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?

Cars are much bigger, average 16 5 cm wider than when older car parks were built and streets of houses that predate cars or built when most households had 1. People do need to travel more - my work is 9 miles no public transport and DH works at many various locations. I can't see ant valid reason for the proliferation of SUVs - they are so heavy, and heavier cars tend to damage road surfaces more - potholes.
I would like to see road tax based on weight and watch people switch to smaller vehicles.

My husband and I both have our seperate cars, and thats because we both work full time and need our cars to get to and from work. I start work at 7am and dont finish untill 7.30 pm. If someone suggets to me that I could catch public transpsort, im not catching a bus after a 12.5 hour shift, that would add at least another hour to my day. I also need my car to drive to my elderly housebound dad, who lives a 30 min drive away from my house. I do hus shopping and stuff for him. I agree with people who cant or wont reverse down streets though.

I think something could be done about the cost of taxing and generally running SUVs to encourage those who really don't need to have them to select something smaller.

I suspect that people that don’t really need to have them are also the ones who can easily afford to pay the extra premium while that those that do really need to have them are the ones who will struggle.

How do you determine who “really needs to have them” anyway?

Actually, I would love to give up my car. If there were decent spaces to walk and cycle, and the trains were usable, I would at least go down to one car.

As it stands, it's the first 50/50 I've ever seen.

Posters detailing their own personal circumstances are somewhat missing the point of the bigger picture

Public transport needs to be invested in before people can even think about giving up their cars. If you aren’t in a city it’s unreliable and expensive - more so than driving. It would cost £18 for a family of four to get the bus to my nearest town. How is that realistic and sustainable.

Are they, though? It all goes to illustrate part of the bigger picture, i.e. why many of us are unable to ditch our cars as we're not adequately served by public transport...

If you're using PCP you're not buying a car. I don't want to pay £250 a month for three years to rent a car which isn't big enough for my 6'7 son to also drive, which won't fit four or five adults when needed, won't fit my dog (large breed) in the boot and all my holiday luggage (UK holiday). I'll stick to my nearly ten year old small-size Volvo which should last me another appro 300k miles. DH will probably also keep his vintage restoration along with his eleven year old run-around which gets used a few times a month for work, and DS1 will keep his car which he uses to travel 25 miles each way to work. If you can come up with a better solution for us which involves a super-mini and/or public transport, I'd be delighted to hear it (did you see the movie Downsizing??).

This is just patently wrong and is an excuse i ALWAYS see on these threads from people who just want to buy a Sportage or Discovery Sport and claim "there's no smaller cars available any more".

We had a Sportage. I didn’t think it was a particularly big car. According to its V5, it was an estate car. We changed it because it wasn’t a 4x4.

I have my car on PCP thankfully as it means I can get rid easily at the end of the term. I have a Mazda 2 Hybrid (e.g. Toyota Yaris) and want to trade it for an older, non hybrid as although it’s economical I don’t drive it enough (apparently) and the stupid thing has already had a new 12v battery when it was 6 months old. For once not owning the car suits me!

But if you had bought it you could have got rid of it now...

I couldn't afford to buy a decent car outright. If I'd bought it on HP I'd probably be lumbered longer to have kept the payments down.

I think cars have become more unaffordable, but I'm guessing people are living beyond their means. I bought a second-hand car a year ago, felt like I paid way over the odds for what I got compared to purchasing my previous car. I'm on a terraced street but luckily most residents are like me and are a 1-car household. I would use public transport where I can, but it's really expensive and I'd have to walk a mile and a half to the nearest bus stop. If we could fix public transport, I'd imagine a lot more of us would give up cars.

Not being unreasonable at all OP. Car ownership outside of London has been increasing year on year. And if it continues then it will cease to be convenient as there'll be more congestion, road damage and pollution. If everyone drives, nobody moves. As well as public transport, walking and cycling for shorter journeys has to be prioritised and discouraging car usage. A previous poster said there used to be amenities in their village but now there's not. And high streets across the country as ghost towns, that's because the default is to hop into the car and drive. Sometimes that's cost based but most of the time it's just convenience. If you don't use local amenities they'll disappear. We need to stop thinking car first and build infrastructure that gives people options. Found some stats on car ownership below. If we assume this trend continues it's going to be a very sorry picture in 20 years, given the population is aging so per capita there's more cars per adults.

www.nimblefins.co.uk/cheap-car-insurance/number-cars-great-britain#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20households%20in%20England,every%20household%20has%20a%20car.

I live in a small cul-de sac of 8 homes. All of us park on our drives, except for one family that use the turning circle as a parking spot. As the kids have grown we have gone from: Parent's car on their drive, eldest son's car in the turning circle. Then: two cars on the drive, eldest son's girlfriend's car in the turning circle. We are now at: three cars on the drive, eldest and second son's cars on the drive next to their parents, eldest son's girlfriend still in the turning circle. Two more teenage kids to go, I can't help but wonder where they intend to park.

“How cheap car ownership is?”

are we on the same planet?

its £475 a month for my car. £65 on Insurance a month, £13 on tax a month. £200 in petrol a month.

I get £1200 a month from my job! (Hubby also works and works hard so we have his income too!)

Also, I work in one area and my husband works in another….. 50 miles away. We both have to work to pay the bills so we both need a car!

honestly. I can’t see why you’re moanining.

Your choice to lease a car costing £475 per month. There are lots of cars you could have leased for half that. Smaller/cheaper cars would also cost less in terms of fuel, insurance etc.

No actually. That was the cheapest car that was NEW.

the car before was a 19 year old 2001 mini! It was falling apart!

I needed something new so I didn’t have to worry about fixing it! It’s a 1.1 so is relatively cheap in the sense of petrol…. We just do a lot of miles.

what would YOU suggest I brought!!

I think part of the problem there is that individual tickets tend to be expensive, whereas season or multi-buy tickets reduce the cost drastically. There are also schemes which reduce family costs further e.g. family rail cards or in Scotland children are entitled to travel on public buses for free.

Get an ev and charge it on the overnight tariff.

You will pay zero tax. You will pay less in maintenance.

EVs make most sense when you are doing high mileage.

If you are cost conscious then I think buying new makes little sense. Cars lose the most money when you drive them off the forecourt. If you are worried about warranty go for something like a Hyundai which has a 5 year guarantee and you could buy one a couple of years into that.

Oh…. And where am I getting the £3k to put the charging point in?! Ffs!

I’ve been driving 7 years and have had 2 cars. The 01 mini, an 06 polo and now my Toyota cross…. Which is by the way a hybrid.

the older the car the MORE Preventative maintenance you need to do! The mini cost me £1500 in the last year! It was worth £400!

are you actually being serious!!

My life would be very restricted if I didn't have a car. We have a pisspoor bus service (first bus after 9am, last bus back from town at 5.45 and a 2-hour gap in the afternoon when the bus is doing the school run, no buses on Sundays).

I'd also have to give up my job: I'm an essential car user and have to see clients at multiple sites across an entire (mostly rural) county and the neighbouring city. A journey I can do in 60 minutes in the car would take 2 hours minimum by public transport. All my colleagues are in the same boat.

A visit to my elderly mother in law would involve a bus, a train and another bus at her end, impossible on a Sunday and fuck knows how long that would take. I can do the 38 mile journey in under an hour by car; to a friend's 19 miles away, 1.5 hours by bus and a 1.5 mile walk to her house,30 minutes door to door by car.

Clearly, it's very different for people who live in cities with decent public transport and have friends in the same city, have kids in local schools and jobs that are based in just one location. But even then they may need a car to get to family and friends who don't live in the same city, or for hobbies that take place outside the home.

And how do people who don't have cars manage to take stuff to the tip? I've often wondered.

Just google for car leasing firms. Lots for under £250, some under £150. Where were you looking if you couldn't find one for under £475??