But cars are great, right? Sleek, high performance vehicles
that get us where we want to go, when we want to go. Why would
anyone want to give up driving?
Cost. Cars are enormously expensive to buy and run. Once
you’ve shelled out thousands of pounds for your shiny new car,
you’ve got to fill it full of petrol. Every week. And pay to
park the thing. There’s road tax, insurance, and yearly
services to be paid for as well. Then there’s parts and labour
whenever anything wears out or goes wrong. And all the while
your car has been depreciating in value.
According to a
study by Prudential Car
Insurance, owning a car in the UK costs an average of £416 per
month. When questioned, however, over a half of drivers
estimated monthly costs to be under a £100. Your car costs you more than you think. A lot more.
And this is before the government brings in more congestion
charging and toll roads.
Congestion. Cars are supposed to get us effortlessly from A to
B in super quick time. The reality is quite different. With so
many cars on the road, nobody gets anywhere very fast.
We waste hours of our lives every week struck in
jams.
And that's without the roadworks.
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Stress. Get behind the wheel and suddenly everybody
else is there just to get in your way. Especially if
you're running late. Add blaring horns, crude hand
gestures and aggressive motorists who all-but drive into you and
feel your stress levels skyrocket.
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The lie of the open road. Even when we get out of the
city limits, we’re soon stuck behind slower drivers, tractors
and lorries with too much oncoming traffic to overtake. Driving just isn’t anywhere near as much fun
as all those car adverts promise us.
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Night driving. It’s horrid with all those headlights
coming at you. Particularly if it’s raining.
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Winter/summer. Winter is awful. By the time you’ve de-iced your windscreen
with numb fingers, sat in the freezing cold waiting for your
screen to de-mist, you’re already 10 minutes late for work.
The low sun gets in your eyes, blinding you with its glare. And winter brings black ice too.
Then in summer your car turns into a greenhouse on wheels,
boiling you alive if it didn't come with air conditioning.
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Speed cameras. We can all agree that nobody should be speeding
through residential areas or accident black spots. But in
my experience
the police ignore these areas for soft targets where the speed
limit is set too low. And how much attention are you
paying to the road if you daren’t take your eyes off the
speedometer?
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Parking. You ride round and round looking for a space,
before manoeuvring your way into a tiny gap while other cars
buzz around you. The nearest pay and display machine is pretty
much guaranteed to have a ‘Temporarily out of order, sorry for
any inconvenience’ sign stuck over it. And then you’re always
rushing back before your ticket expires.
If you share a driveway there's lots of
shuffling about of cars every time you want to go anywhere too.
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When you can't drive. There will always be
times when you can't drive, whether it's because your car is in
the garage or you're too ill or tired. But then how are you going to get around?
Your options are all equally dire.
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Alcohol. Cinemas, bowling alleys, theatres
... almost everywhere has a bar nowadays. Driving means
missing out on a lot of the fun. And yes, for
those big nights out there are taxis. But even the morning
after you can still be over the limit.
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Non-drivers. Ferrying around kids and the elderly wastes
their time and yours. To this you can add train station and
airport runs, which always seem to involve delays and long waits
in car parks.
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Driving requires your full attention. As a passenger
you're free to work on your laptop, read a book, or just relax
and admire the scenery. Drivers need to keep their eyes on
the road.
And when you can't give your full attention, like when your
kids are fighting in the back seat, it's both very annoying and
potentially dangerous.
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Lack of exercise. When we can drive everywhere, the
temptation is to walk nowhere. Even if it’s just a trip to the
local store.
Obesity is set to overtake smoking as the number
one cause of preventable deaths in the UK.
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Pollution. You may think the air inside your car is
clean. You'd be wrong. Pollution levels inside cars
are
2 to 4 times that experienced by pedestrians and cyclists.
This is because pollutants get trapped inside vehicles.
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Being a part of the problem. Cars
are ruining our cities with their stink, noise and danger.
And they're not too good for the planet, either. Some of
us would prefer not to contribute further.
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Car crime and vandalism. It only takes a brick to
really ruin your day. And as car alarms and anti-theft
devices become more sophisticated, criminals are turning to
violent car-jackings instead.
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Maintenance. There always seems to be something going
wrong with cars. Exhaust, brakes ... that annoying rattle.
Everything wears out and needs replacing.
And there’s the small stuff too: driving to petrol stations
and filling up, washing your car, and checking the oil level and
tyre pressures. It all adds up.
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Break downs. You can replace a punctured tyre yourself, if
you don’t mind ruining whatever you’re wearing and sitting
within inches of speeding traffic, but more serious faults will
leave you stranded. A terrifying thought if you’re on the
motorway.
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Product recalls. Or lack thereof. Occasionally new cars
will suffer from a potentially fatal problem, like the bonnet
unexpectedly opening at speed. Even when manufacturers are
aware of such problems, drivers are not always informed.
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Accidents. Small bumps are expensive and annoying.
Higher
speed accidents can injure and kill.
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Dangerous drivers. Whilst airbags and crumple zones
have helped make some crashes slightly less fatal, driving
standards have got worse. People frequently drive about
two inches off
your bumper. There’s always some lunatic who values
getting there on time above
getting there in one piece, driving way beyond the speed limit
and overtaking on blind bends. And then there are the
drink drivers.
And remember here that I’m not trying to talk you or
anyone else out of driving if you really enjoy it. My aim here
is merely to show that a great many of us could quite happily give
up driving were we given a real alternative.
