Officially car and van free....a new life begins!

Essentially the car industry keeps selling us an unreal dream....freedom ....find new undiscovered places etc...be this person if you drive this...it's definitely be pumped into our brains from a young age....
I like those car adverts.. usually Jeep, Landrover or some other scourge of the school run, they show free climbing, kayaking, mtb and such with the usual “unleash your freedom” buzzwords... at the end it says from only £1200/mth subject to status ect...
Nothing quite says ‘freedom’ like being tied into a 6yr repayment scheme does it!?
 
I like those car adverts.. usually Jeep, Landrover or some other scourge of the school run, they show free climbing, kayaking, mtb and such with the usual “unleash your freedom” buzzwords... at the end it says from only £1200/mth subject to status ect...
Nothing quite says ‘freedom’ like being tied into a 6yr repayment scheme does it!?
Yup!
 
Car stress....this also something that has rumbled through my mind. I think it's kinda latent...all the little things add up it's tolerated but but definitely there.
Fear it gets scratched,dented, stolen,runs out of fuel cant find a place to park,traffic jams making you late, where are my effing keys! or deep psyche stuff like my cars shit and I'm embarrassed about it in a keeping up with the Jones's style...

Anyone else got anything to add on car stresses?

Essentially the car industry keeps selling us an unreal dream....freedom ....find new undiscovered places etc...be this person if you drive this...it's definitely be pumped into our brains from a young age....

A couple of years ago I spoke to a neighbour - and they'd been driving about and had had some bearing fail. Apparently the cost to repair was 800 quid. All I could think was, I could buy a new bike with that kind of money - not replace some obscure bit of a car which doubtless most people had never heard of.
 
A couple of years ago I spoke to a neighbour - and they'd been driving about and had had some bearing fail. Apparently the cost to repair was 800 quid. All I could think was, I could buy a new bike with that kind of money - not replace some obscure bit of a car which doubtless most people had never heard of.
Yep...! Mostly had proper mechanical cars...old air-cooled vws..not all this electronic control tosh that shuts down and needs an expensive factory reset cos a fly got caught in the electric window sensor....that sort of thing is a back of the mind stress/worry!
 
Car stress:
'Dad! Can you give me a lift to...?'

'Dad! Can you bring me back at ... [some later hour]?'

And if the answer is, 'No', the follow up is some version of, 'But I'm a weak and delicate female who will be in danger if I have to make my own way back from this party/event/shop that I absolutely must go to.'

Or is that daughter stress?
Just point out that you're more likely to be a victim of violent crime if you're male, and during the day time.
 
I have been considering electric for the commute but the PCP terms are all stuck at 5000 or 6000 miles per annum

What is the point in that??

I do 400 miles a week! But at least thats less than the previous job of around 200+ miles a day

Everything is just that too far away for total car freenesssness here, maybe an e-bike for the missus, get her out pedalling
 
There are such a thing as taxi firms which aren't operated by her parents.
That's a fair point but it also opens up a can of worms. The eldest two certainly would take taxis on occasion but not without precautions. If it was just one of them, on their own, usually just one taxi company would be used and that was because we had built up a good working relationship with them. They could tell us the name of the driver and we would know who it was, partly through my wife, who doesn't drive. That might seem overly cautious but, while the girls were at primary school, the young mother of one of their friends was murdered by a taxi driver, and it made an impact on them—well, on all of us. However, that's not the only reason that they don't feel 100% safe in taxis: it's the wider experience of creepy guys and sexual harassment both online and in the real world. All three of them have experienced it to varying degrees: bums pinched or slapped, unwelcome comments, persistent nagging for topless photos . . . Violent assault is not the only cause for concern. Our youngest simply will not take a taxi at all because she doesn't feel safe in them. I give a lot of lifts because so many guys are arseholes around women. Whatever car stress I might get is less than the stress the girls face around guys.

And to return to the original point of this thread: while it's undoubtedly a good thing for some people to give up their cars and use pedal power or public transport instead, until everyone feels safe doing so, sadly, there are always going to be sectors of the population for whom a car provides relative safety as well as transport.
 

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