I'd encourage everyone to guesstimate how much distance could be taken out of their commute or drive to the city by removing parking lots, huge highways and tens-of-foodball-fields interchanges, large set-backs and front lawns to keep people away from unpleasant roads, and so on, then check whether they could bike that distance in what it takes to drive.

When I encountered the idea that cars being common causes them to lose all benefit for most people while also causing them to become necessary, I initially thought it overblown. Then I ran the numbers. Well. Crap.

[EDIT] and don't forget to factor in minutes or hours per day spent working to pay for car+maintenance+gas.

There’s the concept of “effective speed” that encapsulates that idea. Here’s (1) a sample calculation that someone did for himself and under his assumptions, the effective speed for him using a car is about 2km/h. That’s about half as fast as walking.

On top of the distance taken out of commutes, think about the space taken up in terms of real estate. In Munich, which is a fairly dense city, the estimated share of parking space of the city area is about 12.5%. If you include space for moving vehicles, that estimate approaches 50%. That’s a substantial driver of real estate prices and rents.

(1) https://www.urbanist-magazin.de/das-konzept-der-effektiven-g...

I don't think your examples really count as freedoms. I agree with your point, but I don't think you need to stretch the definition of a word to make it.

My parent made that stretch. I explicitly included other people’s freedom to do the same thing as they want to do in the list of freedoms that their freedom collides with. So call them out.

I agree with your more general point though: framing the entire matter in terms of freedom is detrimental to the debate. However, it’s almost always initially done by the side that wants to retain the status quo.

But how is the right to drive anywhere more of a freedom than those other things?

Because it is told from the perspective of the activity that is allowed. Now they could have technically been stated as the freedom from {Annoying/Harmful thing}* but thats still weak. The only reason to it is to take away power from the original argument by watering down the language it used. I'm sure the op didn't mean anything by it, I just happened to be listening to a conference call with a lot of corporate speak and was particular sensitive to how words are (mis)used

The actual point is that freedoms should be curtailed when they cause harm to others.

In this case unchecked freedom of movement can cause harm to society in different ways, so some forms of movement are restricted. Which is already true, we have signs, lights walls, fences, licenses, etc to restrict our movement. So the argument is really about how much more should they be restricted.

* EDIT, Zarath already called me out on that, but I still think it's a stretch

Positive freedom: Freedom to do something

Negative freedom: Freedom from something

> Your freedom to drive where ever you choose on the fastest route infringes on freedoms of others

Another example: ambulances. The traffic in Manhattan means ambulances take a really long time to get to and from their patients. Those minutes cost lives.