To think car ownership is out of control in the UK

People are not really paying the full cost of motoring.

In particular the cost to the public for handing over public space for individual use.

I think we need road pricing based on vehicle size and weight rather than a flat “road tax” / VED based on emissions as it currently the case.

I have no objection to somebody driving a 2 tonne BMW or Audi SUV (aka wankpanzer). It’s their choice, however they should not be expecting the rest of us to subsidise them.

The same for on street parking and dropped kerbs.

(full disclosure I drive a car and park it on the street)

I’m concerned about them taking off a wing mirror, bare minimum, every time I’m in the car (whether it’s mine or an Uber or a black cab). They are mental.

Do you live in a major city? Have you been in traffic with tens of Deliveroo e-bikes whizzing past with zero knowledge of the Highway Code?

You're concerned about cyclists crashing into your car, every time you drive?

Genuine question, if the 4x4 in question was a shit heap and driven by a working class person, would you still have this stance?

Completely agree op, city dwellers in particular need to be persuaded out of their cars. Thankfully private car ownership in cities like london and Paris is dropping

Agreed about the sheer size of them. NO ONE needs a massive 4x4 unless you're a farmer. Bloody Chelsea Tractors just to drop little Tarquin off, parking across people's drives, forcing everyone else off the road, driving gas-guzzlers when you could just walk.

Statistically you won’t die in childbirth (insert other examples), but doesn’t stop you being concerned, does it?

@OldieButBaddie - point taken about a pushbike being scared of a Defender but that’s not a specific issue ie I drive just fine, and carefully and have a million sensors on the car. Other people you might have a case against. However, ask the average driver in London what they think of cyclists in London…

Honestly, a people carrier to me is ugly as hell. I like the Defender and its climate control and a/c in the seats.

The general vibe of “oh people don’t NEED cars” or “people should only have small cars” is nuts to me. If we’re saying that, well, then let’s do a one child policy and nobody is allowed a detached house or other things that they simply just want. Lots of kids or foreign holiday travel etc negatively impact others but… I mean, honestly, I don’t care. People who don’t have cars do things that negatively impact others. It’s not a black and white game.

Statistically its cars crashing into cyclists that is the bigger issue, but of course you know that

Women don't like reversing ?
WTH OP?

SUV Alliance

This is the organisation campaigning for reducing SUV numbers in cities.

I'm surprised there's only one person on here with one!

@HiddenInCubeOfCheese The reasons you put forward don't really warrant driving a tank! If you are scared of what a pushbike might do to you, imagine how terrifying it would be if you were on a bike and a Defender was bearing down on you.

If you like being higher up you could equally get a people carrier sort of thing which is the width of a normal car, they also have big boots.

And I'm sure you have worked hard for it, but you are still ignoring the fact that your choices negatively impact other people.

(I am not flaming you btw just replying!)

I just look at the traffic on the roads from 07.00 - 19.00 and wonder where on earth everyone is going all day every day and why they aren’t at work.
There used to be clear busy times, 8-9 am and 5-6pm.
You go to our out of town shopping areas any time of day and the car parks are full, as are the cafes, but apparently nobody has any money 🙄
It ought to be illegal to park on the street if you have a perfectly good drive too.

I detest driving now, hell is indeed other people.

It's a problem with many causes that took a while to create, so it's going to take a while with many approaches to unpick.

To be fair, the government have made some moves towards a solution (Although they need to go a lot further IMO). It's now (I believe) legal for local authorities to take buses back under their control, for example. Bus fares are now capped (we actually have the Tories to thank for that 😱), trains will be taken back into public ownership.

Someone who needs to shoulder their fair share of the blame is the car industry. They're responsible for aggressively marketing cars to us- especially the larger ones, which give them bigger profit margins. I think they should have to contribute to a fund to improve public transport, and they should be discouraged from manufacturing big cars.

I do agree that cars are unnecessarily large these days and they take up too much space. You can often tell a lot about the person by the car they drive.

My 80 year old parents have 3 children. When we were all little, my parents had one car. Now they are still there with their one car, and each of us three children have one car each. So that's four cars. We three have three grown up children between us, each of whom have a car each. So from 1980, where there was just one car in this family, now there are seven. We have four more children yet to buy their own cars, so if my parents are still alive at that point, there will be eleven cars where there was just one 45 years ago.

I imagine it's the same across the country.

I don’t want to look and feel wealthy - I just need to a) get my child to and from school in a situation where her abusive father calls the shots and b) be able to work (and having a car is part of my job contract)

Or:

Cars are so much safer these days! There are so many design features which increase the chance of your family surviving even in a serious accident.

Many people, like myself, have to pay to park their car outside their own house.. meaning more money is going into overstretched local councils.

People have so much more freedom these days and many (sadly not all) are able to choose better options for schools, work etc because of ease of travel. My children are able to go to a much better school because I can drive them there.

People in rural communities can more easily access services too! People with a doctor service ten miles away don’t need to worry about relying on the one an hour bus service to get to their appointments on time.

People at some workplaces are being rewarded for car pooling! They are able to get around and are being encouraged to think of more sustainable options as well as helping others in their communities. Much like the many schemes in my local area where elderly people are being helped to collect their shopping etc

Agree OP. It’s car-centric thinking not people centric thinking.

I think we need to be more creative and have shared ownership as cars just sit there taking up space 90% of the time. So much of our environment is given over to their storage. There’s places where having one is pretty vital - rural, limited public transport.

But in the vast majority of cities and towns where the majority of people actually live, most people just don’t need a car all the time but may need access to one every so often. We sold our massive car - have our own off road parking space but really only used the car for camping trips where we needed the space to safely load it with a large dog and camping gear. But it would sit there for weeks on end not being used. I never used it for school run or going to shops as it is faster by bike and I do think SUVs are pretty offensive in cities.

Car hire is expensive though and Zipcar cars are often booked up so we take taxis if we need to, still cheaper than owning a car. I think we can’t keep increasing the number of cars on the road with associated congestion and really offer viable alternatives for short journeys. For us if we could share the cost of a car with several other people for the three weeks a year we’d actually use it that would be brilliant.

i think there’s a need to improve public transport outside the big cities, invest in decent active travel and make multi modal travel possible and have shared ownership and it would make a huge difference to air quality, health, congestion and many other benefits.

And we park on the street in our Zone 1/2 neighbourhood. Council won’t let us drop the kerb and park in our front garden, so…whelp. Guess they’d rather have the parking permit fee than anything else

work in the same office do we? 🤣

My 70 year old neighbours own four - FOUR FFS!!!!! - cars between them. It's ridiculous.

Assuming they are parked on their property, what difference does it make how many they own?

They can’t drive four cars at once.

Well, I beg to differ on the cyclist point! Drive round Regent’s Park on a weekend and see the cyclists getting up to 40mph (and they don’t stop for anyone or any light). I’ve seen one smash into the window of a Ford Fiesta type number.

All sounds good.

Does he think that names like this bother the people who drive them?

Wanker Tankers my exH calls them.