate to city council contestants, often to both sides. They all work to increase car usage and road usage.
They set up meetings to solicit public opinion about public transport in locations not served by public transport, at inconvenient times where buses are not running. Anyone advocating for public transport will be ambushed. "Well, Mrs McGuillacaddy would you care to explain how you came to attend this meeting?" " A car? Did you say a car? So you want to zip about in cars when it suits you but you want others to ride buses?"
Cities like Pittsburgh had very good trolley systems. Many private lines connecting to a main feeder line and a system of token exchange and transfers. These guys would use city council to raise access fees, cap fare increases if charter allowed it, create cash flow issues and buy the main line and take it off exchange and transfers. The branch lines will just die, inter-urban trolleys that were connecting suburbs to next big town will die, and they buy some rights of way and build homes on them to make sure they never ever come back. Pittsburgh suburbs like Monroeville, Canonsburg, Bethel Park, Wexford, Moon had inter urban trolleys connecting to Greensburg, Wheeling WVA, Washington PA, Butler, Beaver, Stuebenville OH, etc. One central token exchange taken down and killed all of them.
USA worked very hard to destroy the trolley and urban public transport systems. And it was done with full knowledge and active support of the electorate. Every one and his brother wanted a car, A car in every drive way a chicken in every pot was the promise that collected votes by the bucketfuls. So to some extent we need to blame our parents short sightedness too. As the next generation is going blame our short sightedness.
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It has to be far enough from civilization that nobody cares enough to show up to the planning meetings and complain. Because if someone has a vacant lot in an existing neighborhood they want to develop, the permitting costs and delays and the risk of not getting the project approved due to NIMBY obstructionism prevents infill projects from being worthwhile unless you build a 40-story tower so you
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I live in one of those glorious non-US "walkable" cities. Do you know what? It sucks. You sweat balls in the summer and freeze in the winter, you're forced to either leave hours early or accept you may randomly be hours late to everything, and 10 minute drives are replaced by 1 hour long bus rides. If you want to buy groceries it's an all day affair and on top of that you can only buy as much as you can carry, forcing you to repeat the painful exercise every few days. Hope you don't like icecream because it
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I live in one of those glorious non-US "walkable" cities. Do you know what? It sucks.
Yeah bullshit it does. I do too. Almost always have. In fact the only time I owned a car was when I lived in the US.
You sweat balls in the summer and freeze in the winter,
Have you considered dressing appropriately for the weather?
you're forced to either leave hours early or accept you may randomly be hours late to everything
Yeah coz no one ever got stuck in a large, unexpected traffic jam. One of the main perks about going
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If you want to buy groceries it's an all day affair and on top of that you can only buy as much as you can carry, forcing you to repeat the painful exercise every few days
You forgot to mention it's uphill both ways.
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Because having your own car is simply far more convenient than having to rely on public transport. Everyone wants to have their own car because it will significantly improve their quality of life.
The vast majority of those without a car have been priced out of the market, it's not that they don't want a car - it's that they cant afford or can't justify the expense of one.
Everyone wants a helicopter and private aircraft too, but a much larger proportion of the population is priced out of these.
Noone wants to
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Ask any one who is stuck in traffic jam, what would they pay get someone else off the road? Use that to subsidize public transport. Introduce surge pricing. If a private company owns parking lots and charges 5$ a day normally and surges to 20$ on game days and event days, you accept it as fact of life.
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The question now is what do we do about it? The UK has similar problems, badly designed cities with thousands of homes that really need to be demolished and replaced with something better.
What do you do? Build a new town nearby, move everyone there and then flatten the old one? Sounds like a logistical nightmare.
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A large part of the United States growth and development happened during the 20th century. So the US infrastructure was built around cars. Allowing a European style of living, will take a long time and a lot of extra work, including re-diversifying our cities, improving general safety, create smaller stores, that are close by.
Re:Would not work in the US. (Score:4, Interesting)
This. Urban planning in Canada and the US is a disgrace. After WWII, everything was designed around the car, and we now have unsustainable urban sprawl that's going to cost us billions in the long run.
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That's true, it's all a game of whack-a-mole. When you widen a road to relieve congestion, you just move the bottleneck somewhere else. You've improved traffic throughput, but that's not the same as reducing congestion.
Well, they provide an alternative to sitting in (and contributing to) traffic, but whenever you take a car off the road, it opens up some space f [streetsblog.org]
Re: Would not work in the US. (Score:2)
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It really depends on your lifestyle. I was happy to live in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Honolulu without a car, walking and riding my bike everywhere. Walking 3-4 miles to go somewhere wasn’t really a big deal to me. There are places everywhere that you can make it work, especially if there is some form of public transportation available.
Then I bought a car, retired, bought a house in the country, got a Costco membership, got older. (For most people the deal-breaker is kids.) I miss the lifesty
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But this cannot work in the US. We have designed our lives around cars...
...And it is the direct cause of the huge traffic jams.
You could just as reasonably say that *what we're doing isn't working* either. Doing more of it isn't likely to make things better.
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I am not familiar enough with France to know if this will work there.
But this cannot work in the US. We have designed our lives around cars and given practically no thought or funding to other transportation mechanism, except in NYC and a rare few other locations.
That is the same situation in France. Walking or biking is possible in the center of cities, but if you live 80 km away from your work, it is not practicable.
Punishing people for using cars when they have no alternative is what ignited the yellow vests movements. It seems french government did not learn from that.
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Walking or biking is possible in the center of cities, but if you live 80 km away from your work, it is not practicable.
Completely different from what the GP was talking about. The GP postulated a world where there was no alternative for anyone. France on the other hand is a place where the planning and design of cities and infrastructure allows for smooth movement of people as well as *efficient* living. And by that I mean the overwhelming majority of people don't live 80km from their work. There will always be a need for cars. But in the USA everyone *needs* a car. There's a reason why 40% of all trips in well connected ma
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> We have designed our lives around cars and given practically no thought or funding to other transportation mechanism, except in NYC and a rare few other locations.
This has more to do with historical reasons rather than ideology. By the time mass transport came into use in the 1830s with steam trains, most of Europe had been settled for thousands of years, and there were hundreds of towns within walking distance of each-other by that point, whereas the United States only had 24 states and was very rural
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I am not familiar enough with France to know if this will work there.
But this cannot work in the US. We have designed our lives around cars and given practically no thought or funding to other transportation mechanism, except in NYC and a rare few other locations.
So, America had dug itself into this hole of environment-damaging way of life, now why don't your country spend some of those trillions of dollars of stimulus package to try to dig yourself out of it?
You have already gone past the first step, which is denial of the problem, that is good. Now move on to the next step and try to make things change.
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Worse, they make cul-de-sacs where you have to drive 20 miles through a maze to get someplace you could walk 50 ft to (if there were no fence blocking you).
Huh, that's a swing and a miss. Lots of cul-de-sacs are generally considered good town planning for residential areas as they naturally prevent unsuitable roads for being used for heavy through traffic. In fact they've retrofitted a bunch in London recently for exactly that reason. Massive failure to not have them connected up for non motorised traffic t
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That is why they did it, but it still creates the problems I mentioned. A cul-de-sac neighborhood is NOT walkable or bike-able. It cannot be.
Moreover, it is not the only way to stop through traffic.
Start with a standard grid. Overlay the same cul-de-sac design on it. Wherever the cul-de-sac would overlay an intersection, take out the intersection, but do NOT put a house there. Instead, put an "X" with a bike path. X could be a park, dog run, baseball field, a news stand with comics, an ice cream store
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Well, i'm french, so i can shed some light : will it work : in short, no, this kind of message will have little impact, but at some point, if you have those messages among other of the same kind, people may consider not taking the car when they can do otherwise.
Basically, regarding how the country is organized, i'd say people already only take the car when they have no choice, there are still a couple of situations where a bike could do (like the daily trip to bakery at 2 km), but i would say that people al
About as effective. (Score:5, Insightful)
As alcohol commercials saying 'drink responsibly'.
I doubt any of their target audience is unaware of the possibility of not driving, and doubtful a commercial will change their mind any more than those drink responsibly messages curing alcoholism and drinking and driving.
Harmless, but silly to tack these onto commercials.
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As with almost all legislation, it is not about making you do something, or achieving something. It is about having a means to prosecute you, if the need or desire arises.
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It's just one part of the strategy, which includes banning short haul flights where the train journey is less than a couple of hours. French trains are very fast too.
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It plants an idea in peoples head. I havent watched cable TV in eons but I remember there being tons of car commercials. Repeatedly suggesting to the masses "maybe you should ride a bike" is bound to make an impression.
It's like ending prices in .99. Sure, you can say we all know to round up to the nearest dollar but retailers still do it because they know it increases sales.
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As alcohol commercials saying 'drink responsibly'.
Seemed to work ok for cigarette commercials though.
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Harmless, but silly to tack these onto commercials
You say harmless but silly, however in reality the messaging from commercials does actually have an impact which is precisely why they are widely adopted for a great variety of measures be that smoking, drugs, gambling, or finance across much of the world.
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While advertising campaigns explicitly against bad things may help, I'm skeptical the tacked on compliance 'drink responsibly' at the end of a beer commercial swayed anyone. For those the message is mixed and clearly the 'tacked on' is outweighed by the main message that 'drinking is fun'. Now commercials wholly devoted to telling the downsides are a different story.
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The majority of cars are not bought by people who have lived without one under burden. The goal in France is to *reduce* car ownership, not maintain a status quo.
They were aware of the options before they purchased their first car.
The world is changing. I remember when I bought my first car. I also remember when I first visited Paris, about a similar time. Holy fuck it is a different city now. Back then before getting on a bicycle you write a suicide note to your loved ones first rather than the ever growing network of protected bicycle tracks taking over the city. Back then
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I'm skeptical the tacked on compliance 'drink responsibly' at the end of a beer commercial swayed anyone
The problem specifically with the "drink responsibly" slogan is that it gives no guidance on how to drink responsibly or define the word responsibly. By comparison the slogans which tell people that smoking harms, or that lending costs you money is far more effective.
In the old days (Score:5, Funny)
French cars guaranteed you would walk or bicycle to the repair shop to visit them. The government just wants to remind people of those days.
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The Italians never forget.
The acronym "Fix It Again Tony" still adorns the emblem of their largest automaker.
Good ad-copy can make this work... (Score:1)
Surgeon General warnings (Score:2)
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Meanwhile smoking has gone down drastically in this country since they implemented those.
Now I wouldnt give full credit for that to just those little messages on the boxes but everyone knows those little blurbs are a cancer warning without reading them and odds are a smoker will catch a glance of one every single time they pull their pack out. It's subtle but you're kidding yourself if you don't think a constant cancer reminder didnt make a difference.
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I seriously do not think those box warnings have done a damn thing
You probably also don't think store's practice of ending prices in .99 has any meaningful effect on you.
Too bad it does and that's exactly why stores do it. The unconscious mind is a powerful thing.
Re: Surgeon General warnings (Score:2)
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Non smokers dont read cigarette packs. Hell smokers dont even read them.
It's like you didn't read a damn word I read and just replied with what you thought I would post. If you can't acknowledge people absorb and process information at an unconscious level in defiance of a century of psychological learning then that's pretty much it for this conversation.
And I mean really, if smokers went back to smoking as often as you suggest (something we were never talking about until you brought it up just now) you never would have seen both the rapid and massive drop in smoking that we sa
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Nothing has a greater impact on the young than instinctual procreation or more aptly smoking interfering with the ability to get laid.
Dude... Everyone knows if she smokes, she pokes.
Not surprising, coming from the French. (Score:2)
I always wondered what happened to the large French car, like Delahaye, Delage, Talbot, etc. I thought they had died at the hands of WWII.
I was so wrong.
The Socialist French government legislated the large French car out of existence by taxation. This is why you can only get a sub-2-liter wheezer from France and nothing as low, long, lean and mean as a Talbot anymore. You want something like that, there's Benz and RR --- and only in name, as none of these are coachbuilt to your spec. You get the same bo
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Kiddies, don't let this happen here. Don't let the US Government be turned into a top-down monoparty that dictates. We're headed to that and fast, now.
It already is that way. They're just still busy putting on the smoke and mirrors show of in-fighting between the rulers to keep us distracted from the fact that we're slowly watching our choices be taken away by greed and arrogance.
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"Don't protect the environment or invest in mass transit everyone can afford"
There, fixed that for you.
I bet you have an absurd attachment to guns as well.
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The Socialist French government legislated the large French car out of existence by taxation.
And thank Christ for that. Next step: Pedestrianize roads, replace car lanes with separated bike lanes, and return the city to the people rather than the motor vehicle.
Shit man Paris already has problems with smog, adding a few liters to the engine won't help them.
Kiddies, don't let this happen here.
Indeed don't. We need a backwards country to buy the nasty beaters as European cities slowly become ever better utopias and cars are steadily taken off the road.
That's interesting. (Score:1)
Yurp (Score:2)
Vanity sells (Score:3)
Yes, this is stupid... (Score:2)
... but not for the reason people seem to think.
You can *tell* everyone to walk or bike until you're blue in the face, but it won't change anything. People will do what they want to do. So if you want people to walk and bike more the solution is incredibly simple in principle: make it more attractive for them to do so.
Now by all reports I've heard Paris has made great strides in its pedestrian, public transit and cycling infrastructure, so it's not as if nobody's taking sensible steps on this. There's all
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You can *tell* everyone to walk or bike until you're blue in the face, but it won't change anything. People will do what they want to do. ...if only there was a way of changing what people wanted to do.
Car ads don't by and large advertise cars, per-se, they advertise a lifestyle of which the car is a part. They're not telling you about features, specs and so on, they're showing how awesome people's lives are and oh look they're driving this dumbass car. The entire point of advertising is not to change anyth
Percentage of emissions (Score:5, Insightful)
The main reason why vehicles account for such a high proportion of France's emissions, is because their electrical grid has very low carbon emissions compared to other countries. Over 70% of their power comes from nuclear, and fossil fuels account for less than 10% of power generation in France.
Overall as a country, France has lower CO2 emissions than local peers such as Germany, Italy and the UK.
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And despite this, each country has to do its share toward the engaging signed CO2 percentage reduction. Then it is mostly a matter of looking where you stand in the 80-20 share of your reduction plan : some must address the carbon plants, other are looking at their car CO2 production :)
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Overall they do, but that's not the whole of it. Major cities in France have frigging terrible air quality, far worse than comparable cities in Germany, and a large portion of that is car obsession. And in many ways it is an obsession there rather than a necessity with major cities being incredibly friendly to pedestrians and increasingly friendly to cyclists. Hell many of the cities have enacted driving curfews to manage smog levels during more severe episodes.
New wording of French ad: (Score:2)
New wording of French ad: "You want a car? Haha. There is a car shortage. You are going to have to walk."
Re: Vaccines ? (Score:2)
What about space aliens? You never say how the vaccines will or wonâ(TM)t help the space aliens? Thatâ(TM)s just as relevant. This is called âoewhataboutismâ, instead of addressing the topic, you are trying to reframe the debate about something else.
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People really can tell when you are making shit up.
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Covid News: Citing Rare Blood Clot Risk, C.D.C. Discourages Johnson & Johnson Vaccine [nytimes.com]
I know someone who reacted very badly immediately after her first dose and had blood pressure spikes that put her in stroke territory. She was recommended not to have the second shot by her doctor after she sta