Anyone gone car free?

[Crankarm]

Yeah, yeah. They've also f**ked up our urban environment and stunned our imaginations. And made people very, very boring.

I should imagine your imagination is stunning Claud.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

Yeah, yeah. They've also f**ked up our urban environment and stunned our imaginations. And made people very, very boring.

I blame Eastenders and Coronation Street for that.

 

[theclaud]

I blame Eastenders and Coronation Street for that.

Them 'n' all...

 

[theclaud]

I should imagine your imagination is stunning Claud.

It was a particular reference. Not everyone will get it.

 

[swansonj]

Interesting post, theClaud.
As I understood the OP, it was a question about ceasing to own a car, and a request for experiences of this. I have added mine, with the note that we still use cars that we hire, rather than owning one.

As I've watched this thread develop, it seemed to me there was an interesting and possibly deliberate ambiguity between car-ownership-free and car-use-free. Lots of people seem to manage by not owning a car, but hiring, borrowing, or taxi-ing when needed. From an environmental perspective, that has some advantage, as you probably do that less often because of the hassle than you would drive a car you owned, but only limited advantage if you still drive whenever you need to / still organise your life in a way that depends on car journeys. But TC has developed a fascinating dimension of the debate as to why car ownership brings social baggage independently of car use. I used to think that my current chosen lifestyle (own a car for the convenience, and also to be fair because work require me to, but still cycle to work, to church, for shopping, to deliver children to school before they were old enough to walk on their own, etc) was politically relatively neutral, because what counted was use rather than ownership, and my car use, for journeys involving just myself rather than the then-new family, did not change much when I owned a car rather than hiring one). Now I'm thinking again.

 

[middleagecyclist]

I like the way this thread is developing.

Anyway, the car passed its MOT today. Just the VED, service and insurance to sort for another year now!

 

[Boris Bajic]

I'm also humming and ha-ing a lot more about this thread than I thought I would.

I look at my own family and others in the same generation or with kids the same age.

I think there is much in TC's observation, although it varies from family to family.

I was brought up by a (widowed) single father, so beyond early primary school motherly love was something observed and experienced vicariously rather than felt. All the driving to the shops, sports events, music lessons and similar was done by my father. Likewise (until we were old enough) the loading of the washing machine, the mowing and similar.

I do think the broader division between men and women in terms of parental and domestic duties is much more blurred (and rightly so) than it was. But these things take decades (generations). I love to cook, but certainly do less than half the household cooking. I am happy living in a tip and certainly do less than half the cleaning, dusting and polishing. I love my children but frequently forget what they are studying at school.

We like to think we move with the times, but I always lay the fire and always clean the grate. My wife doesn't know how. However, all our children (both sexes) have been taught how and get stuck in. So a silly timewarp exemption will peter out. Our children all wield a vacuum cleaner with varying levels of success and pleasure. Our sons are (mirabile dictu) much tidier than our daughter.

I cannot make bread (a lazy excuse) but my wife bakes it all the time. Does this gender 'auto-exemption' extend to car use?

It's a hard one to judge, but in our family I think not. As I look around me, I see that it is women doing the shopping, women ferrying kids around... in the majority of cases anyway.

That happens not to fit our family (by design) or my childhood (by unhelpful fate) but it seems general and will cause me to ho-hum some more on the topic.

 

[Crankarm]

The number of mums I see burning rubber in their huge 4x4s on the school run or bombing it to Tescos and back with one toddler secured as if he is in the spaceshuttle suggest to me that the fairer sex actually very much enjoy driving their cars. Wo betide you if you happen to get in their way and hold them up. Trouble is women have now got what men had and they are STILL not happy. Well the ones doing the driving are. Women can be so bitchy.

 

[TheDoctor]

And blokes can be so sexist!!

 

[middleagecyclist]

Ooops. I obviously spoke too soon!

 

[TheDoctor]

Please don't take Crankarm as representative of guys as a whole.
Not everyone is as bitter and twisted as he appears to be.
Nor do they indulge in such casual and unfounded sexism.

 

[Shaun]

Please don't derail the thread - let people make what they will of the replies (and the respondents) and stick to making points rather than trying to score them off one another!

This thread has good potential and is exploring some interesting twists - I'd like to see that continue.

Thanks,
Shaun

 

[400bhp]

I'm also humming and ha-ing a lot more about this thread than I thought I would.

I look at my own family and others in the same generation or with kids the same age.

I think there is much in TC's observation, although it varies from family to family.

I was brought up by a (widowed) single father, so beyond early primary school motherly love was something observed and experienced vicariously rather than felt. All the driving to the shops, sports events, music lessons and similar was done by my father. Likewise (until we were old enough) the loading of the washing machine, the mowing and similar.

I do think the broader division between men and women in terms of parental and domestic duties is much more blurred (and rightly so) than it was. But these things take decades (generations). I love to cook, but certainly do less than half the household cooking. I am happy living in a tip and certainly do less than half the cleaning, dusting and polishing. I love my children but frequently forget what they are studying at school.

We like to think we move with the times, but I always lay the fire and always clean the grate. My wife doesn't know how. However, all our children (both sexes) have been taught how and get stuck in. So a silly timewarp exemption will peter out. Our children all wield a vacuum cleaner with varying levels of success and pleasure. Our sons are (mirabile dictu) much tidier than our daughter.

I cannot make bread (a lazy excuse) but my wife bakes it all the time. Does this gender 'auto-exemption' extend to car use?

It's a hard one to judge, but in our family I think not. As I look around me, I see that it is women doing the shopping, women ferrying kids around... in the majority of cases anyway.

That happens not to fit our family (by design) or my childhood (by unhelpful fate) but it seems general and will cause me to ho-hum some more on the topic.

What's the proportion of paid work split in your household?

You have to take into consideration the whole with the arguments TC was giving, rather than look at it in isolation.

 

[400bhp]

Please don't derail the thread - let people make what they will of the replies (and the respondents) and stick to making points rather than trying to score them off one another!

This thread has good potential and is exploring some interesting twists - I'd like to see that continue.

Thanks,
Shaun

I don't think anyone is, and anyway the OP likes the way the thread is going.

Stay away mods

 

[Sandra6]

And back to the OP?!
I don't think I count as going car free, because I can't drive -well I haven't passed the test. But, the more I cycle the less inclined I am to learn to drive properly.
We do have a car in the family though -which is much more useful when eldest daughter requires collecting from 12 miles away at midnight on occasion than a bike would be.
I think it's safe to say we do more miles by bike in a week than by car though.