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

Last time I cycled into town a driver rammed into me leaving a badly bruised arm. Got the bus today

I do lots of driving for pleasure and track days whenever I can, I’ll drive as much as I want to.

Wood burning stoves are truly dreadful for particulates. Even modern ones.

Please stop using them in London if you have one. You are damaging the health of yourself and your children in your own home as well as air quality for everyone elsr

The particulates produced are particularly small and particularly dangerous.

Children, pregnant women and those with asthma should stay well away from them.
Honestly, it's like smoking into your baby's face. I know they look nice but they are truly dreadful and should be banned. I think in a few years it will be much more widely understood how bad they are and people will be horrified that children once sat in a room with one every evening in the same way that smoking in confined spaces with children is viewed now

And yet our grandparents would have heated their homes with coal fires in most rooms on a daily basis and the majority lived to old age. Funny that. Surely if fires were as bad as smoking then deaths from lung cancer would have been significantly higher?

Nowadays I imagine most people with woodburning stoves in London use them every now and then as an occasional thing, not every day and night.

Once again it’s the MN double standards - singling out people with woodburning stoves but not those who use a car every day unnecessarily or who holiday abroad. Just look at how pollution levels have fallen significantly this year due to lockdown - it was due to nobody being able to travel.

@Dongdingdong

Errr....I never said it was fine to drive a car and fly as much as you like either.

I think in cities private vehicle transport should be heavily deterred. Most of it is unnecessary and we should not poison ourselves just to make life mildly more convenient for a minority.

Wood burning stoves in London are entirely in unnecessary. No one is living off grid. And the particulates produced through wood burning are very fine and therefore even more dangerous

Some smokers live until they are 100 but that doesn't make smoking safe. Your grandparents may have lived long lives but mine did not.

I think in cities private vehicle transport should be heavily deterred. Most of it is unnecessary and we should not poison ourselves just to make life mildly more convenient for a minority.

Minority? Surely cars make life “mildly more convenient” for the majority, not the minority.

I’m glad you’re not just singling out woodburning stove users anyway. MOST of us pollute the atmosphere in our own different ways - unnecessary car journeys, flying abroad on holidays, eating meat and (probably the worst offender) having multiple kids. If you do any of those things yourself then you’re not really entitled to have a go at someone who does another one of those things. I’m not prepared to be told by someone who takes long haul flights but doesn’t own a car that my occasionally unnecessary car journeys are out of order for example. We’ve ALL got to practise what we preach.

I’m also sick and tired of hearing about how we should all sell our cars and just hop on public transport. It doesn’t exist in parts of the country. Yes that’s right. I have to walk at least a mile, up hill, carting all my work stuff, bearing in mind I have to dress smartly so no jeans, trainers etc.if I catch the bus to work. The last time I travelled home by bus it was awful. People not wearing their masks correctly, sitting near me, not social distancing. Then to top it all off the heavens opened and I was absolutely drenched. It cost just as much as driving and I don’t have to get soaked through to the skin.
The bus going past ds’s school did not get him there on time. Coming home they were every 2 hours.
Dd has moved ‘darn sarf’ and was telling me about how everyone was up in arms when it was announced the next train to arrive would be in 12 minutes. How we laughed. You really, really don’t know you are born.
To have a train every 12 minutes us unheard of where I live.

@Dongdingdong I was referring to London where the majority of households do not have a car - it is just 30pc in my borough. So yes, only a minority use them and mildly inconveniencing them to the benefit of everyone seems fine and fair with me.

I also don't entirely buy that people can't have a view on some form of climate action unless they live pure and austere lives and live entirely off grid and grow their own food.

Every little bit counts - the power is in the combination of all of our good decisions to reduce our environmental impact significantly. Policy should nudge people towards making good decisions and for everyone to invest in efficiency and new technology - better public transport and safer streets for walking and cycling, a requirement for homes to be highly efficient, carbon levies on aviation, shipping etc.

But really - wood burners are so bad for you inside your house! From an entirely selfish perspective of their own health, people should not be running them particularly if there are children or pregnant women in the room

To have a train every 12 minutes us unheard of where I live.

A couple of years ago, I visited London for the first time as an adult. I was staying with a friend who lives about 40 miles outside the city, on one of the main train lines. I rang her in a flap from Paddington station panicking that I had missed the train. She laughed and said 'get the next one'. It was leaving something like 7 minutes after the one I missed. At home if I miss the train, I'm having to fork out £80 for a taxi home because there is no 'next train'. I felt like a right dickhead.

It's a different story outside of London alright.

As for this " most journeys are three miles" bollocks well, yeah, they might be but you've got to get there and back unless you're sleeping under your desk at work every night. Not looking so easy now already is it. Then factor in that most people make multiple journeys a day - go to school, go to work, go to the shop, go to pickup, go home, go to an activity, go back home etc. Yeah you could walk the lot but you'd spend all bastard day walking. And your boss would sack you.

There's already less pollution than 30 years ago. There's massively less pollution than 100 years ago. We're getting there but realistically if we want to be no carbon we have to reorganise every aspect of work, housing and leisure. Oh and end global inequality.

Or, I guess, in the meantime we can continue sniping at each other about which is more evil, having a child or having a wood burning stove. On our planet-fucking phones.

It's a really sad case. I do feel responsible as a car driver and have gone all electric now.

I also don't entirely buy that people can't have a view on some form of climate action unless they live pure and austere lives and live entirely off grid and grow their own food.

Of course people can have a view, but don’t be hypocritical about it. If someone is taking long haul flights but preaching to someone else about not using a woodburner then they can sod off as far as I’m concerned.

But really - wood burners are so bad for you inside your house! From an entirely selfish perspective of their own health, people should not be running them particularly if there are children or pregnant women in the room

Yes it probably would be bad for you if you used one every day, but like I say - the vast majority of Londoners (if any?) in the 21st century do not heat their homes exclusively by burning coal. Using a woodburner as something nice a few times a year is not going to kill you. If you visit a country pub in the winter and they have a nice log fire going, do you walk out? I certainly wouldn’t!

It's a really sad case. I do feel responsible as a car driver and have gone all electric now.

Seriously, good for you (not sarcastic!)

Surely cars make life “mildly more convenient” for the majority, not the minority.

Cars don't really make things more convenient, many people spend hours in traffic, breathing in particulates, getting no exercise etc. Cars are one of the shittier aspects of modern life.

Cars are really not more convenient than the sort of transport system we could have if we weren't biased towards the oil and car industries. I'm hopeful of change but it's very slow in getting here.

Cars don't really make things more convenient

Well they clearly do, otherwise most people wouldn’t own one! I hate cars too by the way and don’t own one myself - but I live in London so don’t feel I need one.

We've cut our car use way down but still have a way to go.

I'm trying to convince my DH that we could manage without one (he's not convinced).

At the moment I'm sitting in the car with a duvet and 2 hot water bottles while my DD is at football. 90 minutes! I've chosen to do this to halve the number of journeys. One journey to football one journey home rather than 2 return journeys.

I turn off my car engine even at traffic lights (I don't have a fancy car that does it for you)

All car journeys have to have at least TWO aims otherwise we wait.

We don't live near a bus route but our town is trying to become a 20 minute town. Unfortunately the road right outside our wee area is very dangerous. Pavements are treacherous- we have to take a detour to walk places in any sort of safety.

We do this and all sorts of other things to try and make a difference.

We need change at all levels, individual, grassroots, company, cultural, political and policy to name but a few.

Those that can, probably should

I certainly wished I'd had a car tonight.

As it was, it took me over an hour to get home, 30 minutes of which was spent waiting for two different buses, in the rain, in the dark, with my fucking laptop on my back. Then both buses were full of arseholes back from shopping, coughing, not wearing masks. The windows were all open because covid, no heating and tbh they weren't too clean. It cost me £5.30 for that slice of delight.

The difference between that and the idea of a 15 minute drive in the warm, with no one potentially giving me a killer disease, and a radio on ... well, I guess you could call it "mildly convenient" but from here it looks like fucking paradise.

You are not going to stop people driving when the alternative is so very shit.

@Dongdingdong

Cars don't really make things more convenient

Well they clearly do, otherwise most people wouldn’t own one! I hate cars too by the way and don’t own one myself - but I live in London so don’t feel I need one.

Cars are not actually very good and they cause a lot of difficulties, imo. I know people who drive even tho the time door to door is longer once parking is factored in. That is nothing to do with convenience, it certainly wasn't when I did it - it was laziness in my case!

For years I got a bus to work every day. It was an end to end express journey, no stops along the way and it was very pleasant. Can't imagine why anyone would have preferred to drive when they could sit on a nice warm coach and read a book or have a snooze.

Sadly the company I worked for were constantly badgering me about not being a team player because I had to leave at a certain time to get my bus. They even attempted to discipline me for it. And I remembered the particularly unpleasant woman from HR sneering that I seemed to want special treatment. But if I didn't get my bus home at 5.15 I didn't get home at all that night, and we weren't allowed to stay in the office after a certain time at night so where could I possibly go.? I had to point out that 1) they had offered me the job fully aware of where I lived and 2) I was paid so poorly that it was impossible for me to be able to afford to live closer to work.

Whilst attitudes like that exist with employers, how can people choose public transport?

@BefuddledPerson I think @PiersMorgansYogaTeacher would disagree with you!

Yup.

[quote Dongdingdong]**@BefuddledPerson* I think @PiersMorgansYogaTeacher* would disagree with you![/quote]
I feel covid should be left out of it, as of course a car is appealing just now.

But cars shouldn't be compared to current UK transport systems - which are deliberately shit. There is huge.potential. Look at the prices in Europe - including free in some parts of Germany. That's a political choice.

In all honesty who loves sitting in traffic? I know cars feel integral to life - it took years of debate to get rid of mine. But I think there are better transport systems out there.

The oil and car lobbies are not on my side though, they have a lot of influence.

I need a car for my job. I have to travel to places that would make using public transport prohibitive both cost and time wise.
In theory I’m actually a perfect candidate for an electric car as my commute is small but I have no way of charging a car once at home due to not having a drive.
There are a lot of reasons that some people don’t seem to see when saying ‘people should drive less!’

Yes YABU. Very expensive garden decoration

@BefuddledPerson but that's how things are. I agree completely that they could be different, but they are not. As they're not, people will continue to drive.

Covid is only an added bonus re my shit journey home - which I have to do tomorrow, and the day after too btw. It's shit and overpriced regardless of whether I get the rona and die from it.

We used to have a semi tolerable public transport system in the UK outside of London but we definitely don't any more. Yes, other countries do. I know because I lived in them, which is why I never learned to drive, and now I've come back here like a twat and found out I can't get to most places or do most things I want to do and the places I do go it's a crap service that costs me a fortune.

This is what I was referring to previously - we'd have to overhaul everything to make not having a car work. But in the meantime it's a bit much to berate people who don't want to use a terrible and expensive method of getting where they need to be rather than jumping into their cars.

Something we CAN do, and this is even less popular than reducing car use, is to stop using wood burners. The particles they emit are horrendous for asthma sufferers. I don’t understand why they aren’t banned in urban areas. My hair smelt like I’d been standing next to a bonfire after an evening run last week.

Wood burning stoves are truly dreadful for particulates.
Even modern ones.

Please stop using them in London if you have one. You are damaging the health of yourself and your children in your own home as well as air quality for everyone elsr

The particulates produced are particularly small and particularly dangerous.

Children, pregnant women and those with asthma should stay well away from them.

Dongdingdong

And yet our grandparents would have heated their homes with coal fires in most rooms on a daily basis and the majority lived to old age. Funny that. Surely if fires were as bad as smoking then deaths from lung cancer would have been significantly higher?

Nowadays I imagine most people with woodburning stoves in London use them every now and then as an occasional thing, not every day and night.

Once again it’s the MN double standards - singling out people with woodburning stoves but not those who use a car every day unnecessarily or who holiday abroad. Just look at how pollution levels have fallen significantly this year due to lockdown - it was due to nobody being able to travel.

No, not double standards.

A modern Eco wood burning stove produces 6X the amount of PM2.5 as a diesel lorry and 18X that produced by a diesel car. Some of the volatile compounds in the smoke are 40X more carcinogenic than the carcinogens in cigarette smoke. The smoke is almost invisible. PM 2.5 will enter neighbour's houses even through closed windows and doors.

It is not just in London. I live in a village just outside a large city. Many neighbours and others in the village have wood burners and they are not just used occasionally but every evening except during the warmest part of the summer. The smell is abominable and the air quality rubbish, in contrast to what it was 15 or so years ago.

The Govt. own website shows domestic wood burning to be the major source of all particulates now, over traffic and industry.

Ban domestic wood burning, with the possible exception of those who are off grid and you have improved air quality hugely, at a stroke.

Too tired to find the links to the figs I have quoted. Thy are freely available on the net There is also another thread about this on MN.

Oh and our long-lived coal fire burning ancestors? No. Huge incidence of COPD, IHD, etc,. Pea soupers? The Great Smog of 1952 anyone? That is why smokeless zones etc. were introduced. Currently the WHO has a working party whose sole concern is disease caused by wood burning in parts of the world reliant on such fires for cooking.