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?

where exactly is your constituency jacques?

@ARichtGoodDram

In England many people even need to drive their kids to school because of how allocations work - that wasn't something previously necessary.

In our case, DS's school was only six miles away but for him to get there in good time for 9am start, he had to leave home at 7am because of the crap buses which only ran hourly, and went all around the houses, and even then he had a mile walk from the town's bus station to his school at the other end! If he missed that bus or it just didn't turn up (far too often!), then we'd have to take him in our car.

YANBU

Where I live it’s not unusual for a family of five to have three cars. Ridiculous.

I see streets like that - a relative lives in one. When I visit I park 5 min away and walk down the road. I'd hate to live on a street like that and it is really congested but rationing parking permits and making controlled parking zones won't change the fact that lots of people need a car for work/other purposes.

Another relative lived in a London borough but was 1.5 miles from a tube or rail station. They did not have a car but almost everyone on their (terraced) street did, presumably because it was a quicker, more convenient way to get to work!

I whole heartedly agree OP.
And I'm a non driver so I can be even more annoyed than you 😅

Stupid massive cars, just no need.
My cunt of a neighbour who used the dropped curb of our drive to drive his Range Rover 100yrds along the pavement to get to outside his house. Where there are two more Range Rovers parked, only one of which is on his ample drive way. Cunt.

No one seems to be able to drive any more, cutting corners and making stupid moves, only made worse by the STUPID MASSIVE CARS.

It's not that cheap to drive anymore either (if your not prepared to go into debt) It's almost impossible to get a cheap run around that you tincker and fix yourself. We're sadly putting it off for a while for our 17yr old (til he makes a decision about the next few yrs) because it's just such a huge cost to even get him on the road.

One of my own massive annoyances are people who moan about paying for parking, like it's a god given right to place a 2tonne price of metal whever they like. Idiots.
A small part of our city has just been pedestrianised (not funded by the council) It looks lovely, with really nice planing and room for cafes and bars to spread out etc.
The RAGE for the local community has been insane. In the 1st week of the rising bollards at cut of time SEVEN cars got stuck/hit by the barriers trying to tailgate in behind an authorised vehicle.
Haven't laughed do much in ages 😅😅😅

I fully support everyone else giving up their car or being priced out of car ownership so that I can drive on less congested roads.

She’s talking about families owning multiple cars, and people using them for journeys they could easily walk.

Obviously.

Oh yeah, that's exactly what I've said in my posts.

That's exactly what I felt when I had my one small car in that terrace of houses for 10 years.

Honestly @StMarie4me if you can't be bothered to read my replies on this thread, then please don't be bothered to post misinformation on my position.

Agreed that the school run is madness these days - it genuinely baffles me why so many people need to turn out in their massive SUVs for a journey of usually less than 10 minutes, rather than walking.

Is it thought that the little darlings will spontaneously explode if they are forced to walk more than five minutes by themselves, or something?

Car sizes are if we were all honest with ourselves, far larger than they need to be in most cases. But then again, us humans are much larger than we were even as recent as the 1980's.

Regarding ownership, Unfortunately outside of major cities, the public transport service is woeful. I recently undertook a journey of 80 miles, all within the same area and between two largish towns. It took me two buses, a train and a taxi to return home. With a time of five hours. It's just not practical.

No I don't agree. When I was a kid in the 90s we lived rurally and every single family we knew had 2 cars, one for Mum and another for Dad. Nobody worked from home, and very few people were walking distance to kids schools , shops and train stations. Online shopping didn't exist. As soon as kids turned 17 they got a car and learned to drive.

Now I'm mid 30s and we do live in a more connected area but i can count on one hand the number of families and people my age I know with 2 cars. Lots more people we know don't own a car at all, they use public transport, cycle or walk. Or they share 1 car between the whole family.

Funnily enough my parents, in laws and friends' parents are the only people I know who still stubbornly own a car each! Despite all being retired..

South West, inside M25 and just outside London proper. Would rather not say more for obvious reasons. My previous terrace experience was in London suburbs.

The rest of it (where i've seen it elsewhere) has been in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Bournemouth.... it's not exactly a "specific to M25 and London" thing is it.

It's the same here, people have to take their child to secondary school because there is no school bus anymore and the timing and reliability of the regular bus (and the kids have to get the first one of the day or they'll be late so no chance of just going earlier) can be extremely hit or miss.

But public transport provision would improve if more people used it instead of using a car to get everywhere.

The parents probably have to get to work and don't have the time to walk back from school again once they've dropped off their little darling(s). Especially if their work is miles away from home/school.

And this is the crux of the issue -

As long as it is cheap enough to own and tax a car, and cheap enough to park multiple cars on your street, why would anyone do otherwise?

There has to be a tipping point someday. Someone has to legislate so that the couple who had five cars on our terraced street, but weren't at all 'wealthy', are put in a position where they can't make that choice again, ever.

Wohld yoh be willing to give up your car or sign over some of your driveway for public parking usage?
If no then you can't really moan abouy othet people who need to get about having a car themselves.

But you can't use something that doesn't exist. Public transport needs to improve first!

Like me. I have to drop and get to work. I could walk the 20 minutes each way if i didnt have a job.

No, but most of those are big cities with lots of public transport options!

A lot of car owners moan at me about how car parking costs are going up, grumble about ULEZ, etc. I nod politely. I would like to hear about road parking charges increasing to minimum £2000 per year, zero diesel or petrol cars within London boundary, ban on jeeps in the city, more parking wardens with higher fines, more traffic police with much higher fines, and self driving cars should be brought in asap because it's lower risk than humans. Revenue can be put into new expanded tram and train systems. Sometimes I'm tempted to say so, but drivers tend to get ever so emotional.

Are you willing to sign away bits of your land that you bought on your deeds? What a fatuous argument.

We are a household of many but with one small car.

I'm talking about people with multiple cars who make suburban streets impossible to drive down

Why should I have to give up my one small car and driveway, before I am allowed to make this argument?!

It's typical Mumsnet.
Don't ever make an argument about anything like Gaza, or car ownership, or the environment, unless you have sold everything to fund humanitarian aid, or got rid of every single piece of carbon footprint.
Only then can you make any kind of argument.

But public transport provision would improve if more people used it instead of using a car to get everywhere.

you can't use what isn't there though. So they'd have to put on the provision for people to use, and make it affordable and reliable, before people would be tempted to give up their cars.

I live with my adult children who all have cars as they need them for work. The other families on my street with young adult children do the same. It’s cost a lot of money to get them on the road (do you know how much new driver insurance is?) but they need them for work.

It’s not the Victorian age where miners can live in miners cottages that are affordable and presumably in a location where it’s easy to get to work.

We don’t live in a city like London either and one of them works at weekends when the timetable is massively reduced)

Not being able to drive is a career limiting move for many people and is much cheaper than using taxis.

Children living at home longer due to high housing costs means more cars per property,
People living further away from towns/cities due to housing costs and cars being more reliable (and often cheaper/more flexible) than public transport,
Even new build estates often have very little parking allocated, small driveways, winding roads so parking becomes an issue,
Cars are now bigger, garages are often too small to accommodate modern cars,
Scrappage schemes took a lot of cars off the road so it has driven prices up of second hand cars, I think we can all understand why people might then pay 'a bit more a month' on a new car rather than buy a proportionately more expensive older car
There's lots of factors. And of course older roads/infrastructure, especially in towns and cities was not built to accommodate more vehicles.
I have a trusty 11-plate Fiesta that's cheap to run and I park on my drive at night. I can also reverse (as can most people...men AND women!) hope that's ok.