AIBU to ask you to read this, and then think twice before you make any unnecessary journeys by car?

[ArcheryAnnie]

I'm not talking about those essential trips where you are transporting a wardrobe/tools of the trade/someone with mobility difficulties/fourteen tiny children/etc etc etc. I'm talking about all those local trips where it's just you, and you aren't going far, and walking might add on a bit of time to your chores, but walking or cycling would also avoid one more car on the road for that day.

(I so, so feel for the grieving mother in this story, below. I live on a main road and now that I've learned more about things like this, I really worry about the effect that it's had on my son's lung development when he was smaller.)

Court ruling about nine year old who died of an asthma attack.

"...lawyers for the family presented new evidence to the attorney general that directly linked Ella’s serious form of asthma and her death with the heavy traffic on the South Circular near her home. Her death coincided with one of the worst air pollution surges in her local area."

www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/07/mother-asthma-death-girl-knew-nothing-toxic-air-ella-kissi-debrah-london?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Well, if you will be so goady

@TheNighthawk where have I been goady? It was a perfectly reasonable question!

@MojoMoon sounds grim and a bit joyless if I’m honest. Sitting by a real fire in a cosy pub is one of life’s simple pleasures. I don’t drive and I don’t fly abroad unlike a lot of other people on MN, so I will enjoy a nice warm fire on a couple of nights a year with a totally clear conscience!

Private car ownership has raged out of control. The number of vehicles registered in the U.K. in the last 20 years had doubled. But the population hasn’t doubled.

Interesting stat, I wonder why that is?

@Thisisworsethananticpated

The sad piece for me is they were so Close to a permanently busy and highly used ring road Any Londoners knows that the north and south circulars are never quiet and have frequent traffic jams It’s as risky a location for pollution as you can get really

So what do you suggest? I grew up on a main road of the South Circular. My single mum worked as a cleaner, and moving to a leafy suburb or the countryside wasn't an option.

@Lifeispassingby

I don’t unfortunately know much about air pollution as such but I don’t believe pp who say it’s not worth cutting journeys etc sure people reducing their car use is going to have some collective effect? So many ppl feel entitled to use their vehicles just because they can which is right to some extent but everyone could reduce their use in some way they just don’t want to and pretending it won’t make any difference is the perfect excuse

This Every journey that every person makes has an effect. My dad goes to the shop 5 mins walk up the road every single day. Every day he takes his car. thats 2 mins there and 2 mins every day. sometimes twice a day. I just worked it out and thats just over 24 hours extra driving in a year. nobody needs to be adding that for a very short walk (which add on the time it takes to get off his drive on a busy road and get out again at the shop ends up taking just as long if not longer.) That is one man's contribution.

I don't blame him, he is just getting lazy but perhaps his road wouldn't be quite so busy if everyone within a 5 minute walking distance walked instead of drove to the shop!

He even drives to my local shop when he's at mine. it takes about 3 mins to drive round, but only 1 and a half minutes (I've timed it!) to walk through the short cut. Pure and utterly laziness.
And I know he's not the only one to do this.

When I've been to London, I've blown grey about out of my nose for days after.
Where we live in the underfunded North that doesn't happen, however there's no decent public transport and no cycle paths. There are no cafes to warm in after walking anywhere in the cold and damp and the only place to sit in our indoor shopping centre is a children's carousel, all seating having been removed.

When I've been to London, I've blown grey about out of my nose for days after.

I’ve lived in London my whole life and have never done this.

When I've been to London, I've blown grey about out of my nose for days after.

tube snot

@PiersMorgansYogaTeacher

Or, if she'd rather use another business than the one we've prepaid for then she stumps up and pays for it.

Thing is though, no one has ever said to themselves "ooh I fancy a treat. Let's go on bus company b rather than bus company a". You just want to go where you're going. Getting there via a bus owned by a different millionaire from the bus in front owned by a different millionaire isn't an exercise in consumer choice.

It's bullshit.

It's Thatcherism. People keep voting for this shit and saying anyone with a different ideas is a loony communist.

@Macncheeseballs

I thought smokeless fuel was ok in wood burners? Not that I have one

Smokeless fuel is better - approx 75pc reduction in particulates compared to wood. But it still produces the very fine pm 2.5 particulates which are the most dangerous. And they still produce c02 so contribute to global warming

And in London there is no need to burn anything at all - no one is living off grid! Why live with any extra pm2.5 particulates in your house at all?

I'd ban all burning of solid fuels of any kind in cities (including bonfires) and ban the sale of anything other than smokeless coal nationally so if you do live off grid in a remote area, you can only buy the less toxic stuff.

I have friends who have an electric car that they are super proud of but then burn wood in their wood burner most evenings in the winter with two small kids present. I find it utterly baffling - they are intelligent people and would be horrified if a childminder smoked in front of their kids but happy to expose them and everyone else in their neighbourhood to high levels carcinogenic particulates because it looks cosy.

And it's almost entirely fairly comfortable and wealthy families in London that have them - so from a social justice point of view, I find it appalling that they enjoy their fire and poor kids - who are more likely to live in areas with particularly high levels of pollution plus more likely to have other health problems - bear more of the cost of their choices

The problem is that life is arranged around driving and few people could drop their car just like that.

It is more a case of targeting the journeys where you have a choice. It would take me hours to get to my parents on public transport but that's only occasional. But driving the kids to school every day and sitting in traffic for a short journey, well, it is feasible to walk that distance if the other factors were changed.

Over years though people will adjust their lifestyle to suit and it will have to be made possible. You can see from the sudden rush to bikes during lockdown that behaviours change quickly when there is a driving factor, as it were.

@thegcatsmother

All well and good if you live somewhere where you can walk to the shops, the doctor etc, but many people live in rural areas where there is little or no public transport, and what there is isn't at the time you need, neither does it go in the direction you want.

Solve those issues first, and people might then use their cars less.

Rural areas aren't the problem. I highly doubt that those using the South Circular (where this child died) live in the back of beyond. Pretty much all of London is well served by public transport and is relatively flat (I grew up in Bristol and now live in North Wales so know what a hill looks like) so cycling shouldn't be a problem. Frankly there's no excuse for people living in London to be driving at all. I live in a a village on top of a hill in North Wales amd no longer have a car. I manage just fine.

I could walk to work, but I'm not going to walk back at 10pm in the dark. So I have to drive, as public transport where I live in shocking.
People could walk to Tesco, but they have to get the shopping back.
Etc etc.

I do agree there should be a solution, but it's not just "drive less".

@theThreeofWeevils

And what about all the mumsnetters who post "Should I have a third [fourth/fifth] baby"? Adding to journeys, adding to landfill, accelerating climate change... Someone coming on to post "AIBU to ask you to think again about that next baby?" would get quite the kicking. ..

Human population is something that really needs to be discussed. It's choking the planet. Not sure how you get people to have less children unless you explain about their children's lives having ever more competition for everthing including jobs, quality of life. Lots of arguments about there being enough space but not enough talk about the cost of ever more humans to the planet and all other species of life on it.

chaosmaker here here. I don't have children and I am getting sick of all the people with multiple (2-3+) trying to shame me (without even a hint of irony) for my annual transatlantic flight

I thought fertility/population rates were due to decline by 2050? as for car use, I agree, it's the cities we need to tackle, stop driving your kids to school because there's a bit of rain (for example) and what's wrong with visiting the in laws on the train occasionally

chaosmaker here here. I don't have children and I am getting sick of all the people with multiple (2-3+) trying to shame me (without even a hint of irony) for my annual transatlantic flight

Precisely. There are always so many double standards on threads like these.

@bingoitsadingo

I don't think it's the short "unnecessary" journeys that are the problem.

I used to live in London, didn't have a car for a long time, then bought a car at the start of covid. I used it maybe once or twice a week, for journeys that would mostly fall into the "unnecessary" bucket.

Then I moved out of London, and now I "have" to drive everywhere (the nearest supermarket is about a 50 minute walk). So obviously I have to drive more. So more pollution. The problem isn't a few unnecessary journeys. The problem is that many people, whether by choice or not, have their lives set up so that they have to spend loads of time in the car. People who commute for an hour or more a day. etc etc. It's not the 5 minute journeys that are the problem really. It's that our lives are spread out across such large areas that driving IS necessary for a huge amount of people.

That 50 minute walk would take you 10 minutes on a bicycle. So no, you don't "have" to drive everywhere. You choose to drive everywhere. And yes, those short journeys by car are the problem. Starting up an engine and using it on a short journey is very damaging. The engine barely gets a chance to warm up.

There's so much whataboutery on this thread. Everyone making excuses for why other people should take responsibility for the planet rather than accepting that we're all on it together and each need to do our bit.

@Macncheeseballs I thought fertility/population rates were due to decline by 2050?

You're right, reproduction is declining all the time. We're already below population replacement levels as people everywhere are having fewer kids and have been for over 50 years.

What's driving overpopulation is lots of medical advances in relatively short space of time ie just three or four generations. Basically, fewer of us are dying young compared to a century ago, so there's more of us kicking about now. But it's not because of people having more kids. We're having fewer kids.

I live in a wealthy area and it seems like as soon as someone has a child they get a 4x4. The same people moan about pollution. I don't know what the answer is but I get so annoyed with the hypocrisy.
There's also massive discrepancies. In parts of Derbyshire there is no recycling at all by the LA waste collectors so you'd have to take it to the recycling centre - by car!
When I was last in London the streets were full of bagged rubbish which was mixed, don't the businesses recycle? If you live in London you really don't need a car in my experience.

@Dongdingdong

'anti electric vehicle lobby' says the pro electric vehicle lobby!

Why wouldn’t any sane person who cares about the environment be pro electric? It’s not a perfect solution granted, but if we were all driving electric it would cut emissions and pollution enormously. What is your solution for people living in rural areas, if it isn’t electric cars?

Rural areas aren't the issue. BEVS are likely to be the solution there. The concentrated pollution is in cities, however. The solution for towns and cities is electric rail. No need for batteries with all of the issues they bring, you supply power through the overhead wires or the conductor rail and you can hugely improve efficiency compared with battery power. Many European countries have tram networks, so do a couple of British cities. Trolleybuses can work the quieter routes (using batteries when out of town, charged from the overhead wires when they return).

Factories and warehouses in urban areas need to follow the Dresden example and bring their goods in by tram.

Short journeys though should be done by bike or on foot. Journeys of three miles or less are easily accomplished on a bike in ten minutes, I used to commute ten miles each way by bike, up hill and down dale. You then solve the other big killer of our age - obesity.

Changing the culture is the hardest thing though.

The individual doesn't have the power to create a safe cycle lane to their 3 mile away destination though.

“People like me, who live in a city and could take an umbrella, are the ones who need to make the changes. Individually, each of the small journeys made may not matter that much, but there are an awful lot of us, an awful lot more than disabled people living in remote parts of Scotland, so any changes we make will still have an impact“

This. Giving up your car entirely is likely not feasible for many people. Not using it to save 5 minutes on

Oops - will try again
“People like me, who live in a city and could take an umbrella, are the ones who need to make the changes. Individually, each of the small journeys made may not matter that much, but there are an awful lot of us, an awful lot more than disabled people living in remote parts of Scotland, so any changes we make will still have an impact“

This. Giving up your car entirely is likely not feasible for many people. Not using it to save 5 minutes or possibly even no minutes on the school run/nipping to the corner shop is very feasible for many. The parents who drop off by car at our kids primary school mainly don’t have to. We live in an urban area with a teeny catchment. No one is more than about half a mile from the school and most are much closer. Many people drive what would be a 5-10 minute walk so at maximum save 5-10 minutes getting back home before they head to work. They must work close to home if going in after the school run and they likely start after 9 as drop off is at 8:50 and regularly runs a bit late. We are about an average distance from the school. I leave the house at 7:50 to drop the kids off at breakfast club and I’m home by 8:05. If I took the car I suppose I could leave at 7:55, which makes no difference to me and I could go straight into work from school saving 4 of those 5 minutes walking back. I accept there could be a parent or two at the school that have to be in work by 9 at latest to whom those minutes may make a difference but it’s not most people. Most people are just being a bit disorganised in the mornings and have got into the habit of going in the car. Changing it is a bit of a challenge but most people where I live and in lots of other urban areas certainly could do it

There’s no point turning on each other like rats in a bucket and making accusations of transatlantic flights and too many kids etc.

We need a new positive mindset and proper political leadership on this where we all pull together and do all we can. The post about individual action not mattering put me in mind of that saying “it’s only a plastic straw” said 7 billion people. It does all add up. Obviously if there is no public transport it’s not an option but for those of us in cities it is. We have one car dh cycles 30 mile round trip to work we have worked on getting car use right down.

Piersmorganyogateacher - quite, so in that case should we be blaming pensioners not breeders?!