To think car ownership is out of control in the UK

[JacquesHarlow]

I fully expect to get a vast majority of "YABU" comments, but here goes:

Firstly, before I get flamed - I am a woman, a car owner, and yes I have a driveway now (though didn't before). I am a car enthusiast in terms of the enjoyment I've got from driving and I don't have an issue with "cars" per se.

What I have an issue with is how ridiculous Britain's councils and governments are on car ownership. How cheap car ownership is. How anyone can distort the living environment around them with their choices.

Have you driven down a suburban street lately, or even an urban one?

Small and narrow Victorian streets with lines of cars packed on either side, and only room for one vehicle to drive down it. Why so many cars? The houses have been there for 150 years. Why now?

And because so many people (often fellow women, annoyingly) don't ever like reversing, you find yourself caught in the middle, having to reverse right back to the end of the street to start again.

School runs are chaos - so many cars, parking up in illegal or careless ways, purely to save a short distance walking.

And the size of cars! Absurdly large vehicles which then take up more road space on the kerbside. Yeah it is "legal" but in a decade where theoretically we want to get better as a country environmentally, most people do not give two fucks as long as their precious DCs are "safe" (you're just as safe in a NCAP 5* rated Yaris as you are in a Merc GLS, but try telling that to people where I live).

So this is the madness of today:

Cars are SO much bigger. And thanks to PCP they're cheaper - and this is why I see so many cars where I live ,and up north when I visit, and everywhere else. The PCP monthlies thing keys right into the British obsession of wanting to look and feel wealthy. Years ago a Golf or an Audi A3 would be considered posh for a family. But why would I buy a Golf when my monthly payments could get me into something BIGGER!

The one thing that isn't bigger, is the United Kingdom. I've seen councils in London paint "parking lines" half on the pavement so that people can park up on either side to let cars past. I've seen people in these Discoveries and Defenders mount kerbs at drop off time without a thought or care for who might be behind them or even aware of this being an issue.

And you can have 1 household in a street of 20 houses own 5 cars. You do the maths as to how much of the available parking is then taken away.

Why are people so aggressive and discourteous in their car ownership? What are we going to do about this?

Some of us remember 20 or 30 years ago when you could drive to another street and not have to face a x5 barrelling towards you, parked cars either side? With a tiny woman peering over the steering wheel refusing to reverse back into the space immediately behind her? But powering through so that you, in your little hatchback, have to reverse 10 car lengths to accommodate her ego and lack of driving skill?

Our city and town streets are not made for X5s, Discoveries, Range Rover Sports, and god knows what else, to be parked along the kerbside blocking out the light into tiny terraced houses.

How do we put a stop to this? I love the Japanese principle in certain cities where you have to name a parking space you own or have access to before you buy a car. Could this work here?

AIBU? How will we ever wean ourselves off this 'bigger is better, and every member of my family must have a car' mentality?

I've got to disagree on the PCP affordability piece.

I bought a car on PCP in 2016 and to get the same car at the same list is over £1000 more per year today. All other associated costs have jumped too. You'd have a point 10 years ago though.

I think until public transport is affordable people are going to have multiple cars. Everyone I know needs to drive to work as the public alternatives are either unreliable or top pricey

Also, some of us feel alienated from the anti-car movement by the Just Stop Oil crowd and their predecessors, who disrupted public transport (remember Canning Town), who probably drove cars to get to their protests, and who used oil for their signs; also the celebrities flying to climate conferences in their private jets. I bet even Greta Thunberg flies or drives when she thinks nobody is looking.

I know this thread is not about climate change, but many of us are yawning and deaf to any moralising is because in the last few years, there’s been so much finger wagging “you shouldn’t go about any business, travelling, pleasure or work at all, because it’s bad for the planet, it kills granny, it burdens the NHS, it causes carbon emissions,” etc, and often the voices saying it are the biggest offenders themselves. We’ve heard it all before, and to take the line that teenagers sometimes use, we didn’t ask to be born.

From your OP:

What I have an issue with is how ridiculous Britain's councils and governments are on car ownership. How cheap car ownership is. How anyone can distort the living environment around them with their choices

Now granted you did fill up the full checklist of car whinges but your OP highlights car ownership.

I note you haven’t addressed any of my points regarding your inaccurate claims either.

But lets face it, you already have what you want from this thread.

We've got 2 cars because we value our time above everything else. The public transport over here isn't too bad, but it's 1h to get to work on the bus vs 15 minutes in the car. Same if I want to get to the nearest shopping centre.

We only have one (large 7 seater because we have four kids) car. We would be fucked without it. Kids schools are a 10 mile round trip - even if we did have a reliable bus service, it would cost me more than £20 a day in bus tickets, and involve a half mile walk at the school end on top of the 20 min bus journey which inevitably would mean us standing up as well. I need to be home for 9am to start work. With a bus journey that would be impossible.

Add to that the clubs my children do every night. Plus the football matches my son plays all over the county and has to be there for 8am on a Saturday morning. My family also live 150 miles away. Costs me about £50 in fuel and 2.5 hours each way to visit them, as opposed to several hundred quid on trains and buses and God knows how many hours.

My husband luckily works very locally so he can walk to work, but if he didn't, he would need a car because he's a shift worker and no buses start before 7am or run after 8pm.

My children are all still young but I imagine all four of them will own cars by their early 20s because unless you work in the tourist trade (seaaonal) there are few jobs round here, and with the way the cost of living is, they'll still be living at home as well so potentially 5 cars here.

Not only that, public transport is Incredibly anti social. I don't want to spend a small fortune on sitting next to someone who stinks, perverts, smelling the weed wafting from upstairs hearing people's mobile music or their crap conversations at the top of their voices. I hate my kids catching the bus because there always seems to be fights or worse on there. They're filthy as well.

No. I'll stick to my car (which I can reverse and parallel park even though I'm a woman!) Which is clean, comfortable and convenient.

I’m a rural community nurse so will always need my car unfortunately, public transport just ain’t going to cut it there same for my colleagues and other home carers

i have to park on the street due to being in a HA house and having to take what they offered and it has no drive way so currently electric car is also out of the question for us

🙄fun = holidays/trips.

On a day to day basis i'd need about 5 hours extra in a day to use a bus for my life. (to horses, to work, to horses)

👍 agreed

But lets face it, you already have what you want from this thread.

Oh yeah of course @C8H10N4O2 , all I wanted to do was just goad people. 🙄

Why do some Mumsnetters do this?
They don't like your line of argument, so they have to instead try and emotionally discredit you by claiming you are a "troll" or "attention seeker".

Can't we have a debate about car ownership, or car parking, or car usage, without me being mislabelled a troll, just because some of the stuff I say is inconvenient or hit a nerve?

Also the government raise huge amounts of tax from cars, so they're not going to give that up AND pay for the necessary improvements in public transport. The tax rises across the population would be enormous to cover the lost revenue and increased costs.

Gotta break the cycle somehow

I think this is spot on. We will have to wait a long time to have a government brave enough to spend the money and do the proactive stuff.

My issue are the tiny or no driveways on a lot of houses. I would never buy a house that I couldn't park at least 3 cars on my driveway. This means I'll never buy a small terrace or city centre living. Limits my options of where to live but I'm ok with that.

Car park spaces need to be larger given the bigger cars around now. Public transport only really works well in cities and suburban areas.

For someone full of aggressive statements you seem very ignorant of the reasons for multi car households. The vast majority are not one person living in a house with 5 cars. With property being unobtainable you people are moving out much much later. We have more multigenerational households. We have multiple ADULTS living in a single house and just as they would if they lived in several apartments, they all need a vehicle.

people with young families have dc allocated schools too far to walk and they don’t have time to share cars as parents need to drop dc off on the way to school.

we no longer live with one working adult and one stay at home parent.

It’s about changes in the way we live way beyond how many cars we have that are driving the situation of multiple cars per household. I don’t know anyone with more than one large car/SUV. They may have multiple cars but only one is a larger one. The rest are small as they are owned by young adult dc

as for your comments on women, you lost all credibility from that point onwards

I live in a city. Our public transport is crap.

It seems to only work well in London and Manchester.

The problems are to do with interlocking vicious circles, the larger your vehicle the more you are able to dominate the space. Everyone tries to dominate vehicles get larger and larger.
As we have more and more cars it feels less and less safe to walk or cycle anywhere. Lack of exercise means that people get fatter and fatter, exercise becomes more and more uncomfortable, you need a bigger and bigger car because you're getting fatter and fatter.
I gave up driving 15 years ago, walk or cycle wherever I need to go.

This is where the 'stick' may be needed for high polluting/heavy cars. Make VED 5k or even10k a year for an SUV (based on weight) and scale down to £50 for an electric Yaris or whatever. The shift in car choice will mean small cars causing less damage to roads, take up less space for parking, less fatalities in pedestrians getting run over. This way, those that are rich/stupid enough to drive an SUV pay the shortfall. Those that do the damage pay most.

Introduce Congestion charge in city centres besides London. City centres like Manchester should not be facilitating car journeys without a significant cost to the driver. Charge a parking Levy on city centre workplace car parks. Redirect the funds to public transport. Exemptions for blue badge holders.

Certainly agree with higher VED for larger cars, but I'd also extend that to vans and pick up trucks. At the moment, such vehicles are popular with self employed (tradies who obviously need them, but others who use them just for tax perks) because of low benefit in kind rates (if a limited company) and higher capital allowances (if a sole trader). Lots of the likes of IT consultants are driving around in Mitsubishi pick up trucks because of tax relief and low BIK (thankfully the law has now changed for new purchases, but still remain the tax breaks for those already in use). Same with transit vans etc - lots of people don't actually "need" them but like the tax breaks. It all needs changing. Vans and trucks are a blight on busy residential streets and we either need to increase excise duty or reduce tax breaks for the self employed, to discourage people who don't actually need big vans from buying them.

Certainly agree with higher VED for larger cars

Larger cars pay higher VED already.

Monster truck manufacturers push back hard against anything which threatens profits. They will lobby the government to prevent anything which disincentivizes sales of the giant metal hulks which dominate our streets ☹️

But not high enough. We're talking about substantial increases to make any difference.

It was about 3-4 miles, I can't remember exactly. It usually took that long (or longer) as there were always 'temporary' traffic lights.

You are putting the cart before the horse!
We don't need bigger spaces to accommodate larger vehicles, space is finite!
We need smaller vehicles to fit into the space available.

I agree to some extent but it is a huge issue to tackle. I think it goes hand in hand with a loss of community. Nothing is local anymore. We need to:

Improve public transport (regularity, cleanliness, safety, convenience, routes, etc)
Increase local in-community facilities so less need for transport (doctors, dentists, minor injury units, shops, etc.)
Build new villages with centres and community facilities (see above), not bland housing estates.
Go back to the days when children attended the nearest school so most are within walking distance (if not, school buses serving the whole catchment should be available).
Allow more people to work from home or in local community multi-office hubs (with parking).
Ban commercial vehicles/motorhomes etc from overnight street parking.
Limit the number and size of vehicles parking on residential streets (permits, limits per household, etc)

I quite like the Japanese idea of having to have somewhere to park the new vehicle before you can buy one but I don't see how it can work for second-hand vehicles.

I agree that PCPs encourage people to buy bigger as they can afford it. I also wish the luxury car market would consider making more smaller cars - the best things can come in small packages!

Couldn't agree more @Mrsbloggz

The big problem is that now people have got used to these huge cars, it will be an "over my dead body are you taking them away" scenario.