To say car ownership shouldn't be seen as the default

[Sidslaw]

several posts on here about financial problems, all claiming the car is "needed" and not up for discussion

People tend to set up their lives with the assumption that they will drive - surely with the climate in the stat it is in it should now be the other way around? People to set up their lives with the assumption that they will not drive, as the default.

I don't drive, I am dyspraxic, so can't and always knew I wouldn't, and it has never been an issue, as I have chosen the places I live and the jobs I do on that basis. I use public transport, walking, cycling, taxis. I have raised my family as a single mother like this, and my children ( not dyspraxic) have grown up to set up their lives the same.

There is always going to be people who rightly or wrongly think they are an exception, but surely the default should be, don't own a car, don't drive?

As of 2022 56% of the uk population live in primary urban areas (cities). So 44% don’t. Its hardly a vast majority. A lot of what is termed urban is places like I described above.

A significant number of those who do live in inner cities with good infrastructure don’t have cars

for example in London (which incidentally has the lowest percentage of car ownership in terms of vehicles per household in the uk- 42% of households do not own a car) the ownership within the inner city areas is lowest of all.

So the better the infrastructure the lower the need for cars- and people are not necessarily zealots for car use, the number of car journeys taken overall is falling. Ignoring the genuine barriers to getting rid of cars and claiming that people are just unmotivated/have limited thinking/don’t care.are lazy etc doesn’t actually do anything to reduce car use.

The DH and I both hated driving and gave up as soon as we could. It’s not especially unusual in the city we live in but I still find myself explaining we don’t have a car and don’t choose to drive at least once a fortnight. Not many of the DCs sixth form friends have learnt yet. It’s expensive parking here and a congestion charge has been mooted, plus a lot of car unfriendly barriers and so on are restricting traffic flow.

Running a car is very expensive, something I hadn’t realised fully until my aged parent gave up his car. He got £700 quid back from some agency or other for remaining part of year - I don’t know the detail because I don’t drive. The sun simply illustrates that you’d have to go in quite a few taxis to spend that much and there is also all th other costs he’s saved.

Its always some single parent that works locally that thinks no-one needs to drive.
Never couples working long hours in different cities with no public transport before 7am or after 7pm.

Who denied that?

That’s not what this thread is about.

I always see the “I live in a rural area” argument as a bit pointless on these threads. Clearly you actually need a car then, and threads like this aren’t about you.

I live in a busy NW town with plenty of public transport links around. Plenty of people who have cars around here would get by without one. The streets are jam packed with cars cars cars, so clearly most people think a car is essential to life. It‘s not essential, it’s just a convenient thing to have. And it makes an adult no less of adult if they don’t own a car.

And I’m pretty sure some of these people who own cars for convenience are also very vocal about the planet too. They must be at war with themselves, unless their car doesn’t count?

At no point in the original post you quoted has that person made any reference to your life being “depressingly narrow”, so you seem to be confused there.

Plenty of people with dyspraxia drive.

You keep telling people to use taxis - but they’re cars too. You’re also telling people it doesn’t matter if their journeys take hours longer (eg the people saying about children’s hospital appointments), using their own car is effectively killing other kids. But a taxi won’t ‘kill’ these kids you’re referring too?!

And you’ve mentioned more than once the vertigo example. Lots of “what ifs”. People won’t set up their lives based on the potential for getting vertigo! But they’re also not daft and realise life can change in an instant.

It is 100% essential that I have a car for my job as I travel too far from home and visit too many people in one shift. It’s absolutely impossible without a car, so I’d be very interested in your solution.

This thread Is indeed about rural and everybody else that doesn't work in the city centre or takes their kids to school on a bike on the tube because according to the op these people just haven't set up their lives properly 🙄

Have you even read the Op?

It’s exactly what the thread is about. Op seems to think everyone can magically set their lives up to not need a car at all.

Alright I’ll bite …..

I don’t think most people start out their lives with the intention of putting themselves in the most inconvenient location, requiring hours of commuting and driving around. Most people tend to gravitate to the area that they find themselves working in. What the OP has conveniently ignored is that lives change - you start (or end) a relationship, have a child, get made redundant, somebody gets sick and needs hospital treatment. Obviously if we all had as much foresight as the OP then we would’ve somehow gazed into our crystal balls, realised these events were going to happen and located ourselves in a place so we didn’t need to drive. Even though we didn’t know these things were going to happen at a point in the future in our lives

Here - have my first ever for the most self-righteous, ill informed and goady thread. You’re welcome

Cambridge is also an extremely expensive city with a large workforce that do not live close enough to cycle in/cycle in safely…

the buses are not too bad but can be very slow.

again, a large proportion of cyclists are generally those who are privileged enough for this to be an option.

I would just about manage without a car but it's of course a great choice to have one. I spent years not having one and didn't miss it. I changed job and funnily enough bought a new car rather than a new house to commute easily. I'm now back in a job that doesn't require a car to commute but I still use it frequently. This weekend alone I used it to go shopping, drive to a pub for lunch and ferry the kids to the trampoline park and another hobby. If I didn't have the car I would have chosen a Supermarket delivery instead and we would have used the local whetherspoons or not gone and the hobbies would either not happen or be something different, I guess. My point is, if I didn't have a car I would have to cope somehow but having a car gives you a lot more choices with an awful lot of things (jobs/hobbies/leisure pursuits). I do think OP was on a wind up though. It's really not viable to move everytime you change jobs. If you don't have the option to drive then you just cast your net very differently.

Exactly. Lots of the cyclists in Cambridge are also the students who can't afford a car!

And I’m pretty sure some of these people who own cars for convenience are also very vocal about the planet too. They must be at war with themselves, unless their car doesn’t count?

Ridiculous comment. Suggesting you can’t care about the planet unless you don’t own a car is the same as saying you can’t care about the planet unless you never buy new things, never go abroad, don’t own a washing machine/dishwasher or other emitting modcons, have children, have a log burner, have a pet, put your heating on above the bare minimum to survive, eat a purely locally produced vegan diet or any other of the gazillion things which 99% of people in the country are guilty of some or all.

If only the tiny minority of people who don’t leave any kind of carbon footprint for their own convenience were allowed to be vocal about green issues, the environment would end up very low down the agenda.

I live 30 miles from work. To get there on time O would need to catch a bus or train to the next town, then a bus to the town the school is in, then another bus. This will probably take a couple of hrs.
I am not prepared to do that, ever!

I live 30 miles from work

Why do you live 30 miles from work?

Not being goady, I lived 25 miles from my work because it was half way between my work and where my ex-partner’s job was moved to.

What would happen if everyone who currently lives in areas without public transit tried to move into the cities?

It is all very well saying you can cycle in city such as Cambridge. But you need to get there.
I can just see myself trying to cycle down the A14 at rush hour - not.

This is the issue with many cities. The shortest road is via a major A road or motorway.
There may an alternative route for cycling but invariable is the long way round turning a 30miles direct route into a 50 mile scenic route

It is all very well saying you can cycle in city such as Cambridge. But you need to get there

I remember removing parking places to allow greater pedestrianisation being discussed in our local town. A councillor pointed out that it was a bit silly because most pedestrians are drivers that have parked.

Someone’s come on mumsnet and said most people don’t have caring responsibilities. Well, there are 1.6 million infant school children. So that’s a million or so carers there.

My kids went to a primary we could walk to and then a secondary they could walk too. Because I was privileged, I could live in a nice area and walk to my work in 35 mins. Then partner couldn’t. We split 3 years ago. I tried for the first 10 months without a car. Carried my stuff between 2 houses each week (we nested them), borrowed my mum’s car to get kids to clubs. Attempted to carry shopping. It was grim and limiting. That was in a large city (though not one you can bike in). I didn’t want to have to shop in the big supermarkets as I can’t afford it.

I know car usage must reduce but we need to massively, massively invest in urban areas in public transport. And it needs to be affordable. We need school buses. We need to be ok with hybrid working, to reduce journeys to work. The rail network needs to be better. We need to push healthcare back into community settings, in my city the community midwife doesn’t home visit anymore, you have to travel with the newborn baby to a ‘hub’. It’s not always walkable.

If we continue not to do this first, and penalise usage of car, I promise that the first people to be impacted will be women, the elderly and the poor (not the very poor as they don’t have cars but need cheap public transport). Because they do the caring, mainly take kids to school and do pick ups, and get family shopping. I absolutely predict that the people who will benefit from making car ownership difficult are the rich. Oh, and by the way, if people don’t drive or use electric cars, you lose millions in car tax and fuel duty. So you need to plug that gap too.

Like I said in another post, we started developing urban areas to be predicated on car ownership around 100 years ago. So a massive structural change is needed.

Because it was where I could get a teaching g job ok?

Can't edit on App...
Teaching- no extra g needed.

Yes, that's true. I never denied that it wasn't the case. Even in London though, 40% of households have one car, 12% have multiple. There will be some edge cases where people genuinely need them, but there is also Jeremy Clarkson (or other people of the same persuasion, he mostly lives in Oxfordshire these days). Some people need the car keys prising out of their cold, dead hands. That's why outright prohibition has become necessary, with low-traffic neighbourhoods etc.

Because it was where I could get a teaching g job ok

Fine by me. I stated my reasons for a long commute. I was just interested in why other people had similar.

I'm with you OP. The most difficult part of living in England was the embarrassingly car-centric infrastructure.

Despite what MN says, car owners are not predominantly car-reliant disabled people living in rural areas made entirely of blind corners and 2 streetlights trying desperately to get to their next bed-ridden client.

They're just not bothered.

Round about 21% of adults in London have a disability such that it affects their ability to do normal day to day activities, like travel.
Add to that the number of adults with disabled children to care for, then add to that all the people who don’t have access to decent infrastructure and thats a significant number of people who are stuck with cars, whatever their principles might dictate.

There are some people who will be wedded to driving no matter what, but I don’t think thats a majority at all.