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?

Personally, I think councils could fund better public transport if they didn't spend so much money on traffic hating initiatives like bus lanes, cycle lanes, bus/cycle priority junctions/traffic lights, one way systems, blocking roads to traffic, etc etc. Such initiatives just make the roads worse because they funnel traffic into ever narrower lanes, fewer roads, hold traffic back at junctions, etc. It's too much "stick" and not enough "carrot".

They'd be far better investing the same money in more bus routes, more frequent buses, better services at weekends and later into the evenings (if not overnight), i.e. more "carrot" and less "stick".

In the city where my son had to move for work, they have park N ride, but it stupidly finishes at 7pm. So if my son parks his car there to get the bus into the city centre, he can't finish work late, can't go for after-work drinks or a meal with his colleagues, can't go to the cinema, etc. Tourists in for a day sightseeing and enjoying attractions have to leave the city early! It's insane stopping so early.

The thing I'm noticing now is that there are so many more HMOs and I include multi-generational families in that. A friend has twelve people living in the house next to her! Its a five bed detached built originally as a three bed. They have five cars between them.

With the cost of housing, the increase in population and the state of public transport, its only going to get worse.

As for massive cars, they're a status symbol for some insecure people.

It's really hard to find "small" cars these days, so it's not necessarily just people "choosing" big cars.

This is just patently wrong @Badbadbunny 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".

Nonsense.

There are 100,000 small hatchbacks with an engine size less than 1.4 litres, for sale today, on Autotrader.

But forget that -

if you're buying new using PCP, there are literally dozens of small cars on sale today with a length less than 4.3 metres and which qualify as superminis or small hatchbacks.

These include:

Renault Clio
Skoda Fabia
Vauxhall Corsa
Toyota Yaris
Honda Jazz
Suzuki Swift
Peugeot 208
Hyundai i20
MG3

and my own choice...

Renault 5

It is absolute nonsense for anyone to suggest there aren't any small cars on sale today any more.

There are dozens. People just don't want them as much because fashion dictates that their £250 a month should go towards something bigger and jacked up.

Just admit it?!

YANBU. Cars have so many negative side-effects on others.

• traffic noise
• pollution
• streets now look ugly as gardens are replaced by driveways
• new developments are ugly due to parking spaces
• increased flooding as drives are replaced by driveways
• children can't play out due to cars
• cycling becomes dangerous and polluted

Central London is so much nicer since the congestion charge and ULEZ. But I agree that public transport needs to massively improve.

But I am sure that people have the cars they need, people don't have a small house then 2 cars per person. They might have two cars for a two person household for work and other duties.
I think you are being unreasonable to think people are just buying cars they don't need.
I have a driveway and two cars, but we absolutely need two cars. If I lived in a suburban terrace, we would still need two cars.
You are coming from a position of privilage to suggest make decisions on what transport people are allowed to use based on the size of their house.
Are you saying that if you can affoed a big house with a drive you are allowed a car, but if you can not afford it then you must take a bus or walk. It's just a bit fascist to try and dictate that.
What about the nurse and policeman who have two kids and work shifts and live in their tiny terrace? Are they allowed two cars, or will there be a rule based on income?

We have an electric moped that DH uses to get to work - it's been brilliant and works out much cheaper than a car. We also have an electric cargo bike that we use for trips about town with DD, plus other bikes. And one family car (well it's my car really), that I use for commuting and occasional big trips.

Britain really needs to invest in decent (cycling) infrastructure if they want any chance of people becoming less car dependent. We live in the Netherlands where it's safe and often more convenient to cycle than it is to drive a car.

It doesn't really take 1.5 hours for any bus to travel 6 miles, that would have it moving at 4mph, slower than central London. Cycling would take at most half an hour.

I have some sympathy for teenagers whose parents chose to live somewhere with no transport, but the public transport gaps won't be resolved while everyone hops into streams of cars and fabricates horror stories to justify why their particular family can't use public transport. Along similar lines to OP stating 1.5 hours on the bus, I've recently heard that "all trains are dirty" (brand new stock on most of their line, we use it), "buses are so infrequent" (max wait of 15 minutes), "buses take so long" (5 minutes longer than the car going up the same road, I've timed it), "bags would be too heavy" (just use a wheelie bag) etc etc.

Some people just take the absolute piss and ruin it for everyone else.

My neighbours opposite are a case in point: between them they have these vehicles:
> 1 camper van (husband drives it)
> 1 works van (husband)
> 1 estate car (wife)
> 2x standard cars (sons x 2)
> 1 harley davidson motorbike (husband)
> 1 other motorbike (1 son)
PLUS:
> 1x small car (son's GF, who visits most nights)

Last Sunday one of the sons decided to invite a bunch of his petrol-head mates over to hang out, so we had another 3x cars dotted about the street, revving and chatting loudly to each other for about 4 hours.

They have 1 teeny tiny drive that opens directly onto the road and only realistically fits 1 car, but they squeeze 2 on with one overhanging into the road.

They park the works van outside their house (small front garden straight onto the road, no pavement) which means the council can't access the rest of the Cul de Sac to reach rubbish / recycling bins. This means they come and get the bins and then leave them at the end of the road each week, meaning 3x elderly people need to retrieve their bins a long way from their houses (as do we, although I am fit and able).

Funnily enough I am finding it hard to like these people..

The idea was to get the staff to recognise the difficulties the unemployed have 😉

Be a bit more understanding of their clients situation.

We absolutely do not have plenty of public transport outside of cities! Not to mention that train travel is eye wateringly expensive. Having said that, I do think car ownership has gone crazy in cities and towns that DO have good public transport and very little space for parking. Not enough people walk either.

I'm sorry but cars are not cheap - they keep going up in price and I cannot afford to change mine

My DD and SIL need cars to work and it is a very large outlay from their wages. SIL has just had to change his car and has bought a car of a similar age as the monthly payments were the same

I drive a 10 year old 4x4 and I have no trouble reversing it but then I live in the country so have plenty of practice and when it comes to parking I always reverse into car parking spaces.

And yes a lot of streets were not designed for cars they were designed for horses and carriages. What do you want to do? Tear down all those beautiful Victorian houses?

Nope, I was specifically talking about a Citroen C3, and there are currently only two cars that are anywhere near the size of a 17 year old C3. We research it as we wanted a car of similar width (narrow driveway at OH's work). The only two of similar size to a 2008 C3 were the Hyundai i10 and the Toyota Aygo. All the others in your list are wider than the 2008 C3!

Well for a start, young people can't afford to move out! We're a house of 5 adults, we have three cars needed for commuting/ life!

I’ve not read the whole thread but I live on one such road as in OP.
We have 2 cars, when I moved in we had no car, I bought a home near public transport links for that reason. My children went to local schools and caught public transport there or walked.
The catchment area for local schools are tiny. There is no need for people to drive their kids in, the reason it’s ’too dangerous’ is because of people like them- driving massive cars containing their kids to school… they are the issue.
Cars dominate the streets, any suggestion of developing homes is met with traffic / parking moaning. I don’t see why I should be able to store my personal property on public highways.
Where I live there was a referendum on a charging zone - to prevent the sole car owners driving into town, parking up and driving back. It was rejected so what is happening now is the Council is making it difficult to drive into town - to unweld people from their cars.
You might not like it - but we cannot carry on this way. The idea for most people of driving into London is insane - this will be rolled out in major cities all over the UK. Claim space for people back from cars. I’m all for it.

Are you saying that if you can affoed a big house with a drive you are allowed a car, but if you can not afford it then you must take a bus or walk. It's just a bit fascist to try and dictate that.

Oh for god's sake - no where have I said this.

I am saying that

• on suburban and urban streets, households shouldn't have lots of cars registered to one house, clogging up roads and making them harder to traverse
• that the rise in large car ownership exacerbates this problem

Does that make sense now?

I owned a small hatchback for a decade on a suburban terraced street parking in a CPZ. I am not a 'fascist'. I want my old neighbours to own their cars and for me to visit in my car.

I don't however see why some of them should suffer giant SUVs being lined up on a tiny Victorian street, three of them registered to one household.

I don’t understand your post. How can a family of 5 (with 3 dc aged 17+) manage with 2 cars? How would that work without it being a massive pain?

dh and I have 2 cars (not one each, we take whichever we need for where we are going - big car or small car). Dd1 is learning to drive currently and initially will share the little car but that will then become hers. I then have twins - who are 2 individuals and may well need a car each depending on jobs. We live in the West Country and public transport is not a reliable option for most situations. But you think all 5 of us should suck it up and share 2 cars?

I don't disagree that there is an over-reliance on cars OP. Distance to work and housing prices, the type of work people do and hours they work, distance to shops, and household demographics have all changed dramatically over the past 100 years. There won't be one simple solution, but that does not mean we should not be looking to solve it.

Car size has also increased - mainly due to higher modern safety standards (look at older and modern versions of the same cars). Of course safety inside the car often comes at the expense of safety outside of the car, so that's not an easy fix either, but still doable.

You are, unfortunately, completely incorrect on this: "you're just as safe in a NCAP 5-star rated Yaris as you are in a Merc GLS". NCAP only compare like for like. A Yaris is 5-star* *within the super mini class. The Merc GLS will be assessed only against other SUVs. Crash physics still favour the larger vehicle. Mass, passenger height and crumple zones all correlate with better crash outcomes. Euro NCAP acknowledge this and have published some useful information about it. Pedestrian safety is another matter!

My street is an absolute nightmare to drive down because of the amount of cars and vans parked on the road because people have too many vehicles that they cannot accommodate. My neighbour has a driveway that fits 2 cars and a garage. He doesn’t use the garage because he made it into a gym instead, but still has to find space for his massive work pickup truck, his daughter’s 2 cars and another daughter’s work van. Every house in our street has 2+ cars.

OP come back and complain about it again when you've gotten rid of your car. We don't have one and no plans to get one (DC 8 and 12). Public transport is adequate if you live in a large town or city. If more people went car free, public transport would get better and cheaper.

And this is what needs to happen. A government and councils working together with a very aggressive and positive , funded policy, that gives an alternative which makes multiple car ownership seem absurd.

Where is the funding going to come from though @JacquesHarlow ?

That's the thing. Councils can't afford to pay for public transport. They can't even afford basics in many places.

We were asked recently if we'd consider moving house as part of a discussion about the transport costs for getting my DD4 (wheelchair bound) to school because councils are trying to save money so much.
The irony is we live in a street with a school, but they cannot take DD.

You need an effective public transport system through the whole of the UK. If I lived in London I wouldn’t need a car because the public transport is cheap (compared to everywhere else in the UK) and frequent enough to be useable. Where I actually live the buses have stopped going through the villages and you have a three mile hike from the village to the main road, not practical for most people.
The other problem is the dying high street, you can’t just walk to the shops now, even in a town and find the shops you need, most of them have moved out of the main town centre to retail parks.

Myself and my children who are old enough to drive all have a car each because my children had to learn as soon as they turned 17 in order to have a chance at getting work as most work places don’t have reliable bus services in my area.

To be a useable service they need to go to each village again, they have to come more often than once an hour and they have to start from about 5am until about 10pm.

Cars have gone up such a lot recently and I think finance can be a dangerous thing. I know people who spend almost as much on their car a month as they do their mortgages, we've always bought outright and for the most part I'm talking old and reliable cars for only a small amount. We've never cared about the cars we have but for so many it's a status symbol.

Cars have gone up such a lot recently and I think finance can be a dangerous thing. I know people who spend almost as much on their car a month as they do their mortgages, we've always bought outright and for the most part I'm talking old and reliable cars for only a small amount. We've never cared about the cars we have but for so many it's a status symbol.

Ah for goodness sake, this is a very specific use case.

The Kia Picanto by the way is narrow enough to fit your needs, but I'm not even sure what your point is - if the space is narrow at your husband's work, an SUV isn't going to help.

😂yeah, the wee people who really need a booster seat to peer over the wheel driving their ginormous chealsea tractors when they live in a big town and have no need for the cars with off road capabilities.
Twats