To think we could make housing estates like Center Parcs re cars

[QuertyGirl]

The USP of Centre Parcs is for many, the fact that they are mostly car free. Kids can play out and ride their bikes like I did when I was kid.

Can't do that now due to the amount of cars, speed and size of cars and, attitude of some car drivers.

People (including myself) pay a small fortune to holiday at CP.

Why can't we make housing estates more like that?

Communal car parks in walking distance, deliveries by small electric vehicles from a hub (like old fashioned milk floats), exemptions for blue badge holders and funding for electric mobility scooters for those that need them.

Yet, if the council suggests a couple of cycle lane and all hell breaks loose.

Yeah you can store you 50 loo rolls etc your hall door next to your disability scooter....can't get out of the house and the paramedic can't get in but your disabled so who cares you should have kept fit as an embryo

Why on earth would anyone want to replicate CP. I can't think of anywhere worse for a holiday, I certainly wouldn't want it in my day to day life.

Yeah bumper to bumper cars, much better

My great-uncle had a severed spinal cord and went everywhere on an adapted bike. He used his hands to propel. I would see him all the time on my way to school. For him it was freedom, exercise and fresh air.

Other alternatives to peddling are e-bikes (you do have to peddle but a lot less) or mobility scooters.

Any physical movement can cause extreme pain to many hands or legs or even sat still....if you read the above you would see mobility scooters discussed...storage, weight, dismantling and rebuilding both physical effort requiring an additional person as well as the additional 30 minutes to do so, lack of being independent, unable to use in certain weather conditions. Issues of storage. Do you use one? Have you ever had to load one?

You do realise only 55% of disabled people in England aged 17-64 hold a full driving licence

Or, to put it another way, more than half of all disabled people potentially rely on their cars as an absolute lifeline.

Of course, the real figure is likely much higher, as many disabled non-drivers will have a driving spouse, parent, adult child and/or carer who lives with them; or will regularly require taxis to take them door to door.

....And, as Jannier very rightly points out, there are so many obstacles to disabled people having the opportunity to learn to drive (or afford it), that very strongly suggests that the remaining 45% don't all not want to drive.

You know what. I am giving up on this thread.

It's an injustice that so many people in the UK can not travel easily because there is a refusal to even entertain not using cars as much. 50% of disabled people don't drive but they don't seem to factor in this discussion.

I personally know a lot of people who would not have the freedom they would have now if they lived in the UK, versus living in my town in the Netherlands where they can go anywhere in town without having to buy, insure, tax a car and spend serious money getting a licence in the first in the place.

This includes my great-uncle who used a hand-propelled wheelchair, my two old neighbours in their mobility scooters and my brother's ex who had a seizure and wasn't allowed to drive.

I am really glad I left. Quality of life is so much better and it has cost me one secondhand bike to enjoy everything in a 10 mile radius.

@ivykaty44 "it’s cheaper to buy on Amazon rather than supermarket for bulk items, toilet paper, pasta, coffee can be sourced on Amazon cheaper"

Not sure this is true, so I checked prices.
Lidl 250gms Chickpea fusilli at £1.49. (£5.96 per kilo); Amazon - £16.90 per kilo.
Lidl plain flour - 38p/kg; Amazon - £1.35/kg
Lidl 200gm freeze dried coffee - £1.99; Amazon's cheapest 200gm - £5.20
Lidl 2ply toilet paper - 22.8p each; Amazon cheapest is 24p each.

I guess it depends which supermarket you use. The coffee price difference is enormous at Amazon!

kdramaqueen My friend who is blind used Sainsbury previously for bulk items as it was her closest supermarket by taxi, she wasn’t going to pay extra in taxi fare to shop further away at a cheaper supermarket. Now she uses Amazon on subscription & doesn’t have to account for the taxi fare either way

WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

everybody wants the opportunity to get about easily, if the infrastructure for non car transport and public transport was as it is in the Nederlands, then many people with physical disabilities would have a better quality of life

@jannier

You have and deserve a blue badge.

Nobody is asking you to give that up. Nothing I suggested would or should, impact you.

There are however people (some of whom are also disabled but differently so) who it would massively benefit.

@ivykaty44 Lidl is my closest supermarket, while my nearest Sainsbury's is across town. Horses for courses, that's why things go tits up once we start arguing from the general to the particular. Some people such as my dd, also shun Amazon for ethical reasons.

I'm not the blue badge holder I'm the carer for 3 disabled people in 3 different addresses to mine....1 is not blue badged but mental health means any essential trip....GP hospital is a nightmare to get the 5 steps or so from the front door takes days of preparation and can take half an hour to achieve or be a total wash out. A 15 minute walk....or even a 5 minute one would never happen.

So that person should have a blue badge.

Nobody is suggesting that people with mobility issues should suffer.

Disability on NM is very misunderstood...the disabled car parking spaces are a luxury anyone who is pregnant or has a child should be able to use, they should wait at bus stops because the parent thinks the disabled space is for their buggy and your sat down anyway, you're disabled because you don't exercise, now you could ride a bike instead and you want to because you obviously chose not to get a driving licence....just shows the total lack of understanding the problems disability brings....and the attitude that I know one person who could do this so you all must be able to because although all disabled are different your all the same really..I'm sure it's believed that no disabled person lives.in constant pain because a pain killer would stop it so they are not taking them ...yeah right. The ignorance on this thread has made me so angry.

Agreed @jannier this thread has revealed such horrifying breezy ignorance of the reality of being disabled.

I don't actually like cars. I would love us to be less dependent as a nation. But I am astounded by some of the comments on here. The idea it's easy to get a blue badge, the idea a mobility scooter or a hand powered bike is a suitable alternative. It's just so disappointing.

I am saying nowhere that disabled people shouldn't have cars. A better balance should be struck between the situation as is, which is life is difficult without a car, regardless of disability, and having no cars.

50% of disabled people don't have a car, and I maintain my stance that their lives would be much improved if they have the option to safely walk or cycle somewhere.

In many areas people who use wheelchairs can’t even go out due to cars parking on pavements; you certainly couldn’t get a wheelchair past many of the roads that I walk along daily. Cars in designated parking areas would improve things for these disabled people (as people have said, many can’t drive). Allowances would be made for people who really couldn’t walk to their cars.

(not for those who don’t like a bit of rain)

With all the other terrible aspects of this aside, I present; defrosting your car

The problem with this thread is there are people with no experience of disability or a particular disability telling others with a disability/ carers for someone with a disability, what they can or cannot do.

This comment for example

"Allowances would be made for people who really couldn’t walk to their cars."

Who are you to make comments about "really couldn't". Are you saying that people should be in pain getting to their vehicle because that doesn't count as really couldn't. Or it is ok for someone to have meltdowns and get distressed on the way to their vehicle. Who gets all these mobility scooters into these sufficiently large vehicles.
It is also what is practical and in that persons best interests. We should be making vulnerable people's lives better not harder.

The blue badge system desperately needs an overhaul. I swear it's made difficult as a deterrent.

The solution is to fix that.

Simply deciding that cars can do what they like (that's what it feels like to me) isn't the solution.

I know that some people cannot walk, ride a bike, a mobility scooter or even a self propelled wheelchair.

I used a mobility scooter for a short period. That was an eye opener! I was queuing for an attraction in it once. The man in front of me actually tried to sit on the front of it! Needless to say I moved swiftly and he felt flat on his arse. He still gave me a mouthful of abuse.

Simply deciding that cars can do what they like (that's what it feels like to me) isn't the solution.

Who has decided that cars can do what they like? That’s not true, is it?

Honestly most of the posts come over that you are not able to drive so don’t think anyone else should either, except a very few disabled people if they fit a very specific set of circumstances.

Cars won’t go anywhere.

I said that was what it feels like to a non-driver.

I'm asking that people in cars do not make life difficult and dangerous for others.

Anyway, more restrictions on cars is the way that town planning is going in the future. I think the battle has already been largely won in the civil sphere, it's the pain of the cultural catch-up that this thread is demonstrating.