I guess that high insurance is a part of that.<<
Toooo True! G/F's daughter recently passed test, (wants personal plates but thats another story!), was added to her dads insurance as a named driver of his car until she bought her own. He had to "fork-out" an extra £600 a year, so he decided to go halves with her to buy her own car, (think it's a Seat Ibiza 1.3? 04 model). The cheapest insurance she could get was £1600!!, (17 yr old).
Best thing is, she had only been on dads insurance for about 3 months, but when he applied to have her name removed, and to be given a refund, he was informed that they do not give monetery refunds, but would deduct what was due from his premium whjen he next renewed it with them!!...and there was a £25 admin fee!!.....bloomin cheek!!
Billy
Oh! and in keeping with the thread, I dont drive now, (although i can!) saving £££££'s! ;-)
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I think it's the classic thing that you assume instantly that everyone is broadly the same without realising that in fact there are large chunks of the population who aren't suburban living, home owning, double income families with passports, taking foreign holidays and the same tastes on what they spend their money on (eg obsessing about a new car). I do wish some newspapers that I won't name would stop assuming that everyone is in fact the same and the overuse of the "hard working" and "families" in one sentence to talk about something that actually affects us all eg tax rises, fuel duty, mortgage rates etc etc gets on my goat....
I don't have a car, owned one from 17 to 24 then had a pretty serious crash (no one hurt but created the only 12ft long Honda Accord...) and suddenly realised that I had only needed to use the car for 2 days in the past 4 mths (Christmas and Boxing Day) and therefore had a sudden attack of logic and decided to do without.
Now not owned one for 13 years and can't ever really seeing me buy one - costs for me have now gone up to much (insurance is now prohibitive as no driving/insurance history), car tax up, residents parking (now likely to hit £200 in my parts for a half decent car) when less than 5 years ago there was none.
Plus living in london in what the marketeers call a "gentrified multi ethnic area" I am quite relieved at not having to check each morning the car has not been scratched/broken into/hit by some passing berk...
Also I cannot ever understand quite where people get the money from for a nearly new car.
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beefy
"living in London" Yes, but a lot of us don't have such easy access to good and frequent public transport and have different circumstances. I only have a 5 mile each way commute but there isn't a public transport servicee (please don't say get a bike - I have one but not practical for work). Nearest supermarket is also 5 miles away. My daughter lives 100 miles south, my son 100 miles north, my sister 150 miles south east, my brother 150 miles the other way, my parents (used to live) 140 miles north east, my in laws 130 miles north west. My wife doesn't like flying so we drive to the continent for our main holiday and have a few short breaks to France each year. I reckon we make good use of the car and it would cost us a large fortune to do without the car let alone the inconvenience of using public transport.
"cannot ever understand quite where people get the money from for a nearly new car"
Sometimes it's an essential purchase - cost-benefit?
Sometimes it's just because they choose to spend their money that way? - I can't understand how you can afford to live in London - perhaps my "nearly new car" costs a lot less than your additional morgage/rent compared to my "cheap" East Midlands mortgage? - especially since I bought my house 27 years ago and the mortgage will be paid off in 6 months?
Choices?
If it suits you not to have a car then fair enough but don't "assume instantly that everyone is broadly the same" !! ;-)
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Phil
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Car I must have car...
Seriously I live in the country with pretty effective bus systems (to both nearby towns and the next villages) With modern amenities such as t'internet I could radically reduce my car dependant after I retire. (i.e. home alone when SWMBO is in work I can walk the half mile to the village store or to the next busier village 3 miles or catch a bus to either town....) but I won;t cos I love my car.
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beefy
Choices? If it suits you not to have a car then fair enough but don't "assume instantly that everyone is broadly the same" !! ;-) -- Phil
Sorry Phil I was not meaning to imply everyone was the same at all! I was actually meaning all our circumstances are different so not everyone needs a car although certain daily rags would assume that "normal" people (ie in their minds middle England, home owning, car owning, suburban living, employed, aspirational types preferably with children to prove their "family" credentials) would all protest at perceived "anti car" political moves.
What is interesting is how mass car ownership has moulded our lives such that many are in total dependency to the car especially those living in a semi-rural or rural location and yet expecting and achieving an urban lifestyle and income courtesy of their use of a car allowing them to be 20-50 miles distant from major centres. Generationally as some have pointed out there were many of our parents/grandparents generation who "got by" without a car generally by accepting (or not knowing any different) a more limited range of choices in their life and seeking their leisure and shopping pursuits in much less expansive ways.
I do wonder if car use will ever abate in this country or do you think we will just increase the number of cars, distance driven etc until the whole country is one slow moving jam?
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I take your points beefy, and no need for "Sorry Phil ".
However, on your point "many are in total dependency to the car", while this is true, I wonder why car ownnership is viewed as being so bad - it has been a great liberating influence for most people, especially if you think back a couple of generations - grandad went 40 miles up the road (by rail!) for a weeks holiday in Scarborough, and the other grandad saw a "trip to Northern France in 1915" as an opportunity to travel away from his village in Wensleydale which he would otherwise never achieve. (It was a long "holiday" which luckily lasted a further 3 years - more than many lasted).
We view other modern advances as things to be extended - TV channels - no-one complains that there are too many, lets cut some out, - the internet - let everyone have access to broadband, why shouldn't everyone have a washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, half a dozen radios, cd and dvd players, central heating, en-suite bathrooms , mobile phones by the dozen etc, etc all of these are polluting and "congest" wavelengths, electricity supplies, telephone lines, need more phone masts etc, etc and yet we just build/provide more.
Yet someone suggests that we should all have access to the most convenient (and cheap if you go it about it the right way) form of moving about and many hold up their hands, quote global warming, (oops, sorry, climate change after that carp summer), pollution, scarce resources etc. Tell you what - how about switching off all television and radio stations for ever and taxing the energy used by dishwashers/tumble dryers at the same rate as petrol/diesel ? Would that save the world?
Yep, my grandma managed without a car - but she also managed without 3 milllion TV and radio channnels, a fridge, washing machine, and all the rest. Why should motorists be the only people who are expected to go back to the dark ages??????
Regards
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Phil
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>>However on your point "many are in total dependency to the car" while this is true I wonder why car ownnership is viewed as being so bad - it has been a great liberating influence for most people especially if you think back a couple of generations
The thing with mass car ownership and use is the difficulty we have with accomodating the car either parked or moving if everyone wants to use one extensively and own multiple cars per household. I work in the urban design field and designing new developments wholly around fitting all the parked cars in is almost impossible unless people are prepared in the future to pay £30,000 a pop for underground parking. Getting 2 per household vehicle parking into 30+ units a hectare is impossible without that. Higher density development aids alot of things eg walkability, legibility, good urban form/pleasant safe streets/quality of life and that is really incompatible with really high levels of car ownership and use. Alongside this accommodating almost unlimited road space for US levels of car use would make many of our cities very ugly and inhospitable places especially for pedestrians/children/elderly/those who'd just like a choice in their mobility. Go visit the average sprawling suburb stateside and see how unhelpful that sort of layout to anyone other than a car user.
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In the past we have all had to do without a car as adolescents (SP?), before tests were passed.
I was one of the last to pass my test in my peer group (just before 18th birthday, so I suffered longest. I can't honestly imagine not having a car, even if I didn't work as a builder. When i was 17 I lived in a remote cornish village. The nearest town was 20 miles away.
One of my friends worked in his family bakery business around study. The family wanted him to do delivery rounds. As soon as he turned 17 his bother took him out and they covered some 2000 miles in 2 weeks. His test was shedued for 2 weeks after his 17th. IIRC he had a few lessons from an instructor as well.
He passed. However there was no thery test in those days. His result my have had something to do with his dad threatening to buy him a Reliant Robin van if he failed, so he could still do rounds on his provisional/moped licence.
When I was at uni, I did come across a number of non driving students. A lot of them didn't have or take the opportunity to learn whilst at home, and then couldn't afford the lessons once at uni. A few didn't see the point. One chap on my course who was quite career driven hadn't learned. His girlfriends drove him around.
More recently a couple who were clients of mine were complete opposites. She was quite career driven even in her late 40s, whereas he seemed very laid back. They both had good LA senior management jobs. She learned to drive when she was 17, whereas he decided to leave it till his mid 30s
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I don't have a car, and I don't drive - ever since I passed my bike test - much more fun!
But I don't think that was the point of the question....
Living in London in the 80s, with family in Lincolnshire, I didn't have a car but hired on maybe one weekend a month - worked out cheaper, more convenient, better car.
A few years later, living near Wrexham with a wife and four young children, I went freelance and had to hand back the company car. As an experiment we spent a year without a car - I commuted to work by train on a weekly basis, there was a station in the village which made a big difference.
Shopping was done on the bus, with all the kids carrying a back pack - and it was always an adventure.
We had a week's holiday on a boat on the Thames - getting there by train (Family Railcards are great) - and the kids still remember the journey more than the holiday! In fact, I found the kids would much rather travel on the train or the bus than in a car, and suspect the same would be true of many others.
The downside that I remember was that so many shops were out of town - e.g. Toys R Us totally dominates the toy market, and their stores are hard to get to. But of course that problem wouldn't exist now thanks to Internet shopping.
So - give it a go!
(As soon as the ex asked for a divorce I went out and bought a car :-) )
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