to feel car driving is frequently unjustified

[Clairetree1]

Having sat in a traffic jam yesterday, in which I counted 10 buses being held up by around 45 cars, many of which only had one person in.

So say 60 people in cars holding up 600 people in buses....

just as a snapshot, throughout the whole journey, each person in a car seems to hold up 10 people in a bus, and if the cars were not there, those car travelers could easily fit on the buses, and everyone would be moving at least 3x as fast,

and I can't really see how this is allowed, or can be justified.

If you are in a city, or in another area with an adequate bus route, and are physically able to use the bus, how do you justify to yourself the danger, inconvenience and lethal pollution you subject everyone else to? Not to mention the further damage to the environment caused by concreting over parking spaces, car manufacture, etc.

I know some people are going to say they need the time, but if cars were banned from our cities and more people on public transport, everyone would be moving faster.

I know some people are going to say they are disabled, or have too much to carry, but some people who are disabled or have a lot to carry do use buses, they often have no choice! it doesn't automatically preclude you.

I know some people are just going to say they have a right to, but really, do you? Pollution is killing thousands of people a year in the UK, not to mention those killed in car crashes, the environmental damage done including global warming, and the sheer inconvenience to everybody else.

I know a couple of cities are planning on banning private cars, and I know petrol cars are on their way out, so things might well improve, but I just don't understand how we reached this position in the first place, so much death and destruction and time taken away by an entitled privileged few with such a selfish habit I can't understand how they justify to themselves.

I don't expect many people to agree with me, I think this privilege is so deeply ingrained in our culture that people genuinely feel they have a right to drive cars, when perfectly adequate public transport exist.

I don't think there is any moral right at all though, I think it is morally wrong in every way

of course only rich people own and use cars!

Idiotic. We have TWO cars and are very far from rich.

I would be happy to use public transport if it was reliable. I live in Manchester near the metrolink but often this isn't running or us unreliable, too much of a gamble at times when I have to be at work by a certain time. Bus replacement services are often very poor and take an incredibly long time. If I do ever get the metrolink it is rammed, that would be getting on one at 6.30am and so the discomfort is not worth it combined with the unreliability.

@MrSpock I presume you, like me, have no children?

@Sockwomble I spotted that too, but of course the OP won't answer. Even if she hadn't gone of to her teaching job in the school holidays, she avoids answering direct questions.

I think there was probably a time when public transport was reliable, frequent and cheap. As a teenager I used buses in Surrey a lot and there were lots of them- about every 10 minutes on some routes. Even in the extremely rural area where I now live, there used to be four or five buses a day.

Unfortunately, cuts have been made to services in many areas and now we have one bus a day, which you have to book by phone the night before. Walking is not safe for most of my regular driving routes because of narrow single track roads with no pavements and poor visibility of oncoming traffic- it is also dark at about 4pm in winter and obviously there is no street lighting. That's assuming we are talking about one of the days when there aren't strong winds and/or lashing rain.

Of course it's wiser to plan driving routes and minimise trips, but it just isn't reasonable to expect people to massively change how they live in order to satisfy your preachy need to be right. If you live n London then you have far less to give up to make adjustments to your carbon footprint than someone who only has a car to rely on.

ShatnersWig no she has an austutic dc and is pregnant with twins. And STILL gets public transport. She's a star

LlamaPyjamas That's already been done. Pages and pages ago. Keep up if you can

I was tagged in the comment. I didn’t read the rest of the thread, just responded to the comment which was directed at me.

MrSpock I presume you, like me, have no children?

I have DS1 who’s three and am expecting twins.

@MrsRyanGosling15 How selfish of her to put three more polluters onto the planet.

@MrSpock If you truly cared for the environment, you wouldn't have three children!

I would try to care but in the list of issues and priorities in my life, believe me, the taking a bus to save the environment is so far down the list, it isn't even on the list.

See that’s what comes over as horrible.

I'd love to not drive so much, but have to because of the usual reasons. (Live rurally, job visiting patients, multiple school runs etc.)

I get the P&R into town when I can and walk if possible.

It'd be lovely to return to the fabled days of one parent working and the other being able to walk to local school with the children, but it's not cloud-cuckoo land.

If you truly cared for the environment, you wouldn't have three children!

Having children is a biological want. Driving a car isn’t.

I justify it because:

• public transport is not reliable enough.
• public transport takes much longer for several journeys I have to make.
• public transport is often more expensive for long journeys with the whole family.
• I would be unable to collect DS from nursery on time and would have to set off for work 30 minutes earlier than I already do to arrive at work 10 minutes later than I currently do.
• my job classes me as an essential care user.

Having said that, I do use public transport when appropriate (e.g. only me and DS travelling somewhere long distance) or we walk.

Having children is a biological want. Driving a car isn’t

Yet both are wants and both are damaging to the environment.

I want to clarify I don’t have an issue with cars as much as excessive use of cars without any regard for others.

Using cars when there’s genuinely no other choice is fine, but it’s the excessive car use that I find annoying.

Buses In my area are disgusting. Dirty, kids misbehaving very loudly, intimidating teens staring at you on purpose to intimidate you further. Smokers sit next to you straight after having one before jumping on the bus makes me feel utterly sick. A lot of people that travel on the buses in my area also seem to have missed the memo to bathe adequately as well.

On top of this, despite living on a main road in a town,one bus an hour in the week, none on Sundays, I do have good transport links via train to London but I can still beat the train on a Sunday by driving, plus when my dd wants to sleep she just nods off at the end of a long day instead of above issues waking her up and leaving us needing a bath after using public transport.
London transport is great and if I lived there I would definitely not have a car, however most of the rest of uk is crap ime.

Also anyone experiencing public transport on public holidays is normally always doomed. Even our good train service pack up with engineering works, doubling the time it takes.
My main reason anyway is because the buses here are dirty and full of a lot of dirty people.

@MrSpock It's still a WANT. You don't NEED to have children. It may be biological, but you don't HAVE to indulge it, nor do you HAVE to have more than one. It's nonsense to call other people out for being selfish and not caring about the environment when the reason the environment is fucked is us bloody humans and the sheer number of us.

Yet both are wants and both are damaging to the environment.

You can’t compare something as natural and evolutionary programmed as procreating to being lazy and using the car to save you 15 minutes walking.

ShatnersWig as above. One is a natural programmed inbuilt urge and the other is sheer laziness.

DP commutes to work by public transport. We live in the north west. The journey is 22 miles.

He has to walk 4 minutes to the bus stop, buses come every 30 minutes (we live 1.8 miles outside a major town centre) and frequently are late. He times it so there SHOULD be a bus in the next 5 minutes. Sometimes it is early and he misses it, about 50% of the time on time, often it is late by up to 15 minutes. Bus journey takes 10-20 minutes into town centre, depending on traffic. 3 min walk to train station. Trains every 20 minutes. Fast train takes 25 minutes. Slow train takes 40 minutes. He has a 20 minute walk on the other end.

I get less then 10 mins in between care calls to travel to the next. No way can you walk or do that on public transport

You can’t compare something as natural and evolutionary programmed as procreating to being lazy and using the car to save you 15 minutes walking

I'm comparing the end result.

if I had to catch the bus, I'd have to wait 3 days!

I don't drive into London anymore though, but still have to drive to the station.

Of course it would be good that people used public transport. But the reality is that it is often infrequent, inconvenient and unpleasant.

Posted to early.

So in total, a journey that takes half an hour (in no traffic) to an hour (in traffic) driving, takes him 1hr 10m on a perfect day, or 2hrs 30m on a bad day - particularly with all the Northern strikes recently.

Driving is quicker, cheaper, more convenient. I'm not surprised so many people do it and the roads are congested. Outside major cities traffic is appalling.

@MrSpock False argument. Because we've evolved. My mum had an urge for a second child but they didn't think they could afford a second child, so she fought the urge. Should everyone just ignore whether they are financially, physically and mentally capable of having children and just keep popping them out regardless because, you know, the urge.