To think it's ridiculous how people go to pieces when they don't have their car

[orangesandlemonssaythebellsofstclements]

This might be unpopular.

Being able to drive and having a car to get around seems to be a sign that you have your shit together and you are a proper adult.

However, I have witnessed so many times people that are used to cars, absolutely failing to cope the minute they no longer have access to one, even if it's just for a day. Where as people who use public transport frequently have to plan around last minute cancellations and lateness and are actually required to be more organised.

A couple of examples.

SIL (BIL's wife) had a company car for years. She now doesn't work enough hours to have it so she lost her company car. I made what I thought was a genuine and helpful comment about the fact that she's lucky she lives on a great bus route and got given looks of disgust and no-one even answered me. It was as though they thought I was deliberately trying to be factious or something. Now MIL comes and takes her on days out with her toddler and even takes her shopping because she no longer has a car and claims she can't get anywhere. I have two children and have always managed days out and shopping with out one.

Someone once called in to work and said they were going to be late because their car had broken down and they had to get a bus. There was an out pouring of sympathy for her, people were calling her every few minutes to check she was OK and making jokes about how horrible it must be for her. She turned up at the office a whole hour late, was hailed as some sort of hero for getting there and told not to worry if she had to be late for the rest of the week while she got her car sorted. I lived on the next street over and got there on the bus every single day.

AIBU to think these people kind of need to grow up a little bit and handle their shit?

I have worked with the same kind of people. Someone who lives on a very regular bus route that went straight to work, would make her husband be an hour late for his work so that he could drive her there if her car was at the garage, and then hang around for an hour after work waiting for him to pick her up. When mentioned the bus would have got her home by now she gave me a look of such distress and hurt as if I was being unbeleivably cruel. 😂

Trains are public transport?

Yep, absolutely typical. They act as if the bus is so far beneath them I might as well have suggested they ride backwards on a donkey cart while having shit flung at them.

You are right, @orangesandlemonssaythebellsofstclements - of course trains are public transport, @Dreamskies!

I think you're absolutely right about housing estates not being built with convenient infrastructure but I agree that this has been happening for decades. Isn't that why ice cream vans became a thing? because of the Glasgow high-rise estates being built miles away from everything? The van would come and sell people essentials as well as ice cream, like a mini shop on wheels.
I believe that the need for housing is so high that houses and flats are just being knocked up as quickly as possible so they can be filled with people and the infrastructure they need is not being prioritised - it can just be worked out later. It is contributing to the rise in a car reliant culture and the people that don't have one are being screwed.

So are Planes!!

And people seem to forget this. I have absolutely no sympathy with people that moan about things like babies crying on planes. It's public transport. You're just not used to dealing with it on the ground because you have your car.
If a baby was crying on the bus people would probably say well you don't have a car so you have to put up with it, it's just part of public transport. Same goes for a plane. Unless you have your own plane - deal with it.

But I digress.

@orangesandlemonssaythebellsofstclements - you are absolutely right that housing estates have been designed like this for ages - basically the UK has built communities that only work well if you can drive for far too long, which has engrained the car as the primary mode of transport - and changing existing communities to make them more public transport friendly is a difficult thing to do.

But we know all this now, and yet council planning departments are still approving plans for new estates that are predicated around car ownership. It's hard to change existing estates, but there is no excuse not to do better in planning new ones.

That’s occasional and didn’t happen at all at my old job (I.e. the first 10+ years of my full time employment!) to the point I didn’t even know how to get to my destination on a train. No idea at all how to use them! And I’m not the only one who has been in that position.

I had a couple of years of working away, and I very occasionally travel to another site for my current role. But the actual relevant point still stands that I simply cannot get to my place of work on the bus. It’s not possible.

No shit Sherlock! 🙄 I didn’t say they weren’t. Just that I cannot get a bus (or a train!!!!!) to my current place of work, and I’ve never had to regularly use public transport since I was at school.

It's just that you said "I haven’t had to use public transport since school" and then followed that up with a comment about sometimes using trains. You didn't use the word "regularly" so it's reasonable to assume you don't think of trains as public transport. No need to be snippy.

Absolutely!! No excuse!

I'm firmly of the opinion that many people have some sort of a nervous breakdown if they are more than 500 yards from their car.

We go to an absolutely beautiful sandy beach on the South Coast. It's almost completely deserted, even on the sunniest bank holiday, when nearby beaches are absolutely rammed. The reason? It's about a mile flat walk or easy bike ride away from the nearest carpark.

The New Forest is like this too - carparks rammed on a bank holiday with people picknicking, dads and kids playing football (what is it with going to a beauty spot just to have a kickabout in the carpark?), all within touching distance of their beloved preciouses. Go 2 minutes along a trail and there's no-one about.

I wouldn't want to walk a mile to and from my car if I was carrying beach chairs, beach toys, towels, sunscreen, food, drinks etc. either!

The thread is about whether people who usually drive struggle without a car, so whether I’ve occasionally used trains in the last decade isn’t really relevant to the point of the thread is it?

No need to respond to me PURELY to try to call me out for using a train to get elsewhere is it? Hardly reasonable to assume I don’t think trains are public transport. I wouldn’t have mentioned them in a thread about public transport otherwise would I? 😂🤡

At least respond to the relevant part.

@Dreamskies - you said, ”I haven’t had to use public transport since school. I have had to use trains sometimes for work when I’m in different locations” - which did seem to me to imply that you don’t think trains are public transport. Apologies if I misunderstood.

YABU.

The nuance of the words “had to” are important. I don’t HAVE to use public transport to get to work. I HAD to in order to get to school as I couldn’t drive. For the first decade of my employment I never used a bus or train for either work or play. I now
occasionally do so for specific work trips out of town. That’s not the same as a regular commute and isn’t relevant to the “car suddenly broke down and now I have to get the bus” situation that the OP was talking about. I only mentioned it as it was an exception to my general not needing to use PT point, but clearly I should have just missed that part out.

I wasn’t saying trains aren’t public transport, it was a separate part of my response. Picking it up simply to try to somehow “prove me wrong” is pretty unnecessary.

I learnt to drive, and I pay to maintain a car especially so as to give myself the freedom afforded to drivers. Of course it would be hugely inconvenient to me if that were suddenly taken away, just like it would for anyone with any modern convenience- from mobile phones to a washing machine! Strange that the OP can’t understand that to the degree they needed to start a thread about it.

I’m afraid I didn’t get that nuance, @Dreamskies - I read it as saying you had not used public transport since school - again, apologies for not getting it.