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?

So you're happy to screw all the minimum wage workers who need a car then? Carers, shift workers, hospitality workers, out of town retail park workers. You'd need to massively improve public transport before you could even think of doing any of that. Have you considered the loss of tax revenue from drivers which would need to be made up by other taxes. That means massive tax rises. |Are YOU happy to pay a lot more tax to fund public transport AND replace the lost tax revenue from motorists? No thought not!

People with little money won't be able to buy new EVs. They'll be buying the old ones, second hand, that DO need proper charging.

Over 10 million people live in rural areas in the UK. That's a lot of people. "Rural" definition isn't some remote hamlet on a hillside. 23% of registered businesses in the UK are in "rural" areas. Yet rural areas are well acknowledged to be less likely to have decent public transport. So around a sixth of people and staff at around a quarter of employers, have limited access to decent public transport!

Feel free to ban excessive car use in London and a handful of other cities, but you have to be realistic that for most other areas, continued car use is probably cheaper for the taxpayer and better for the environment than spending billions (and environmental damage) on building new cycle paths and footpaths, building new railway lines, buying and running thousands of extra buses, to create the kind of "car free" infrastructure where people genuinely didn't need cars. It's a lot cheaper and more efficient to do that in densely populated urban cities.

Correct, but me giving up my car isnt going to change that, it will need physical infrastructure changes, pavements, cordoned off cycle lanes/paths with a physical barrier between the cars and the bikes, flat roads not cambered roads with proper drainage to avoid the need for the camber, safe sides to the roads, regular litter picking so the edges of roads are not filled with litter that goes under your wheels, flat safe pavements with crossings on busy roads for pedestrians, the list is endless

These things have to be built before theres any hope of being able to physically get to places without a car

And thats for local places, buses/trains need to be affordable and accessible, with proper safety, manned, CCTV, toilets and refreshments, seats and shelters.

No they don't. In fact, with the ones that I am fsmilar with, the older the battery type, the more damage is done by fast charging or charging to full.

You giving up your car isn't going to change that.

However, if I had those things between my house and a few key destinations, then I could give up my second car. My teens would also be able to delay getting cars.

I could think of many ways that I could use the money that's wasted on a second / third car.

Jumping the gun there aren't you? where did i say i want them banned in cities or anywhere else?

The number of registered cars is, parking aside, not the issue, its their use, people use them for the shortest of journeys.

Our local primary school will have cars parked all over the place.. many from people who live in the village and are not on their way to work...

Pollution from cars is a huge problem, we need to think longer term, not just for the next 12months, new rail infrastructure is vital, as are trams etc and also reliving road bottlenecks.

If these are sourced from UK manufacturers, then that boosts the economy/jobs, buying more Chinese EVs doesn't help our industry.

Charging stations are not £3k the most expensive I've seen after a google is £500.00 - I had to check as when we bought our 2nd hand EV they installed a charger for free as part of the deal

One other thing- money that is spent on bike infrastructure results in nett savings for the government due to reduced health costs, etc.

I would. But it’s impossible now. I used to get the bus/train everywhere, but now need a car for work, I’ve arranged my lifestyle around it.

Well yes, but wouldn't it be nice to have the choice?

People always come on these threads to bang on about how we can't take their car away. That's not the aim. The aim is to give more people more of a choice, rather than everybody being forced to rely on cars.

My sister in law has an ev. She hates it. She paid £2000 for the charger to be installed, as it WOULDNT GIVE HER A FULL CHARGE from the socket at night.
we went to Devon 2 weeks ago.a fill charge was 172 miles 🤣🤣 Twice she had to stop to charge and it cost £30 a time. Then she had to charge at Tesco (not sure how much that cost), but also had to stop twice on the way home.

shes also said her electric bill is ridiculous! 400 a month or more. I pay £175. It’s a 2022 Audi.” Too

I put £80 of fuel in to go on holiday.

i may not own an ev(mines hybrid) but they are not worth the wheels whey sit on! So stop with your bull please 🤣🤣

I CHOSE to learn to drive and in a way chose to change my lifestyle around my car.

I wouldn’t want to be with people who use public transportation. It’s not safe for one. I would always choose my private vehicle.

That's fine. You have that choice.

My point is that it has now become impossible to make any other choice, as infrastructure has entirely turned to cars. It is no longer really possible for me to choose to not have a car.

I would like to have a choice.

I have owned an ev for years.

Why would I want to charge my battery from empty to full overnight? That's not how you run an ev. I just put my car on every night, just like my phone, and that's enough for what I need on a daily basis. Not many people average more than 200km per day.

In the rare occasion that I need a fast charge, I go to the supercharger. I do that about once every six months in my home town.

Of course the power bill went up! It isn't free!(unless you have solar). It's still about 1/3 of the cost per km when compared to petrol.

Supercharging is expensive - almost the same per km as petrol - but I only do that on long trips.

I usually stop to charge about every two hours on long trips (which you should do anyway). I plug the car in, go to the toilet, perhaps buy a coffee. By the time I've done that, the car is ready to go. A million times more pleasant than standing pumping fuel!

I could not be paid enough to go back to an ICE.

I mean, your SIL has so bady misunderstood that you don't run an ev the same way as an ICE, that I suspect that she either doesn't exist or is a bit daft. Most people grasp it in the first few weeks of driving one.

Oh that strange as I know quite a few people now with EVs who would never go back

yes a standard plug isn’t great for charging - you also need to be careful about your electric supply for induction hobs btw

you can get great overnight rates for charging EVs from sone electric providers - switch to someone like octopus

yes you may have to break your journey to recharge - it’s a loo stop and coffee break which is highly recommended every 2 to 3 hours for safety reasons anyway

I know people who have travelled all over the county and over to Ireland and the continent quite easily with their EV. The early days ( 10 plus years ago) it did sound like a major planning exercise but nowadays it’s quite straightforward

yiur friend also needs to know that running the battery between 20% and 80% most of the time is better for long term battery health - only charge to 100 for the longer trips

You can choose not to own a car. Loads of people use public transport….depends on your lifestyle.

🤣🤣

yea you enjoy your time having a coffee and I will spend 2 mins filling up, getting on my way to my holiday home. 💋

I drive long trips regularly, and certainly do not stop every two hours. Sod that.

Im at my destination relaxing with a coffee wine

agree. I’m travelling from north to midlands in a few weekends time. I would prefer to go by train. The journey out on a Friday would be fine (putting aside the cost) but was impossible back on the Sunday. I’m not paying a very high train fare to have some ludicrous broken journey on a Sunday. Will go in the car.

No, practically, I cannot. Not and stay in the same area, not without huge sacrifices.

With relatively small infrastructure changes, real options would be possible, without turning my whole life upside down.

There's a term for it. A choice that isn't really a choice?

It's unsafe not to. You should be stopping at least that often.

Also, you clearly are not travelling with children.

I would love to give up my car. I don't have much spare money and it seems to cost me more every month. But I'm three miles from work (walkabout just but I work a late shift and I wouldn't want to walk the three miles home over the fields in the dark or slightly further along the road) and we have no public transport. I'm the same three miles from the nearest bus stop. Annoyingly, I will become eligible for a bus pass in three years time, but if I have to drive to the bus stop I might as well drive the rest of the way...

Rural life is great and I love it and never want to move, but the absolute necessity of having a car is the one thing that spoils it for me. Even a couple of buses a day through my village would make it better.

A Hobson's choice - it's a choice between two options, where one is made so unworkable / unappealing, that there really isn't a choice.

We have that in the UK with cars at the moment. Active transport has been made so horrible (due to lack of safe space) that it isn't a real option. My only real choice is to take the car, despite my knowing that it will shorten my life (lack of active transport leads to shorter lifespans).