FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected.
Ahh. I get it. While pounding the roads on your bike in all weathers you developed an enduring and intense dislike and resentment of the motorists passing you all the time.
If indeed you did travel four miles to the local Spar by bike for a curly wurly.
I'm regularly held up by car drivers when cycling round Edinburgh. They should stop being so selfish and leave the car at home.
We lived in Fairmilehead and my daily journey to St Andrews Square was by bus
Even today cycling to and from work to Fairmilehead would be unrealistic, unless you are a tour de France cyclist
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It doesn't have to be like that in places outside London though.
When I was in Germany, we lived in a medium-sized town, and we were able to get along perfectly well without our own car because the infrastructure (public transport, cycling provision, school and shop locations) was set up to allow this. On the occasions when we did need a car, we'd take a taxi or hire a car (or van). After moving back to the UK, I immediately bought a car because our social structure and infrastructure make it so difficult for most people to live without one (outside London).
Yet German transportation statistics are almost identical to ours. And cars reign supreme in Germany too.
Seems your experience is NOT the typical German lifestyle any more than it's the typical British one.
A quick Google shows that you are talking bollocks, e.g:
First off, why would you not include school trips in the stats? There is no particular reason why kids have to travel to school by car and, indeed, many don't, in both the UK and Germany. It's utterly absurd and slightly creepy to suggest that that is "twisting them to my agenda".
Secondly, we are talking about relative numbers of trips made by car, public transport and, in particular, bicycle. So what's the point in referencing a stat that doesn't include journeys made by bike?
More generally, I really don't understand your opposition to encouraging journeys by bike. It's a win/win thing to do. It's great for that who would cycle if they could to be able to do so, and those who wish or need to drive get less congested roads to drive on.
People use cars because they like them and find them convenient, not because of the standard of public transport.
No government is going to get elected, by telling people that they have to wear hair shirts.
people don't use public transport because it's not good enough. Unless you live in London, I suspect that some of the larger cities are getting better (eg Manchester, Liverpool, sheffield) but the rest of us have to deal with the rubbish. For me to get to work on public transport it's two busses and a 1 mile walk.
as London shows when you have an integrated transport system people will use it. Although for some there's little or no public transport to integrate
I'm in my early 30s. I'm looking at the current stats - ice loss in the arctic, sea temperatures in the Atlantic, rising global temperatures beating new records, Sicily and Rhodes on fire and losing electricity due to melting infrastructure. The AMOC could fail in my lifetime. I have no belief that I'll retire, get a pension, that by the time I'm in my 60s or 70s food stability will be a thing.
And the PM seems to be saying he'll invest in fossil fuels and design the country for more car use out of spite.
If this is how the Tories want to continue, they will go the way of the dodo. The next generation of voters care about having a habitable planet (unsurprisingly) and the turn towards climate antagonism if not outright climate change denial will go down like a lead balloon with a lot of middle class suburbanites who look at the world and what is happening and start thinking about their kids.
The material reality is that we will have to significantly change our infrastructure and the organisation of society to try to prevent and to react to climate catastrophe. That will include sacrifices from many people, but we can (and should) put the greater burden on those who can afford it. An economic change on par with WW2 or the New Deal is the only real solution. We need a government that accepts that and starts preparing now.
Sounds terrifying. If everyone thought about it as you do then we would solve our problem. The UK would as from tomorrow stop using all that fossil fuel stuff and we would have at least a chance of saving ourselves.
War footing is the only way to do this, I absolutely agree.
Can you please share with us a suggested draft of the manifesto, before of course you go dark and switch off your computer for the common good.
As to my personal manifesto - I'm not a policy expert but CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology) has had a Zero Carbon Britain plan that would take 20 years to implement (that version was published in 2010, which would have been the perfect time to start it).
I think we do need to seriously fund public transport and infrastructure, and incentivise against individual car use. I think we need to tackle the behaviours of the extremely wealthy, as the top 1% have the same carbon footprint as the poorest 50% (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-carbon-emissions-one-percent-wealthiest-pollution-b1767733.html). I think we need to accept that things like meat and chocolate are going to be luxuries and not staples. I also think that economic growth cannot be the only factor in considering what is important - what is the benefit of a profit margin when the planet is burning; what can you buy on a desert island?
Obviously some of these solutions will require still using fossil fuels for the short term, but we need to calculate how much and how to offset that as we use it, and not just use it inconsiderately.
Anyone touching my meat and chocolate can fuck right off.
I mean, people can either choose or be incentivised to reduce consumption, governments can regulate these things or the planet will collapse and chocolate and meat consumption will reduce because of that (cocoa is one of the crops most at risk at the moment due to the impacts of climate change, as well as being highly resource intensive to grow itself)
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
As a parent of young children, I agree on the car seats. Having them out of the car is a pain as they're quite large and even with isofix etc they take a few minutes to install.
But not everyone has young children. Before we had children, we lived in a small city and the car went out perhaps 1-2 times/week at weekends. Possessions in the car were a few sweets and crossword books for longer journeys, tool kit, binoculars and a bird book. Most of the time none of those needed to be in there. A car on demand would have been perfectly fine of us then. Not now, but then. Probably fine in another 7-8 years, too, when the youngest can have a tiny lightweight booster and the others probably none.
So, I agree. Right now, I want my own car on the drive with all the kid stuff in it. But that will probably only be important for 10-12 years of my life, fewer years if I had fewer children. If others are anything like me - which they may not be, of course - then that's a minority of use cases.
Whether Leon's prediction comes to pass, outside big cities with parking issues, depends on costs versus owning a car.
Also, don't forget it's not all about money but also status: possessing your own ride is an expression of your success, identity and independence.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
Here also. In the U.K. driving tests are still backed up for months - in a lot of places you can’t get one before Christmas, now.
This is because driving is seen a right of passage and a life skill.
All the LiveOnABike* people I know (of varying ages) have a license.
*People for whom cycling isn’t just transport - it’s their sport, social scene. Often have multiple bikes.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
There is an emotional, generational effect here.
Thinking about my parent's generation, getting a car for the first time was not just freedom, but a marker of having made it. Cars were a totem for Thatcher, hence that rather disturbing Happy Rishi photo yesterday.
Generations coming up don't have that same sense. At best, car use is a necessary chore which is partly necessary because of the effect cars have on communities. And those effects aren't desirable; see the way that townhouses in places where you don't need a car are more expensive than similar-to-larger houses in car-dependent suburbs.
As with some other things, I suspect the Conservatives have messed up pretty badly by cutting themselves off from the young, and then the middle-aged.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
If in the future a better alternative is invented, then yes it may change.
Taxis are not a better alternative. They already exist, and people don't like them and don't use them by and large. Except in inner cities, or when inebriated, or in other very limited circumstances.
Taxis becoming driverless isn't going to change that fact.
My lad and his young friends use Ubers all the time. And I don't think they are unusual in doing so.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
According to the ONS in 2000 71% of adults had a driving licence and by 2022 that was 75% so it is going up not down.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
Source: ONS England and Wales figures.
9.0 million live in London. 8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
English people overwhelming live in towns, not that you'd know it from how some on this website think and act.
So you accept that you're wrong. 17 million isn't a miniscule minority by any reasonable definition of 'miniscule'.
No but 2/3 of the English and Welsh population live in towns and villages not cities so Bart does have a point there
However anything including a village or a rural area can support alternatives eg a car club, or a stop on a bus route. Never mind the many villages with railway stations.
Choice needs to be husbanded and made convenient.
I would be very surprised if cars were not a thing. It’s not an either/or situation, it’s a both/and situation.
My village is 20 miles from the nearest A&E. To get there by public transport requires cabs. Cars aren’t going away here completely any time soon, but you can do live without a car quite happily most days.
I'm in my early 30s. I'm looking at the current stats - ice loss in the arctic, sea temperatures in the Atlantic, rising global temperatures beating new records, Sicily and Rhodes on fire and losing electricity due to melting infrastructure. The AMOC could fail in my lifetime. I have no belief that I'll retire, get a pension, that by the time I'm in my 60s or 70s food stability will be a thing.
And the PM seems to be saying he'll invest in fossil fuels and design the country for more car use out of spite.
If this is how the Tories want to continue, they will go the way of the dodo. The next generation of voters care about having a habitable planet (unsurprisingly) and the turn towards climate antagonism if not outright climate change denial will go down like a lead balloon with a lot of middle class suburbanites who look at the world and what is happening and start thinking about their kids.
The material reality is that we will have to significantly change our infrastructure and the organisation of society to try to prevent and to react to climate catastrophe. That will include sacrifices from many people, but we can (and should) put the greater burden on those who can afford it. An economic change on par with WW2 or the New Deal is the only real solution. We need a government that accepts that and starts preparing now.
Sounds terrifying. If everyone thought about it as you do then we would solve our problem. The UK would as from tomorrow stop using all that fossil fuel stuff and we would have at least a chance of saving ourselves.
War footing is the only way to do this, I absolutely agree.
Can you please share with us a suggested draft of the manifesto, before of course you go dark and switch off your computer for the common good.
As to my personal manifesto - I'm not a policy expert but CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology) has had a Zero Carbon Britain plan that would take 20 years to implement (that version was published in 2010, which would have been the perfect time to start it).
I think we do need to seriously fund public transport and infrastructure, and incentivise against individual car use. I think we need to tackle the behaviours of the extremely wealthy, as the top 1% have the same carbon footprint as the poorest 50% (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-carbon-emissions-one-percent-wealthiest-pollution-b1767733.html). I think we need to accept that things like meat and chocolate are going to be luxuries and not staples. I also think that economic growth cannot be the only factor in considering what is important - what is the benefit of a profit margin when the planet is burning; what can you buy on a desert island?
Obviously some of these solutions will require still using fossil fuels for the short term, but we need to calculate how much and how to offset that as we use it, and not just use it inconsiderately.
Anyone touching my meat and chocolate can fuck right off.
I mean, people can either choose or be incentivised to reduce consumption, governments can regulate these things or the planet will collapse and chocolate and meat consumption will reduce because of that (cocoa is one of the crops most at risk at the moment due to the impacts of climate change, as well as being highly resource intensive to grow itself)
Give up your Curly Wurly or "the planet will collapse".
That is some powerful messaging you have there young fella.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It doesn't have to be like that in places outside London though.
When I was in Germany, we lived in a medium-sized town, and we were able to get along perfectly well without our own car because the infrastructure (public transport, cycling provision, school and shop locations) was set up to allow this. On the occasions when we did need a car, we'd take a taxi or hire a car (or van). After moving back to the UK, I immediately bought a car because our social structure and infrastructure make it so difficult for most people to live without one (outside London).
Yet German transportation statistics are almost identical to ours. And cars reign supreme in Germany too.
Seems your experience is NOT the typical German lifestyle any more than it's the typical British one.
A quick Google shows that you are talking bollocks, e.g:
First off, why would you not include school trips in the stats? There is no particular reason why kids have to travel to school by car and, indeed, many don't, in both the UK and Germany. It's utterly absurd and slightly creepy to suggest that that is "twisting them to my agenda".
Secondly, we are talking about relative numbers of trips made by car, public transport and, in particular, bicycle. So what's the point in referencing a stat that doesn't include journeys made by bike?
More generally, I really don't understand your opposition to encouraging journeys by bike. It's a win/win thing to do. It's great for that who would cycle if they could to be able to do so, and those who wish or need to drive get less congested roads to drive on.
Kids can't drive by law, most can walk to school or get dedicated school buses etc, its not remotely comparable to adults getting about. I don't know why its "creepy" to say that its a twisted figure to use. Either total journeys, or commuters specifically, seem like legitimate figures to use for me. And looking at that, just under 70% of Germans get to work by car - not bike or public transport as the default.
As for bikes, I have no qualms with having bikes as an option for those who want it and encourage that by building new roads to relieve traffic so that traffic calming and cycle paths can replace lanes meant for cars on old through roads. I have no objections whatseover to people choosing to cycle of their own volition.
I have qualms with people wanting bikes as the only or default option and having an anti-car agenda. That's every bit as absurd as having an anti-bike agenda.
I am pro choice. And I, like the overwhelming majority or Britons choose the car unless I'm using a bike for recreational purposes. But that's my choice, I respect others rights to choose differently and ask you to respect mine.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
If in the future a better alternative is invented, then yes it may change.
Taxis are not a better alternative. They already exist, and people don't like them and don't use them by and large. Except in inner cities, or when inebriated, or in other very limited circumstances.
Taxis becoming driverless isn't going to change that fact.
My lad and his young friends use Ubers all the time. And I don't think they are unusual in doing so.
= urban living and quite right.
In the boondocks a) there are no ubers; b) the bus comes once a day; and c) you need to hire out Big Phil the taxi driver for that event you all want to go to weeks in advance.
But then again that is the choice to live in the boondocks, albeit it doesn't change the need to have a car (with eg designated driver) element of it.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
No, I'm not doing anything again - other than simply disagreeing with you.
Taking present day trends and projecting them way out into the future with the air of inevitability is the oldest trick in the book for futurologists but forgets that they can change shape, diverge, converge or even go into regression.
Your post is simply doubling down on your precious one with a few more capital letters. I want to own my own ride and have the convenience of it on my own driveway, ready for me whenever I like.
Yes, we can all exercise fantasies and imagination of what might be different in the future but what we're really discussing here is how smartphones have made the hailing of cabs in major cities and short-term car hire far more convenient than once they were.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
That's also been my experience with my lad and his friends. Most of them have learned or are learning to drive, but mostly due to insistence by their parents that they need to be able to do so. There's not been much enthusiasm for it, and most of them seem to regard it as a bit of a chore rather than a leap into freedom. They don't see the point - Ubers already give them freedom, without the hassle and expense of car ownership.
I'm in my early 30s. I'm looking at the current stats - ice loss in the arctic, sea temperatures in the Atlantic, rising global temperatures beating new records, Sicily and Rhodes on fire and losing electricity due to melting infrastructure. The AMOC could fail in my lifetime. I have no belief that I'll retire, get a pension, that by the time I'm in my 60s or 70s food stability will be a thing.
And the PM seems to be saying he'll invest in fossil fuels and design the country for more car use out of spite.
If this is how the Tories want to continue, they will go the way of the dodo. The next generation of voters care about having a habitable planet (unsurprisingly) and the turn towards climate antagonism if not outright climate change denial will go down like a lead balloon with a lot of middle class suburbanites who look at the world and what is happening and start thinking about their kids.
The material reality is that we will have to significantly change our infrastructure and the organisation of society to try to prevent and to react to climate catastrophe. That will include sacrifices from many people, but we can (and should) put the greater burden on those who can afford it. An economic change on par with WW2 or the New Deal is the only real solution. We need a government that accepts that and starts preparing now.
Sounds terrifying. If everyone thought about it as you do then we would solve our problem. The UK would as from tomorrow stop using all that fossil fuel stuff and we would have at least a chance of saving ourselves.
War footing is the only way to do this, I absolutely agree.
Can you please share with us a suggested draft of the manifesto, before of course you go dark and switch off your computer for the common good.
As to my personal manifesto - I'm not a policy expert but CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology) has had a Zero Carbon Britain plan that would take 20 years to implement (that version was published in 2010, which would have been the perfect time to start it).
I think we do need to seriously fund public transport and infrastructure, and incentivise against individual car use. I think we need to tackle the behaviours of the extremely wealthy, as the top 1% have the same carbon footprint as the poorest 50% (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-carbon-emissions-one-percent-wealthiest-pollution-b1767733.html). I think we need to accept that things like meat and chocolate are going to be luxuries and not staples. I also think that economic growth cannot be the only factor in considering what is important - what is the benefit of a profit margin when the planet is burning; what can you buy on a desert island?
Obviously some of these solutions will require still using fossil fuels for the short term, but we need to calculate how much and how to offset that as we use it, and not just use it inconsiderately.
Green socialist: I don't need to give up my car/computer/annual holiday because I am a tiny part of the whole and I am working towards a better society where we all give up these things.
Also Green socialist: it doesn't matter that the UK is responsible for only a tiny proportion of emissions it must cease these because every little helps.
I do as much as I can but can’t become a monk in a cave; I live and participate in society.
I’ve been strict veggie / mostly vegan for over ten years, don’t drive, use public transport or walk to and from work, have flown once in the last decade, have solar panels, campaign on local and national issues, don’t use much energy in my house etc etc. But I also don’t make much money and am just one person.
I don’t have the soft power of the British state. It’s also important to recognise that British consumption (even if not creation of fossil fuels) is one of the highest on the planet and that our historical emissions debt is also very high as a country that industrialised early.
I don’t really understand the hostility people have to making the continuance of human civilisation a priority. What’s the alternative - enjoy the champagne as the Titanic heads towards the iceberg despite knowing the iceberg is coming? And occasionally also throw a life boat overboard because why should we be so negative as to assume we’ll need them.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
Everyone used to watch broadcast TV and it was unthinkable that there would be a time that people didn’t. Time moves on. Things change. The privately owned ICE car will evolve into something else, which provides greater freedom and convenience. It’s inevitable.
There must have been a 20 year period when cars and buses were becoming increasingly ubiquitous in big cities, especially London (in the UK) while the provinces and the countryside remained heavily reliant on horses and carriages. It would be interesting to see the stats
The same, I am guessing, will happen here: as non-private driverless e-cars arise in the cities, many hicks, yokels, red-brick Barratt Home semi-detached house dwellers, and splenetic clodhoppers like @Casino_Royale, @malcolmg and @BartholomewRoberts will continue, doggedly, to use their funny tradtional "cars", like the ancient farmer of 1910 with his spavined old carthorse
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
As a parent of young children, I agree on the car seats. Having them out of the car is a pain as they're quite large and even with isofix etc they take a few minutes to install.
But not everyone has young children. Before we had children, we lived in a small city and the car went out perhaps 1-2 times/week at weekends. Possessions in the car were a few sweets and crossword books for longer journeys, tool kit, binoculars and a bird book. Most of the time none of those needed to be in there. A car on demand would have been perfectly fine of us then. Not now, but then. Probably fine in another 7-8 years, too, when the youngest can have a tiny lightweight booster and the others probably none.
So, I agree. Right now, I want my own car on the drive with all the kid stuff in it. But that will probably only be important for 10-12 years of my life, fewer years if I had fewer children. If others are anything like me - which they may not be, of course - then that's a minority of use cases.
Whether Leon's prediction comes to pass, outside big cities with parking issues, depends on costs versus owning a car.
Also, don't forget it's not all about money but also status: possessing your own ride is an expression of your success, identity and independence.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
The stats don't say anything of the sort in the UK.
In 2005 82% of Britons had their drivers licence of 30-39 year olds had their drivers licence, that's 79% in 2019. Virtually no difference at all.
Rather than the UK following America here, Americans seem to be catching up with Britons with more Americans now learning to drive in their twenties as has always been the case in the UK.
Its part and parcel of adolescence lasting longer, people are taking longer to grow up and do the things that grown ups do like learn to drive, but they're still doing it - just many in their twenties (as has always been the case here, and is now the case in America).
And if you want to push back on that, who has been more right wing?
Certainly not Major or Cameron. Not Johnson.
If you want a more right-wing Conservative PM, you need to make a case for May or Truss. Not sure either of those is easy.
Truss was more pro cutting tax than Sunak but Sunak is more of a hawk on spending. Sunak is more socially conservative than Truss and harder on immigration even than May but less pro hard Brexit than Boris was.
The main difference between Sunak and his predecessors is that Sunak just believes what the polls tell him to believe, the others had agendas and ideas of their own (even if in Boris’ case it was to further Boris’ interest).
The main similarity between Sunak and a hawk is that a hawk flies about all over the place in search of something to sustain its existence.
I'm in my early 30s. I'm looking at the current stats - ice loss in the arctic, sea temperatures in the Atlantic, rising global temperatures beating new records, Sicily and Rhodes on fire and losing electricity due to melting infrastructure. The AMOC could fail in my lifetime. I have no belief that I'll retire, get a pension, that by the time I'm in my 60s or 70s food stability will be a thing.
And the PM seems to be saying he'll invest in fossil fuels and design the country for more car use out of spite.
If this is how the Tories want to continue, they will go the way of the dodo. The next generation of voters care about having a habitable planet (unsurprisingly) and the turn towards climate antagonism if not outright climate change denial will go down like a lead balloon with a lot of middle class suburbanites who look at the world and what is happening and start thinking about their kids.
The material reality is that we will have to significantly change our infrastructure and the organisation of society to try to prevent and to react to climate catastrophe. That will include sacrifices from many people, but we can (and should) put the greater burden on those who can afford it. An economic change on par with WW2 or the New Deal is the only real solution. We need a government that accepts that and starts preparing now.
Sounds terrifying. If everyone thought about it as you do then we would solve our problem. The UK would as from tomorrow stop using all that fossil fuel stuff and we would have at least a chance of saving ourselves.
War footing is the only way to do this, I absolutely agree.
Can you please share with us a suggested draft of the manifesto, before of course you go dark and switch off your computer for the common good.
As to my personal manifesto - I'm not a policy expert but CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology) has had a Zero Carbon Britain plan that would take 20 years to implement (that version was published in 2010, which would have been the perfect time to start it).
I think we do need to seriously fund public transport and infrastructure, and incentivise against individual car use. I think we need to tackle the behaviours of the extremely wealthy, as the top 1% have the same carbon footprint as the poorest 50% (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-carbon-emissions-one-percent-wealthiest-pollution-b1767733.html). I think we need to accept that things like meat and chocolate are going to be luxuries and not staples. I also think that economic growth cannot be the only factor in considering what is important - what is the benefit of a profit margin when the planet is burning; what can you buy on a desert island?
Obviously some of these solutions will require still using fossil fuels for the short term, but we need to calculate how much and how to offset that as we use it, and not just use it inconsiderately.
Anyone touching my meat and chocolate can fuck right off.
I mean, people can either choose or be incentivised to reduce consumption, governments can regulate these things or the planet will collapse and chocolate and meat consumption will reduce because of that (cocoa is one of the crops most at risk at the moment due to the impacts of climate change, as well as being highly resource intensive to grow itself)
I think the ecozealots (not you) need in general to get it through their limited minds that people will only ever go eco if it makes their lives better, more enriching and rewarding. So, it's much more likely that meat production is engineered to not cause environmental problems and cocoa the same, so choice is maintained.
No-one is going to volunteer to eat mung beans on toast forevermore.
The rest is our Judeo-Christian culture of publicly demonstrative self-sacrifice feeding through, which is mainly about abrogating guilt and social proof, and not a serious examination of solutions.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
There is an emotional, generational effect here.
Thinking about my parent's generation, getting a car for the first time was not just freedom, but a marker of having made it. Cars were a totem for Thatcher, hence that rather disturbing Happy Rishi photo yesterday.
Generations coming up don't have that same sense. At best, car use is a necessary chore which is partly necessary because of the effect cars have on communities. And those effects aren't desirable; see the way that townhouses in places where you don't need a car are more expensive than similar-to-larger houses in car-dependent suburbs.
As with some other things, I suspect the Conservatives have messed up pretty badly by cutting themselves off from the young, and then the middle-aged.
The middle aged still live in car dependent suburbs and commuter towns on the whole
There must have been a 20 year period when cars and buses were becoming increasingly ubiquitous in big cities, especially London (in the UK) while the provinces and the countryside remained heavilty reliant on horses and carriages. It would be interesting to see the stats
The same, I am guessing, will happen here: as non-private driversless e-cars arise in the cities, many hicks, yokels, semi-deatched house dwellers, and splenetic clodhoppers like @Casino_Royale, @malcolmg and @BartholomewRoberts will continue, doggedly, to use their funny tradtional "cars", like the ancient farmer of 1910 with his spavined old carthorse
CArthorses were still in use in the 1950s! Though it was not a bad thing to have hay-powered tractors in the war years and the farming slump in between.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
This thread is a good example of the false binaries of so much political discourse.
Each "side" creates an extreme vision of the other side's world view which they then critique:
Thesis: Eco-warriors dream of a future where nobody is allowed to drive a car and we all travel around on bikes or subsidised public transport
Antithesis: petrolheads want a dystopian world where all journeys are in gas-guzzling SUVs along traffic choked multi-lane highways to vast car parks (i.e. small town America)
Synthesis: an increasingly urbanised population will gradually drive less and less, more public transport investment could accelerate this as could things like greater availability of ride hailing, a diminishing but still significant proportion of people will still rely on their own cars, and town and city centres may well become configured more for walking and cycling and less for traffic in future as has happened in many other European countries and already in several UK cities.
Most of us are multi-modal. I own 2 cars (an electric one for local shopping trips and a diesel for long haul), I walk to most places locally, I occasionally cycle though not as often as I'd like, and I take tubes, buses, trains and light rail to various places around town every week.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
Last time I looked we were living in the UK not the US. Well with the honourable exceptions of SSI, Jim and Gardenwalker.
We are behind America, as ever, but we are following, as ever
"Fewer and fewer young adults are learning to drive. In April 2021, the Guardian broke the story that the number of young adults with a full driving license has fallen to a recent low. In fact, there are 18% fewer teenagers with a license than there was ten years ago"
There must have been a 20 year period when cars and buses were becoming increasingly ubiquitous in big cities, especially London (in the UK) while the provinces and the countryside remained heavilty reliant on horses and carriages. It would be interesting to see the stats
The same, I am guessing, will happen here: as non-private driversless e-cars arise in the cities, many hicks, yokels, semi-deatched house dwellers, and splenetic clodhoppers like @Casino_Royale, @malcolmg and @BartholomewRoberts will continue, doggedly, to use their funny tradtional "cars", like the ancient farmer of 1910 with his spavined old carthorse
This is when you start to sound like a proper lefty Met elite type.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
If in the future a better alternative is invented, then yes it may change.
Taxis are not a better alternative. They already exist, and people don't like them and don't use them by and large. Except in inner cities, or when inebriated, or in other very limited circumstances.
Taxis becoming driverless isn't going to change that fact.
Yes I agree with that and I don't think that is what either @leon or I are arguing. It has to be something better than just a driverless taxi.
I gave my example. We have two cars. We don't need two but keep two for the occasional inconvenience of not having a spare car. Financially it makes no sense for us to have the 2nd car, but we don't give it up. Things will have to change a lot for us to do that and a driverless taxis alone is not the answer.
But that is not what either @leon or I are arguing. We are looking into a possible future where the convenience is so overwhelming that owning a car becomes equivalent to keeping a horse for personal transport. Nice to have if you are into cars/horses but less convenient than the alternative.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
That's also been my experience with my lad and his friends. Most of them have learned or are learning to drive, but mostly due to insistence by their parents that they need to be able to do so. There's not been much enthusiasm for it, and most of them seem to regard it as a bit of a chore rather than a leap into freedom. They don't see the point - Ubers already give them freedom, without the hassle and expense of car ownership.
Driving will become something the working class (and the old) do. Until the bots take over.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
Source: ONS England and Wales figures.
9.0 million live in London. 8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
English people overwhelming live in towns, not that you'd know it from how some on this website think and act.
So you accept that you're wrong. 17 million isn't a miniscule minority by any reasonable definition of 'miniscule'.
No but 2/3 of the English and Welsh population live in towns and villages not cities so Bart does have a point there
However anything including a village or a rural area can support alternatives eg a car club, or a stop on a bus route. Never mind the many villages with railway stations.
Choice needs to be husbanded and made convenient. If done correctly, the 13 mile Llandudno -> Bets-y-Coed cycle route should be about an hour each way, depending on traffic, and far less time to the villages en route.
Post Beeching probably less than 10% of villages have railway stations, buses are often every hour at best in rural areas
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected. Obviously this isn't possible for many, but the sad truth is that driving tends to make people selfish, unhealthy, aggressive, and disconnected. As well as imposing harm on others.
Also, the last time I looked road accidents were the leading cause of death among 5-18 year olds in the UK, and current traffic imposes a kind of permanent semi lockdown on millions of children.
With respect I utterly reject your observations about car drivers and indeed this is an anti car narrative that is developing mainly from cyclists and none of my grandchildren have any kind of lockdown
If there is a "war" between drivers and cyclists, then drivers are winning comprehensively.
16,000 cyclists were injured or killed last year.
I do not see it as a competition and many cyclists will no doubt have been responsible for the outcome themselves
Pretty horrible comment.
Why unless you think all these accidents are the car drivers fault
You did say 'many', clearly indicating - intentionally or otherwise - that a high proportion of the accidents - at least half, say - were the cyclist's fault.
I am with G on this one, perfectly sensible post. The best available research, from the Transport Research Laboratory, indicates that around half of all one-on-one collisions involving a cyclist were attributed in some part to the cyclist,
That's the wrong question.
It's should be "how can we make this safer?", not "who can I blame for this?".
And if you want to push back on that, who has been more right wing?
Certainly not Major or Cameron. Not Johnson.
If you want a more right-wing Conservative PM, you need to make a case for May or Truss. Not sure either of those is easy.
Truss was more pro cutting tax than Sunak but Sunak is more of a hawk on spending. Sunak is more socially conservative than Truss and harder on immigration even than May but less pro hard Brexit than Boris was.
The main difference between Sunak and his predecessors is that Sunak just believes what the polls tell him to believe, the others had agendas and ideas of their own (even if in Boris’ case it was to further Boris’ interest).
The main similarity between Sunak and a hawk is that a hawk flies about all over the place in search of something to sustain its existence.
Seagull, surely, certainly in [edit] today's Scottish coastal context.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
Source: ONS England and Wales figures.
9.0 million live in London. 8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
English people overwhelming live in towns, not that you'd know it from how some on this website think and act.
I think you are mistaken in putting all towns in the same category.
The town of Totnes was mentioned earlier - living there, in rural Devon, is qualitatively different from living in the town of Gateshead in the Tyneside urban area.
Whilst I accept quite a lot of people live in towns in slightly more sparsely populated areas, quite a lot also live in towns which form part of an essentially contiguous, large urban area.
One of the reasons designing transport policies for England is that our population by density decile is very flat.
Using a combination of ONS stats, population by density decile figures and a bit of excel this is where the "median" English person lives by pop density. It's not perfect as Welsh data is contained within the lsoa file I downloaded but not in my population by decile analysis.
I'm in my early 30s. I'm looking at the current stats - ice loss in the arctic, sea temperatures in the Atlantic, rising global temperatures beating new records, Sicily and Rhodes on fire and losing electricity due to melting infrastructure. The AMOC could fail in my lifetime. I have no belief that I'll retire, get a pension, that by the time I'm in my 60s or 70s food stability will be a thing.
And the PM seems to be saying he'll invest in fossil fuels and design the country for more car use out of spite.
If this is how the Tories want to continue, they will go the way of the dodo. The next generation of voters care about having a habitable planet (unsurprisingly) and the turn towards climate antagonism if not outright climate change denial will go down like a lead balloon with a lot of middle class suburbanites who look at the world and what is happening and start thinking about their kids.
The material reality is that we will have to significantly change our infrastructure and the organisation of society to try to prevent and to react to climate catastrophe. That will include sacrifices from many people, but we can (and should) put the greater burden on those who can afford it. An economic change on par with WW2 or the New Deal is the only real solution. We need a government that accepts that and starts preparing now.
Sounds terrifying. If everyone thought about it as you do then we would solve our problem. The UK would as from tomorrow stop using all that fossil fuel stuff and we would have at least a chance of saving ourselves.
War footing is the only way to do this, I absolutely agree.
Can you please share with us a suggested draft of the manifesto, before of course you go dark and switch off your computer for the common good.
As to my personal manifesto - I'm not a policy expert but CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology) has had a Zero Carbon Britain plan that would take 20 years to implement (that version was published in 2010, which would have been the perfect time to start it).
I think we do need to seriously fund public transport and infrastructure, and incentivise against individual car use. I think we need to tackle the behaviours of the extremely wealthy, as the top 1% have the same carbon footprint as the poorest 50% (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-carbon-emissions-one-percent-wealthiest-pollution-b1767733.html). I think we need to accept that things like meat and chocolate are going to be luxuries and not staples. I also think that economic growth cannot be the only factor in considering what is important - what is the benefit of a profit margin when the planet is burning; what can you buy on a desert island?
Obviously some of these solutions will require still using fossil fuels for the short term, but we need to calculate how much and how to offset that as we use it, and not just use it inconsiderately.
Green socialist: I don't need to give up my car/computer/annual holiday because I am a tiny part of the whole and I am working towards a better society where we all give up these things.
Also Green socialist: it doesn't matter that the UK is responsible for only a tiny proportion of emissions it must cease these because every little helps.
I do as much as I can but can’t become a monk in a cave; I live and participate in society.
I’ve been strict veggie / mostly vegan for over ten years, don’t drive, use public transport or walk to and from work, have flown once in the last decade, have solar panels, campaign on local and national issues, don’t use much energy in my house etc etc. But I also don’t make much money and am just one person.
I don’t have the soft power of the British state. It’s also important to recognise that British consumption (even if not creation of fossil fuels) is one of the highest on the planet and that our historical emissions debt is also very high as a country that industrialised early.
I don’t really understand the hostility people have to making the continuance of human civilisation a priority. What’s the alternative - enjoy the champagne as the Titanic heads towards the iceberg despite knowing the iceberg is coming? And occasionally also throw a life boat overboard because why should we be so negative as to assume we’ll need them.
Thing is, you need to take people with you.
Everyone has as exactly the same access as you do to information about climate change. And a large number of such people choose not to make the choices you have taken. You can say that they are ill-informed but that is counter-productive because then you set yourself up as an elite and no one likes those. So you need to bring people with you and shouting at them we're all going to die ain't (imo) the way to do it.
If you want to do the things you say you want then it is about baby steps and incentives and building on success. Having people in orange jackets lying down in front of lorries bringing you tins of tofu is going to be counterproductive because there is no over-arching power who will step in and make everyone "see sense" in your meaning of the word "sense".
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
There must have been a 20 year period when cars and buses were becoming increasingly ubiquitous in big cities, especially London (in the UK) while the provinces and the countryside remained heavilty reliant on horses and carriages. It would be interesting to see the stats
The same, I am guessing, will happen here: as non-private driversless e-cars arise in the cities, many hicks, yokels, semi-deatched house dwellers, and splenetic clodhoppers like @Casino_Royale, @malcolmg and @BartholomewRoberts will continue, doggedly, to use their funny tradtional "cars", like the ancient farmer of 1910 with his spavined old carthorse
Thpont was that the car got you where you wanted to go quicker and more conveniently. Hence the reason it was so widely adopted. Your vision for the future is one where journeys take longer and are less convenient. Giving people less freedom and more hassle is not an easy sell.
It would be like asking you to give up all your international travel.
I'm in my early 30s. I'm looking at the current stats - ice loss in the arctic, sea temperatures in the Atlantic, rising global temperatures beating new records, Sicily and Rhodes on fire and losing electricity due to melting infrastructure. The AMOC could fail in my lifetime. I have no belief that I'll retire, get a pension, that by the time I'm in my 60s or 70s food stability will be a thing.
And the PM seems to be saying he'll invest in fossil fuels and design the country for more car use out of spite.
If this is how the Tories want to continue, they will go the way of the dodo. The next generation of voters care about having a habitable planet (unsurprisingly) and the turn towards climate antagonism if not outright climate change denial will go down like a lead balloon with a lot of middle class suburbanites who look at the world and what is happening and start thinking about their kids.
The material reality is that we will have to significantly change our infrastructure and the organisation of society to try to prevent and to react to climate catastrophe. That will include sacrifices from many people, but we can (and should) put the greater burden on those who can afford it. An economic change on par with WW2 or the New Deal is the only real solution. We need a government that accepts that and starts preparing now.
Sounds terrifying. If everyone thought about it as you do then we would solve our problem. The UK would as from tomorrow stop using all that fossil fuel stuff and we would have at least a chance of saving ourselves.
War footing is the only way to do this, I absolutely agree.
Can you please share with us a suggested draft of the manifesto, before of course you go dark and switch off your computer for the common good.
As to my personal manifesto - I'm not a policy expert but CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology) has had a Zero Carbon Britain plan that would take 20 years to implement (that version was published in 2010, which would have been the perfect time to start it).
I think we do need to seriously fund public transport and infrastructure, and incentivise against individual car use. I think we need to tackle the behaviours of the extremely wealthy, as the top 1% have the same carbon footprint as the poorest 50% (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-carbon-emissions-one-percent-wealthiest-pollution-b1767733.html). I think we need to accept that things like meat and chocolate are going to be luxuries and not staples. I also think that economic growth cannot be the only factor in considering what is important - what is the benefit of a profit margin when the planet is burning; what can you buy on a desert island?
Obviously some of these solutions will require still using fossil fuels for the short term, but we need to calculate how much and how to offset that as we use it, and not just use it inconsiderately.
Green socialist: I don't need to give up my car/computer/annual holiday because I am a tiny part of the whole and I am working towards a better society where we all give up these things.
Also Green socialist: it doesn't matter that the UK is responsible for only a tiny proportion of emissions it must cease these because every little helps.
I do as much as I can but can’t become a monk in a cave; I live and participate in society.
I’ve been strict veggie / mostly vegan for over ten years, don’t drive, use public transport or walk to and from work, have flown once in the last decade, have solar panels, campaign on local and national issues, don’t use much energy in my house etc etc. But I also don’t make much money and am just one person.
I don’t have the soft power of the British state. It’s also important to recognise that British consumption (even if not creation of fossil fuels) is one of the highest on the planet and that our historical emissions debt is also very high as a country that industrialised early.
I don’t really understand the hostility people have to making the continuance of human civilisation a priority. What’s the alternative - enjoy the champagne as the Titanic heads towards the iceberg despite knowing the iceberg is coming? And occasionally also throw a life boat overboard because why should we be so negative as to assume we’ll need them.
Our efforts are as nothing. China alone has produced more carbon than the UK and continues to do so. Then add in USA, India and all of Africa seeking to improve their lifestyle. If I want self flagellation Ill go to an S&M club.
There must have been a 20 year period when cars and buses were becoming increasingly ubiquitous in big cities, especially London (in the UK) while the provinces and the countryside remained heavily reliant on horses and carriages. It would be interesting to see the stats
The same, I am guessing, will happen here: as non-private driversless e-cars arise in the cities, many hicks, yokels, red-brick Barratt Home semi-detached house dwellers, and splenetic clodhoppers like @Casino_Royale, @malcolmg and @BartholomewRoberts will continue, doggedly, to use their funny tradtional "cars", like the ancient farmer of 1910 with his spavined old carthorse
I don't qualify for semi-detached , so have to be hick or yokel and my car is far from traditional other than having a large diesel engine
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
Last time I looked we were living in the UK not the US. Well with the honourable exceptions of SSI, Jim and Gardenwalker.
We are behind America, as ever, but we are following, as ever
"Fewer and fewer young adults are learning to drive. In April 2021, the Guardian broke the story that the number of young adults with a full driving license has fallen to a recent low. In fact, there are 18% fewer teenagers with a license than there was ten years ago"
Isn't the 2021 article quite possibly COVID-related, though? There were a couple of years when taking lessons and getting a driving test were quite challenging. Indeed, an 18% drop in teenagers with a licence is rather more modest a fall than I'd have expected at that time.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
Slightly tongue in cheek, but the strongest correlating indicator of Conservative voting that I have ever found in 20 years of canvassing is car related.
- Those washing their car in their driveway on a Saturday morning.
Slightly disconcertingly for the blue meanies, apart from my Dad, I don't know anyone who does this now. Why bother when its a tenner at the local hand car wash?
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
If in the future a better alternative is invented, then yes it may change.
Taxis are not a better alternative. They already exist, and people don't like them and don't use them by and large. Except in inner cities, or when inebriated, or in other very limited circumstances.
Taxis becoming driverless isn't going to change that fact.
Yes I agree with that and I don't think that is what either @leon or I are arguing. It has to be something better than just a driverless taxi.
I gave my example. We have two cars. We don't need two but keep two for the occasional inconvenience of not having a spare car. Financially it makes no sense for us to have the 2nd car, but we don't give it up. Things will have to change a lot for us to do that and a driverless taxis alone is not the answer.
But that is not what either @leon or I are arguing. We are looking into a possible future where the convenience is so overwhelming that owning a car becomes equivalent to keeping a horse for personal transport. Nice to have if you are into cars/horses but less convenient than the alternative.
That's exactly what Leon is saying. That driverless taxis will replace cars because well actually he's got no reasons why, he's just saying its the case and insulting anyone who disagrees with him.
Taxis already exist. Whether they're driverless or not, they're inconvenient and not of interest to all but a tiny minority. Making taxis driverless isn't going to change that fact.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
According to the ONS in 2000 71% of adults had a driving licence and by 2022 that was 75% so it is going up not down.
OK, this is a horrible graph (five house points for every bad thing you can spot, class), but it shows the share of driving licence holders in each age bracket;
The increase in total share of the population who have driving licences is driven by those passing into the 60+ cohorts. Very few of those born in 1905 still had driving licences by the age of 70, quite a lot of those born in 1945 did.
But the most recent figures have fewer twentysomethings with driving licences than seventysomethings. That feels significant.
(Must resist the temptation to say Boomer Bulge messing up the stats... oh dear, failed miserably there, didn't I?)
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected. Obviously this isn't possible for many, but the sad truth is that driving tends to make people selfish, unhealthy, aggressive, and disconnected. As well as imposing harm on others.
Also, the last time I looked road accidents were the leading cause of death among 5-18 year olds in the UK, and current traffic imposes a kind of permanent semi lockdown on millions of children.
With respect I utterly reject your observations about car drivers and indeed this is an anti car narrative that is developing mainly from cyclists and none of my grandchildren have any kind of lockdown
If there is a "war" between drivers and cyclists, then drivers are winning comprehensively.
16,000 cyclists were injured or killed last year.
I do not see it as a competition and many cyclists will no doubt have been responsible for the outcome themselves
Pretty horrible comment.
Why unless you think all these accidents are the car drivers fault
You did say 'many', clearly indicating - intentionally or otherwise - that a high proportion of the accidents - at least half, say - were the cyclist's fault.
I have no idea the statistics and certainly I do not accuse anyone of intentionally causing an accident, but cyclists do contribute to accidents and to infer it is car drivers who are all at fault is unfair
Any Tory who whines about an anti-car narrative is channelling Conservative HQ at the moment, whether this is intentional or not. The next step is to stop all spending on cycle ways and active stuff because cyclists are a bunch of selfish kamikaze woke types. Or so the narrative is shaping out.
Sorry but that is the other extreme
16 million is being spent on a dedicated cycle track between Llandudno Junction and Betws y Coed and that is the way to go
By that nice Mr Drakeford, though. Not the Tories.
Actually the 16 million is coming from The UK government
No, it's not - it's coming from taxpayers and the bank lenders. Ultra vires money, too, breaching the devolution legislation.
Correcting my previous note, it is money from a bid to the Levelling-Up fund.
This actually highlights an issue: it is being referred to as a 'cycle path', but it is actually a "shared-use walking and cycling path". It is not just for cycling. That's an important distinction, especially for the idiots who will want to use it as a velodrome (I'd assume horse riders can also use it, but cannot find information).
That's important; there are very few exclusive away-from-road cycle usage facilities in the country - though there's a rarely used road-sign to designate them. Something like a mandatory cycle lane (marked out by solid painted line on a road) used to be exclusive, but the current Govt f*cked up the laws in 2016 so anything created since is optional; it's quite the saga.
It's about specification and quality for the traffic level.
Even something like the Bristol and Bath railway path, which has 1-2 million cycle trips a year, is a 3m wide shared path. There are several similar width cycle tracks in London with higher traffic levels.
What is the spec of the Llandudno to Bets-y-Coed path?
English standards LTN 1/20 say such should be a 3m-wide minimum sealed machine laid surface, at which width it will be fine. Welsh standards probably say the same but they are a 475-page document covering both walking and cycling, so I'm not going to look.
Why shouldn't something like the Bristol and Bath railway path be dual-use? Why restrict walkers and others from using it just because some cyclists want to ride fast and cannot be bothered about other users?
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
There is an emotional, generational effect here.
Thinking about my parent's generation, getting a car for the first time was not just freedom, but a marker of having made it. Cars were a totem for Thatcher, hence that rather disturbing Happy Rishi photo yesterday.
Generations coming up don't have that same sense. At best, car use is a necessary chore which is partly necessary because of the effect cars have on communities. And those effects aren't desirable; see the way that townhouses in places where you don't need a car are more expensive than similar-to-larger houses in car-dependent suburbs.
As with some other things, I suspect the Conservatives have messed up pretty badly by cutting themselves off from the young, and then the middle-aged.
The middle aged still live in car dependent suburbs and commuter towns on the whole
This thread is a good example of the false binaries of so much political discourse.
Each "side" creates an extreme vision of the other side's world view which they then critique:
Thesis: Eco-warriors dream of a future where nobody is allowed to drive a car and we all travel around on bikes or subsidised public transport
Antithesis: petrolheads want a dystopian world where all journeys are in gas-guzzling SUVs along traffic choked multi-lane highways to vast car parks (i.e. small town America)
Synthesis: an increasingly urbanised population will gradually drive less and less, more public transport investment could accelerate this as could things like greater availability of ride hailing, a diminishing but still significant proportion of people will still rely on their own cars, and town and city centres may well become configured more for walking and cycling and less for traffic in future as has happened in many other European countries and already in several UK cities...
TBF to Leon, for once*, his argument is that synthesis.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
My rural roads are packed with urban cyclists at the weekends. Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
Bit harsh. Those rural cyclists are proficient, quiet, efficient, usually polite, and are gone before you know it. Plus they bring custom to rural enterprises.
Err no
They are usually middle class professionals with attitude. They hog the roads and are more likely to ram in to walkers using the same road space. And why can they never use a bell ?
Typical is a peloton of cyclists coming down a hill and threatening one of our local farmers because his cows were the crossing at milking time and they had to stop. Apparently he shouldnt have had them on the road ( and they might sue him ) despite signs either side of his farm warning road users that cows crossing the road was a hazard.
Not seen this and is the exception I have no doubt.
I have lived in my village for 30 years and quite frankly the cyclist problem has been getting steadily worse. Mostly its one of attitude as they think they have priority over other users.
Horse riders are the worst imo, often side-by-side, chatting, oblivious to their surroundings, or on their mobiles, texting or talking. Or leading one or two other horses over which they seem to have little control.
They act as if they own the road and everyone else is an annoying inconvenience.
I find horse riders ok. Youre judging the mood of the horse not the rider so out in the sticks we always slow down and pass slowly. Roumd my area he horse riders always pull in at the nearest drive or layby and let traffic pass.
The only dnagerous ones are usually nervy horses or inexperienced riders. But L Plate riders are usually accompanied by an expeirenced adult.
I have an odd experience with that; when I am hiking, I often have my walking poles strapped to the side of my rucksack if I don't need them. Horses *really* don't like this, for some reason, and it seems to spook them. If I have the poles in my hands they seem fine, which is counter-intuitive. I chatted to a rider about this once, and she said that horses sometimes get spooked by rucksacks.
Our dog reacts to stuff on or above people's head: head torch, umbrella, large hat. Not a big issue. He just barks, but remains friendly, although if you don't know him that isn't obvious so we are always apologetic.
The problem with that is that "he's just being friendly" is ALWAYS what a dog owner says about an out-of-control dog IMMEDIATELY before it bites you !
And if you want to push back on that, who has been more right wing?
Certainly not Major or Cameron. Not Johnson.
If you want a more right-wing Conservative PM, you need to make a case for May or Truss. Not sure either of those is easy.
Truss was more pro cutting tax than Sunak but Sunak is more of a hawk on spending. Sunak is more socially conservative than Truss and harder on immigration even than May but less pro hard Brexit than Boris was.
The main difference between Sunak and his predecessors is that Sunak just believes what the polls tell him to believe, the others had agendas and ideas of their own (even if in Boris’ case it was to further Boris’ interest).
The main similarity between Sunak and a hawk is that a hawk flies about all over the place in search of something to sustain its existence.
Seagull, surely, certainly in [edit] today's Scottish coastal context.
They go to the football as well Carnyx, coastal and inland. You have to watch your pie carefully.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
Source: ONS England and Wales figures.
9.0 million live in London. 8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
English people overwhelming live in towns, not that you'd know it from how some on this website think and act.
So you accept that you're wrong. 17 million isn't a miniscule minority by any reasonable definition of 'miniscule'.
No but 2/3 of the English and Welsh population live in towns and villages not cities so Bart does have a point there
However anything including a village or a rural area can support alternatives eg a car club, or a stop on a bus route. Never mind the many villages with railway stations.
Choice needs to be husbanded and made convenient. If done correctly, the 13 mile Llandudno -> Bets-y-Coed cycle route should be about an hour each way, depending on traffic, and far less time to the villages en route.
Post Beeching probably less than 10% of villages have railway stations, buses are often every hour at best in rural areas
it depends on the area. there are a lot of places where there's no bus services at all. for where there is a bus service you may find 2 hourly not uncommon. but that's mostly during the day, if you're trying to go anywhere for the evening or on a sunday there's no bus services at all. There's also no desire in both local and national government to spend the money to ensure that these places have a decent bus service because it doesn't win enough votes.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
There is an emotional, generational effect here.
Thinking about my parent's generation, getting a car for the first time was not just freedom, but a marker of having made it. Cars were a totem for Thatcher, hence that rather disturbing Happy Rishi photo yesterday.
Generations coming up don't have that same sense. At best, car use is a necessary chore which is partly necessary because of the effect cars have on communities. And those effects aren't desirable; see the way that townhouses in places where you don't need a car are more expensive than similar-to-larger houses in car-dependent suburbs.
As with some other things, I suspect the Conservatives have messed up pretty badly by cutting themselves off from the young, and then the middle-aged.
Agree. It was a rite of passage to get a driving licence in my day and a car asap. My children are 22 and 27. Neither own a car and one has should no interest in learning to drive. We have offered our 2nd car to the one who can drive and she has turned it down as too much hassle. In fairness to @Casino_Royale and @BartholomewRoberts points though they both live in places with decent transport.
I know I’m a lurker and don’t really have the right to criticise but this cars vs bikes vs public transport discussion seems to have been going on for days.
Everyone used to watch broadcast TV and it was unthinkable that there would be a time that people didn’t. Time moves on. Things change. The privately owned ICE car will evolve into something else, which provides greater freedom and convenience. It’s inevitable.
Your example is exactly the reverse. With TV we moved from centralised and limited choice to a massive diversity and more freedom than we know what to do with. Simply pick what you want to watch and watch it any time 24/7.
Your transport vision of the future sees us moving from spontaneous choice with our own vehicles to a far more centralised and controlled system with less choice and less freedom.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
According to the ONS in 2000 71% of adults had a driving licence and by 2022 that was 75% so it is going up not down.
OK, this is a horrible graph (five house points for every bad thing you can spot, class), but it shows the share of driving licence holders in each age bracket;
The increase in total share of the population who have driving licences is driven by those passing into the 60+ cohorts. Very few of those born in 1905 still had driving licences by the age of 70, quite a lot of those born in 1945 did.
But the most recent figures have fewer twentysomethings with driving licences than seventysomethings. That feels significant.
(Must resist the temptation to say Boomer Bulge messing up the stats... oh dear, failed miserably there, didn't I?)
Yes the chart has many flaws but it shows some relevant things.
Such as all figures have always in all years had fewer twentysomethings having driving licences than thirtysomethings. Lots of people only learn to drive in their twenties which has always been the case, something now being adopted in America as people are living 'at home' with parents for longer than used to be the case.
From 2005 to today almost all those lines (besides the anomaly of 70+) has flatlined.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
That's also been my experience with my lad and his friends. Most of them have learned or are learning to drive, but mostly due to insistence by their parents that they need to be able to do so. There's not been much enthusiasm for it, and most of them seem to regard it as a bit of a chore rather than a leap into freedom. They don't see the point - Ubers already give them freedom, without the hassle and expense of car ownership.
I actually agree it will be a sad moment when the last human-driven cars disappear. They do provide a wonderful freedom: I would advise my teenage daughters to learn to drive (despite all that I have said) - but not so they can drive in the UK (boring, expensive, often a chore), so they can hire a car in a foreign country and go see the world for themselves. A glorious, liberating experience (and the chance to do it will be with us for a couple of decades yet, at least)
But then cantering a horse across green hills and through woods without having to worry about cars and roads and all that danger was surely wonderful, as well; but it disappeared, and progress had its way
There must have been a 20 year period when cars and buses were becoming increasingly ubiquitous in big cities, especially London (in the UK) while the provinces and the countryside remained heavilty reliant on horses and carriages. It would be interesting to see the stats
The same, I am guessing, will happen here: as non-private driversless e-cars arise in the cities, many hicks, yokels, semi-deatched house dwellers, and splenetic clodhoppers like @Casino_Royale, @malcolmg and @BartholomewRoberts will continue, doggedly, to use their funny tradtional "cars", like the ancient farmer of 1910 with his spavined old carthorse
Thpont was that the car got you where you wanted to go quicker and more conveniently. Hence the reason it was so widely adopted. Your vision for the future is one where journeys take longer and are less convenient. Giving people less freedom and more hassle is not an easy sell.
It would be like asking you to give up all your international travel.
Exactly, instead of having a car outside his house that never moves , he constantly jets about the world ,using taxis etc and mainly on expenses and thereby sanctimoniously thinking he is saving the planet.
Slightly tongue in cheek, but the strongest correlating indicator of Conservative voting that I have ever found in 20 years of canvassing is car related.
- Those washing their car in their driveway on a Saturday morning.
Slightly disconcertingly for the blue meanies, apart from my Dad, I don't know anyone who does this now. Why bother when its a tenner at the local hand car wash?
My guess is car ownership is highly correlated with voting Conservative. Labour might be in the lead amongst car owners now though.
I know I’m a lurker and don’t really have the right to criticise but this cars vs bikes vs public transport discussion seems to have been going on for days.
Days ?
It's only just started, then. Just don't mention cash, or PR, and we'll be fine.
Slightly tongue in cheek, but the strongest correlating indicator of Conservative voting that I have ever found in 20 years of canvassing is car related.
- Those washing their car in their driveway on a Saturday morning.
Slightly disconcertingly for the blue meanies, apart from my Dad, I don't know anyone who does this now. Why bother when its a tenner at the local hand car wash?
No way would I be getting my paintwork scratched by these carwashes.
Slightly tongue in cheek, but the strongest correlating indicator of Conservative voting that I have ever found in 20 years of canvassing is car related.
- Those washing their car in their driveway on a Saturday morning.
Slightly disconcertingly for the blue meanies, apart from my Dad, I don't know anyone who does this now. Why bother when its a tenner at the local hand car wash?
Or even, why bother at all? We get ours cleaned about once every six months.
If posession of a car is a sign of having, in some sense, made it, having it as a source of pride to be cossetted is sensible. If it's a machine for getting around in (especially now the bodywork quality lasts better), why bother?
I know I’m a lurker and don’t really have the right to criticise but this cars vs bikes vs public transport discussion seems to have been going on for days.
It's been going on for years! The PB equivalent of lupus erythematosus - breaks out every now and then.
But it strikes at the heart of the gammonry whose self-image is bound up with their Rover 2000s and backless gloves.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected. Obviously this isn't possible for many, but the sad truth is that driving tends to make people selfish, unhealthy, aggressive, and disconnected. As well as imposing harm on others.
Also, the last time I looked road accidents were the leading cause of death among 5-18 year olds in the UK, and current traffic imposes a kind of permanent semi lockdown on millions of children.
With respect I utterly reject your observations about car drivers and indeed this is an anti car narrative that is developing mainly from cyclists and none of my grandchildren have any kind of lockdown
If there is a "war" between drivers and cyclists, then drivers are winning comprehensively.
16,000 cyclists were injured or killed last year.
I do not see it as a competition and many cyclists will no doubt have been responsible for the outcome themselves
Pretty horrible comment.
Why unless you think all these accidents are the car drivers fault
You did say 'many', clearly indicating - intentionally or otherwise - that a high proportion of the accidents - at least half, say - were the cyclist's fault.
I am with G on this one, perfectly sensible post. The best available research, from the Transport Research Laboratory, indicates that around half of all one-on-one collisions involving a cyclist were attributed in some part to the cyclist,
That's the wrong question.
It's should be "how can we make this safer?", not "who can I blame for this?".
Yes but it was in rtesponse to a rabid cyclist claiming cyclists were angels and all car drivers were maniacs.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
That's also been my experience with my lad and his friends. Most of them have learned or are learning to drive, but mostly due to insistence by their parents that they need to be able to do so. There's not been much enthusiasm for it, and most of them seem to regard it as a bit of a chore rather than a leap into freedom. They don't see the point - Ubers already give them freedom, without the hassle and expense of car ownership.
I actually agree it will be a sad moment when the last human-driven cars disappear. They do provide a wonderful freedom: I would advise my teenage daughters to learn to drive (despite all that I have said) - but not so they can drive in the UK (boring, expensive, often a chore), so they can hire a car in a foreign country and go see the world for themselves. A glorious, liberating experience (and the chance to do it will be with us for a couple of decades yet, at least)
But then cantering a horse across green hills and through woods without having to worry about cars and roads and all that danger was surely wonderful, as well; but it disappeared, and progress had its way
Even if human driven vehicles get replaced with autonomous vehicles, you'll still have most people owning their own autonomous vehicle rather than relying upon taxis for the same reason they already have their own vehicle rather than relying upon taxis.
I know I’m a lurker and don’t really have the right to criticise but this cars vs bikes vs public transport discussion seems to have been going on for days.
Days ?
It's only just started, then. Just don't mention cash, or PR, and we'll be fine.
Oh, aren't we talking about cash in payment for touchless car washes?
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
My rural roads are packed with urban cyclists at the weekends. Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
Bit harsh. Those rural cyclists are proficient, quiet, efficient, usually polite, and are gone before you know it. Plus they bring custom to rural enterprises.
Err no
They are usually middle class professionals with attitude. They hog the roads and are more likely to ram in to walkers using the same road space. And why can they never use a bell ?
Typical is a peloton of cyclists coming down a hill and threatening one of our local farmers because his cows were the crossing at milking time and they had to stop. Apparently he shouldnt have had them on the road ( and they might sue him ) despite signs either side of his farm warning road users that cows crossing the road was a hazard.
Not seen this and is the exception I have no doubt.
I have lived in my village for 30 years and quite frankly the cyclist problem has been getting steadily worse. Mostly its one of attitude as they think they have priority over other users.
Horse riders are the worst imo, often side-by-side, chatting, oblivious to their surroundings, or on their mobiles, texting or talking. Or leading one or two other horses over which they seem to have little control.
They act as if they own the road and everyone else is an annoying inconvenience.
I find horse riders ok. Youre judging the mood of the horse not the rider so out in the sticks we always slow down and pass slowly. Roumd my area he horse riders always pull in at the nearest drive or layby and let traffic pass.
The only dnagerous ones are usually nervy horses or inexperienced riders. But L Plate riders are usually accompanied by an expeirenced adult.
I have an odd experience with that; when I am hiking, I often have my walking poles strapped to the side of my rucksack if I don't need them. Horses *really* don't like this, for some reason, and it seems to spook them. If I have the poles in my hands they seem fine, which is counter-intuitive. I chatted to a rider about this once, and she said that horses sometimes get spooked by rucksacks.
Our dog reacts to stuff on or above people's head: head torch, umbrella, large hat. Not a big issue. He just barks, but remains friendly, although if you don't know him that isn't obvious so we are always apologetic.
The problem with that is that "he's just being friendly" is ALWAYS what a dog owner says about an out-of-control dog IMMEDIATELY before it bites you !
Yep which is why I said 'if you don't know him that isn't obvious so we are always apologetic'. We also immediately call him back if he does it.
He is pretty obviously friendly, unlike some dogs, and not that big, but if you are frightened of dogs that is no consolation, particularly if one barks at you. It is usually one bark and then a lot of friendly gestures.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
If in the future a better alternative is invented, then yes it may change.
Taxis are not a better alternative. They already exist, and people don't like them and don't use them by and large. Except in inner cities, or when inebriated, or in other very limited circumstances.
Taxis becoming driverless isn't going to change that fact.
The somewhat temporary explosion in usage when Uber subsidised the prices suggests that price is a huge factor.
Down below I said how often I see 'inconsiderate' drivers or cyclists. Let me put it another way: I perhaps see inconsiderate people 0.1% of the time. That means for 99.9% of the time I see considerate people.
Think about that for a moment: whenever a car stops to allow me to pull out of a junction; whenever a driver overtakes and leaves loads of room (whether I am running or on a bike): I am seeing considerate behaviour. It is massively common.
And if you want to push back on that, who has been more right wing?
Certainly not Major or Cameron. Not Johnson.
If you want a more right-wing Conservative PM, you need to make a case for May or Truss. Not sure either of those is easy.
Truss was more pro cutting tax than Sunak but Sunak is more of a hawk on spending. Sunak is more socially conservative than Truss and harder on immigration even than May but less pro hard Brexit than Boris was.
The main difference between Sunak and his predecessors is that Sunak just believes what the polls tell him to believe, the others had agendas and ideas of their own (even if in Boris’ case it was to further Boris’ interest).
The main similarity between Sunak and a hawk is that a hawk flies about all over the place in search of something to sustain its existence.
Seagull, surely, certainly in [edit] today's Scottish coastal context.
They go to the football as well Carnyx, coastal and inland. You have to watch your pie carefully.
Slightly tongue in cheek, but the strongest correlating indicator of Conservative voting that I have ever found in 20 years of canvassing is car related.
- Those washing their car in their driveway on a Saturday morning.
Slightly disconcertingly for the blue meanies, apart from my Dad, I don't know anyone who does this now. Why bother when its a tenner at the local hand car wash?
Also, very well kept and manicured gardens.
See a well kept garden and a pristine Jag on the driveway?
You don't even need to bother knocking on the door.
That being said, those blinkered city dwellers who don't understand the politics of the car in the suburbs and rural areas are missing the point.
Rishi is trying to sure up his base. His base largely drive cars.
This is the first good bit of political nous I've seen since his not buckling to strikes.
Yes. It is shoring up his base. It is a strategy for holding Uxbridge.
But it is not a strategy for recovering from Lab 48%, Con 25%. It is not a strategy for regaining councils in the South. The notion that Oxford is suddenly going to start voting Conservative because Rishi doesn't like LTNs is for the Xs*. So is the notion that Tiverton & Honiton is going to swing back to Rishi because he doesn't like 20mph limits.
The Conservatives are going to be reduced to a rump of the East Coast, Outer Suburbiton, Continuity Red Wall and General Sir Bufton Tufton (Rtd) at the next election. This is a policy that appeals to all those demographics. It is not a policy that will win back the 48% who say they're going to vote for Starmer.
Slightly tongue in cheek, but the strongest correlating indicator of Conservative voting that I have ever found in 20 years of canvassing is car related.
- Those washing their car in their driveway on a Saturday morning.
Slightly disconcertingly for the blue meanies, apart from my Dad, I don't know anyone who does this now. Why bother when its a tenner at the local hand car wash?
My guess is car ownership is highly correlated with voting Conservative. Labour might be in the lead amongst car owners now though.
About three-quarters of UK households own a car, so I'd have thought it's practically certain Labour have a lead in that group.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
If in the future a better alternative is invented, then yes it may change.
Taxis are not a better alternative. They already exist, and people don't like them and don't use them by and large. Except in inner cities, or when inebriated, or in other very limited circumstances.
Taxis becoming driverless isn't going to change that fact.
The somewhat temporary explosion in usage when Uber subsidised the prices suggests that price is a huge factor.
What explosion in usage?
What percentage of transportation across the UK was Uber?
Uber largely displaced older taxi services more than it displaced people owning their own vehicles.
Slightly tongue in cheek, but the strongest correlating indicator of Conservative voting that I have ever found in 20 years of canvassing is car related.
- Those washing their car in their driveway on a Saturday morning.
Slightly disconcertingly for the blue meanies, apart from my Dad, I don't know anyone who does this now. Why bother when its a tenner at the local hand car wash?
Or even, why bother at all? We get ours cleaned about once every six months.
If posession of a car is a sign of having, in some sense, made it, having it as a source of pride to be cossetted is sensible. If it's a machine for getting around in (especially now the bodywork quality lasts better), why bother?
It's a good idea to remove bird muck - it can damage the paintwork. Otherwise I generally agree.
Oh, and reversing cameras / sensors need cleaning occasionally as well.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
If in the future a better alternative is invented, then yes it may change.
Taxis are not a better alternative. They already exist, and people don't like them and don't use them by and large. Except in inner cities, or when inebriated, or in other very limited circumstances.
Taxis becoming driverless isn't going to change that fact.
Yes I agree with that and I don't think that is what either @leon or I are arguing. It has to be something better than just a driverless taxi.
I gave my example. We have two cars. We don't need two but keep two for the occasional inconvenience of not having a spare car. Financially it makes no sense for us to have the 2nd car, but we don't give it up. Things will have to change a lot for us to do that and a driverless taxis alone is not the answer.
But that is not what either @leon or I are arguing. We are looking into a possible future where the convenience is so overwhelming that owning a car becomes equivalent to keeping a horse for personal transport. Nice to have if you are into cars/horses but less convenient than the alternative.
That's exactly what Leon is saying. That driverless taxis will replace cars because well actually he's got no reasons why, he's just saying its the case and insulting anyone who disagrees with him.
Taxis already exist. Whether they're driverless or not, they're inconvenient and not of interest to all but a tiny minority. Making taxis driverless isn't going to change that fact.
I believe @leon quoted 2050 and a rather better service than a driverless taxi yesterday when he brought this up.
Got to take the dog for a walk, so apologies if I don't reply for a bit.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
That's also been my experience with my lad and his friends. Most of them have learned or are learning to drive, but mostly due to insistence by their parents that they need to be able to do so. There's not been much enthusiasm for it, and most of them seem to regard it as a bit of a chore rather than a leap into freedom. They don't see the point - Ubers already give them freedom, without the hassle and expense of car ownership.
I actually agree it will be a sad moment when the last human-driven cars disappear. They do provide a wonderful freedom: I would advise my teenage daughters to learn to drive (despite all that I have said) - but not so they can drive in the UK (boring, expensive, often a chore), so they can hire a car in a foreign country and go see the world for themselves. A glorious, liberating experience (and the chance to do it will be with us for a couple of decades yet, at least)
But then cantering a horse across green hills and through woods without having to worry about cars and roads and all that danger was surely wonderful, as well; but it disappeared, and progress had its way
You can still canter across fields and through woods today.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
According to the ONS in 2000 71% of adults had a driving licence and by 2022 that was 75% so it is going up not down.
OK, this is a horrible graph (five house points for every bad thing you can spot, class), but it shows the share of driving licence holders in each age bracket;
The increase in total share of the population who have driving licences is driven by those passing into the 60+ cohorts. Very few of those born in 1905 still had driving licences by the age of 70, quite a lot of those born in 1945 did.
But the most recent figures have fewer twentysomethings with driving licences than seventysomethings. That feels significant.
(Must resist the temptation to say Boomer Bulge messing up the stats... oh dear, failed miserably there, didn't I?)
Your own graph shows that there is now a higher percentage of 17-20 year olds holding licencens than there was in 1975 (and 2005 for that matter). Indeed ignoring the bulge you mention it is a pretty consistent picture of more 17-20 year olds getting licences (with occasional dips in an upward trend).
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
If in the future a better alternative is invented, then yes it may change.
Taxis are not a better alternative. They already exist, and people don't like them and don't use them by and large. Except in inner cities, or when inebriated, or in other very limited circumstances.
Taxis becoming driverless isn't going to change that fact.
Yes I agree with that and I don't think that is what either @leon or I are arguing. It has to be something better than just a driverless taxi.
I gave my example. We have two cars. We don't need two but keep two for the occasional inconvenience of not having a spare car. Financially it makes no sense for us to have the 2nd car, but we don't give it up. Things will have to change a lot for us to do that and a driverless taxis alone is not the answer.
But that is not what either @leon or I are arguing. We are looking into a possible future where the convenience is so overwhelming that owning a car becomes equivalent to keeping a horse for personal transport. Nice to have if you are into cars/horses but less convenient than the alternative.
That's exactly what Leon is saying. That driverless taxis will replace cars because well actually he's got no reasons why, he's just saying its the case and insulting anyone who disagrees with him.
Taxis already exist. Whether they're driverless or not, they're inconvenient and not of interest to all but a tiny minority. Making taxis driverless isn't going to change that fact.
I believe @leon quoted 2050 and a rather better service than a driverless taxi yesterday when he brought this up.
Yes, and by 2050 we'll be driving electric vehicles.
And no, his proposed service is a driverless taxi. He just doesn't use the word taxi as he likes to pretend its some novel/futuristic invention.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
Source: ONS England and Wales figures.
9.0 million live in London. 8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
English people overwhelming live in towns, not that you'd know it from how some on this website think and act.
So you accept that you're wrong. 17 million isn't a miniscule minority by any reasonable definition of 'miniscule'.
No but 2/3 of the English and Welsh population live in towns and villages not cities so Bart does have a point there
However anything including a village or a rural area can support alternatives eg a car club, or a stop on a bus route. Never mind the many villages with railway stations.
Choice needs to be husbanded and made convenient. If done correctly, the 13 mile Llandudno -> Bets-y-Coed cycle route should be about an hour each way, depending on traffic, and far less time to the villages en route.
Post Beeching probably less than 10% of villages have railway stations, buses are often every hour at best in rural areas
it depends on the area. there are a lot of places where there's no bus services at all. for where there is a bus service you may find 2 hourly not uncommon. but that's mostly during the day, if you're trying to go anywhere for the evening or on a sunday there's no bus services at all. There's also no desire in both local and national government to spend the money to ensure that these places have a decent bus service because it doesn't win enough votes.
Which both emphasise my point.
I make it 2500 railway stations plus heritage lines plus systems such as metro or light rail. I have a light rail station just under 2 miles away which is 12-14 minutes on a bicycle, where previously I had no station for 30 years until the 1990s. I can either take the hack-bike and park it at the station, or (if and when I get one) take a Brompton and take it with me, or take the car.
I'd agree that approx 10% of villages have stations.
And proper funding of Local Authorities is a huge issue to be addressed - they have been salami sliced by about 1/3 to 1/2 across the country since 2010. These are decisions we need to make.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
If in the future a better alternative is invented, then yes it may change.
Taxis are not a better alternative. They already exist, and people don't like them and don't use them by and large. Except in inner cities, or when inebriated, or in other very limited circumstances.
Taxis becoming driverless isn't going to change that fact.
Yes I agree with that and I don't think that is what either @leon or I are arguing. It has to be something better than just a driverless taxi.
I gave my example. We have two cars. We don't need two but keep two for the occasional inconvenience of not having a spare car. Financially it makes no sense for us to have the 2nd car, but we don't give it up. Things will have to change a lot for us to do that and a driverless taxis alone is not the answer.
But that is not what either @leon or I are arguing. We are looking into a possible future where the convenience is so overwhelming that owning a car becomes equivalent to keeping a horse for personal transport. Nice to have if you are into cars/horses but less convenient than the alternative.
That's exactly what Leon is saying. That driverless taxis will replace cars because well actually he's got no reasons why, he's just saying its the case and insulting anyone who disagrees with him.
Taxis already exist. Whether they're driverless or not, they're inconvenient and not of interest to all but a tiny minority. Making taxis driverless isn't going to change that fact.
You stupid, dung-eating regional oik, the benefit of a society without private cars will be to society as a whole, more than the individual. Towns and cities will be transformed, all the horrible concrete and tarmac and infrastructure at the moment dedicated to cars will be freed up for parks and gardens and cycleways and trees and life and cafes and expensive oyster-serving pubs
But I bet it will benefit the individual as well: owning a car is a hassle, you have to clean and maintain it, you have to pay tons for it, you gotta fill it up, insure it, MOT it, blah blah - and there is always the chance you will mow someone down in it, or get killed in it yourself by some other terrible human driver
That will all go. ALL of it. In the end we will wonder why we never did it before and the Age of the Car will be seen as an aberration
And you will get around just as fast: by autonomous e-cars. Indeed, you will likely get about faster as these machines will not get stuck in traffic jams: autonomous e-traffic will be all be smoothed out by a central computer so there is zero congestion, like wot they have in Singapore now
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
If in the future a better alternative is invented, then yes it may change.
Taxis are not a better alternative. They already exist, and people don't like them and don't use them by and large. Except in inner cities, or when inebriated, or in other very limited circumstances.
Taxis becoming driverless isn't going to change that fact.
Yes I agree with that and I don't think that is what either @leon or I are arguing. It has to be something better than just a driverless taxi.
I gave my example. We have two cars. We don't need two but keep two for the occasional inconvenience of not having a spare car. Financially it makes no sense for us to have the 2nd car, but we don't give it up. Things will have to change a lot for us to do that and a driverless taxis alone is not the answer.
But that is not what either @leon or I are arguing. We are looking into a possible future where the convenience is so overwhelming that owning a car becomes equivalent to keeping a horse for personal transport. Nice to have if you are into cars/horses but less convenient than the alternative.
That's exactly what Leon is saying. That driverless taxis will replace cars because well actually he's got no reasons why, he's just saying its the case and insulting anyone who disagrees with him.
Taxis already exist. Whether they're driverless or not, they're inconvenient and not of interest to all but a tiny minority. Making taxis driverless isn't going to change that fact.
I believe @leon quoted 2050 and a rather better service than a driverless taxi yesterday when he brought this up.
Yes, and by 2050 we'll be driving electric vehicles.
And no, his proposed service is a driverless taxi. He just doesn't use the word taxi as he likes to pretend its some novel/futuristic invention.
Its about as good an idea as what3words.
You’re wrong I think. It’s a fundamentally different thing because a taxi still has another human being inside the vehicle. It’s not a private space.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
That's also been my experience with my lad and his friends. Most of them have learned or are learning to drive, but mostly due to insistence by their parents that they need to be able to do so. There's not been much enthusiasm for it, and most of them seem to regard it as a bit of a chore rather than a leap into freedom. They don't see the point - Ubers already give them freedom, without the hassle and expense of car ownership.
I actually agree it will be a sad moment when the last human-driven cars disappear. They do provide a wonderful freedom: I would advise my teenage daughters to learn to drive (despite all that I have said) - but not so they can drive in the UK (boring, expensive, often a chore), so they can hire a car in a foreign country and go see the world for themselves. A glorious, liberating experience (and the chance to do it will be with us for a couple of decades yet, at least)
But then cantering a horse across green hills and through woods without having to worry about cars and roads and all that danger was surely wonderful, as well; but it disappeared, and progress had its way
You can still canter across fields and through woods today.
In Scotland if you're considerate - the law is more tilted toward individual freedom in Scotland compared to the presumption of trespass in England. 'Right to roam'.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
If in the future a better alternative is invented, then yes it may change.
Taxis are not a better alternative. They already exist, and people don't like them and don't use them by and large. Except in inner cities, or when inebriated, or in other very limited circumstances.
Taxis becoming driverless isn't going to change that fact.
Yes I agree with that and I don't think that is what either @leon or I are arguing. It has to be something better than just a driverless taxi.
I gave my example. We have two cars. We don't need two but keep two for the occasional inconvenience of not having a spare car. Financially it makes no sense for us to have the 2nd car, but we don't give it up. Things will have to change a lot for us to do that and a driverless taxis alone is not the answer.
But that is not what either @leon or I are arguing. We are looking into a possible future where the convenience is so overwhelming that owning a car becomes equivalent to keeping a horse for personal transport. Nice to have if you are into cars/horses but less convenient than the alternative.
That's exactly what Leon is saying. That driverless taxis will replace cars because well actually he's got no reasons why, he's just saying its the case and insulting anyone who disagrees with him.
Taxis already exist. Whether they're driverless or not, they're inconvenient and not of interest to all but a tiny minority. Making taxis driverless isn't going to change that fact.
You stupid, dung-eating regional oik, the benefit of a society without private cars will be to society as a whole, more than the individual. Towns and cities will be transformed, all the horrible concrete and tarmac and infrastructure at the moment dedicated to cars will be freed up for parks and gardens and cycleways and trees and life and cafes and expensive oyster-serving pubs
But I bet it will benefit the individual as well: owning a car is a hassle, you have to clean and maintain it, you have to pay tons for it, you gotta fill it up, insure it, MOT it, blah blah - and there is always the chance you will mow someoine down in it, or get killed in it yourself by some other terrible human driver
That will all go. ALL of it. In the end we will wonder why we never did it before and the Age of the Car will be seen as an aberration
And you will get around just as fast: by autonomous e-cars. Indeed, you will likely get faster as these machines will not get stuck in traffic jams: autonomous e-traffic will be all be smoothed out by a central computer so there is zero congestion, like what they have in Singapore now
Delusional, utterly delusional.
Firstly people will do what's in their own interest, as they should, not some ephemeral and supposed "societal" interest.
Car parks aren't horrible, they're practical and useful.
And as for going to fill up your car, maybe you've missed the fact that increasing numbers of people will be charging their car at home in the future? Why would I rely on a taxi, in order to avoid plugging my car into its charger dock that's already on my house, when I park it on my driveway?
E-cars are not instead of cars, they are cars, they just have a different motor. And yes they are the future. And yes, we will have them parked at our own home when we've not taken them out or are using them.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
As a parent of young children, I agree on the car seats. Having them out of the car is a pain as they're quite large and even with isofix etc they take a few minutes to install.
But not everyone has young children. Before we had children, we lived in a small city and the car went out perhaps 1-2 times/week at weekends. Possessions in the car were a few sweets and crossword books for longer journeys, tool kit, binoculars and a bird book. Most of the time none of those needed to be in there. A car on demand would have been perfectly fine of us then. Not now, but then. Probably fine in another 7-8 years, too, when the youngest can have a tiny lightweight booster and the others probably none.
So, I agree. Right now, I want my own car on the drive with all the kid stuff in it. But that will probably only be important for 10-12 years of my life, fewer years if I had fewer children. If others are anything like me - which they may not be, of course - then that's a minority of use cases.
Whether Leon's prediction comes to pass, outside big cities with parking issues, depends on costs versus owning a car.
Also, don't forget it's not all about money but also status: possessing your own ride is an expression of your success, identity and independence.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
That's also been my experience with my lad and his friends. Most of them have learned or are learning to drive, but mostly due to insistence by their parents that they need to be able to do so. There's not been much enthusiasm for it, and most of them seem to regard it as a bit of a chore rather than a leap into freedom. They don't see the point - Ubers already give them freedom, without the hassle and expense of car ownership.
I actually agree it will be a sad moment when the last human-driven cars disappear. They do provide a wonderful freedom: I would advise my teenage daughters to learn to drive (despite all that I have said) - but not so they can drive in the UK (boring, expensive, often a chore), so they can hire a car in a foreign country and go see the world for themselves. A glorious, liberating experience (and the chance to do it will be with us for a couple of decades yet, at least)
But then cantering a horse across green hills and through woods without having to worry about cars and roads and all that danger was surely wonderful, as well; but it disappeared, and progress had its way
Even if human driven vehicles get replaced with autonomous vehicles, you'll still have most people owning their own autonomous vehicle rather than relying upon taxis for the same reason they already have their own vehicle rather than relying upon taxis.
No, they won't because who wants that shit cluttering up the drive and who wants to maintain it at vast expense when there will be companies offering immediate autonomous vehicles at your door in minutes with near-zero expense
It's like growing all your own veg versus "just going to the supermarket". A few cranks will do it; most will shrug and say SUPERMARKET
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
They very much are where I live.
The stats say otherwise. America leads the way (but this is also true of the UK)
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
That's also been my experience with my lad and his friends. Most of them have learned or are learning to drive, but mostly due to insistence by their parents that they need to be able to do so. There's not been much enthusiasm for it, and most of them seem to regard it as a bit of a chore rather than a leap into freedom. They don't see the point - Ubers already give them freedom, without the hassle and expense of car ownership.
I actually agree it will be a sad moment when the last human-driven cars disappear. They do provide a wonderful freedom: I would advise my teenage daughters to learn to drive (despite all that I have said) - but not so they can drive in the UK (boring, expensive, often a chore), so they can hire a car in a foreign country and go see the world for themselves. A glorious, liberating experience (and the chance to do it will be with us for a couple of decades yet, at least)
But then cantering a horse across green hills and through woods without having to worry about cars and roads and all that danger was surely wonderful, as well; but it disappeared, and progress had its way
Even if human driven vehicles get replaced with autonomous vehicles, you'll still have most people owning their own autonomous vehicle rather than relying upon taxis for the same reason they already have their own vehicle rather than relying upon taxis.
No, they won't because who wants that shit cluttering up the drive and who wants to maintain it at vast expense when there will be companies offering immediate autonomous vehicles at your door in minutes with near-zero expense
It's like growing all your own veg versus "just going to the supermarket". A few cranks will do it; most will shrug and say SUPERMARKET
All that Sunday morning washing of the car by the oldies (not me). That timing is suspicious, isn't it? The worship of the Great Lord [edited to remove unfortunate ambiguity].
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
According to the ONS in 2000 71% of adults had a driving licence and by 2022 that was 75% so it is going up not down.
OK, this is a horrible graph (five house points for every bad thing you can spot, class), but it shows the share of driving licence holders in each age bracket;
The increase in total share of the population who have driving licences is driven by those passing into the 60+ cohorts. Very few of those born in 1905 still had driving licences by the age of 70, quite a lot of those born in 1945 did.
But the most recent figures have fewer twentysomethings with driving licences than seventysomethings. That feels significant.
(Must resist the temptation to say Boomer Bulge messing up the stats... oh dear, failed miserably there, didn't I?)
You need a cohort graph/cohort chart for something like this:
Comments
First off, why would you not include school trips in the stats? There is no particular reason why kids have to travel to school by car and, indeed, many don't, in both the UK and Germany. It's utterly absurd and slightly creepy to suggest that that is "twisting them to my agenda".
Secondly, we are talking about relative numbers of trips made by car, public transport and, in particular, bicycle. So what's the point in referencing a stat that doesn't include journeys made by bike?
More generally, I really don't understand your opposition to encouraging journeys by bike. It's a win/win thing to do. It's great for that who would cycle if they could to be able to do so, and those who wish or need to drive get less congested roads to drive on.
as London shows when you have an integrated transport system people will use it. Although for some there's little or no public transport to integrate
DETROIT (AP) — Michael Andretti has a 21-year-old son with zero interest in obtaining a driver’s license. Rideshare apps get him where he wants to go.
In New Jersey, the 16-year-old daughter of a local short track racer took a five-minute driving lesson on a golf cart through their yard before turning over the keys. “That's it, I'm done. Don't like it,” Kat Wilson told their father.
The teenage rite of passage of rushing to the DMV on your birthday to get that plastic card that represents freedom has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Data collected from the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by Green Car Congress showed that in 2018 approximately 61% of 18-year-olds in the U.S. had a driver’s license, down from 80% percent in 1983.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nascar/2021/08/04/kids-and-cars-todays-teens-in-no-rush-to-start-driving/48148523/
That isn't going to go anywhere.
This is because driving is seen a right of passage and a life skill.
All the LiveOnABike* people I know (of varying ages) have a license.
*People for whom cycling isn’t just transport - it’s their sport, social scene. Often have multiple bikes.
Thinking about my parent's generation, getting a car for the first time was not just freedom, but a marker of having made it. Cars were a totem for Thatcher, hence that rather disturbing Happy Rishi photo yesterday.
Generations coming up don't have that same sense. At best, car use is a necessary chore which is partly necessary because of the effect cars have on communities. And those effects aren't desirable; see the way that townhouses in places where you don't need a car are more expensive than similar-to-larger houses in car-dependent suburbs.
As with some other things, I suspect the Conservatives have messed up pretty badly by cutting themselves off from the young, and then the middle-aged.
My village is 20 miles from the nearest A&E. To get there by public transport requires cabs. Cars aren’t going away here completely any time soon, but you can do live without a car quite happily most days.
That is some powerful messaging you have there young fella.
As for bikes, I have no qualms with having bikes as an option for those who want it and encourage that by building new roads to relieve traffic so that traffic calming and cycle paths can replace lanes meant for cars on old through roads. I have no objections whatseover to people choosing to cycle of their own volition.
I have qualms with people wanting bikes as the only or default option and having an anti-car agenda. That's every bit as absurd as having an anti-bike agenda.
I am pro choice. And I, like the overwhelming majority or Britons choose the car unless I'm using a bike for recreational purposes. But that's my choice, I respect others rights to choose differently and ask you to respect mine.
In the boondocks a) there are no ubers; b) the bus comes once a day; and c) you need to hire out Big Phil the taxi driver for that event you all want to go to weeks in advance.
But then again that is the choice to live in the boondocks, albeit it doesn't change the need to have a car (with eg designated driver) element of it.
It’s just that they also have lots of excellent segregated cycle paths to cycle on.
And lots of excellent pavements to walk on.
So cars don’t mix much with pedestrians and cyclists. And the cyclists are separated from the pedestrians.
Crazy idea, isn’t it?
Taking present day trends and projecting them way out into the future with the air of inevitability is the oldest trick in the book for futurologists but forgets that they can change shape, diverge, converge or even go into regression.
Your post is simply doubling down on your precious one with a few more capital letters. I want to own my own ride and have the convenience of it on my own driveway, ready for me whenever I like.
Yes, we can all exercise fantasies and imagination of what might be different in the future but what we're really discussing here is how smartphones have made the hailing of cabs in major cities and short-term car hire far more convenient than once they were.
That does not a revolution make.
I’ve been strict veggie / mostly vegan for over ten years, don’t drive, use public transport or walk to and from work, have flown once in the last decade, have solar panels, campaign on local and national issues, don’t use much energy in my house etc etc. But I also don’t make much money and am just one person.
I don’t have the soft power of the British state. It’s also important to recognise that British consumption (even if not creation of fossil fuels) is one of the highest on the planet and that our historical emissions debt is also very high as a country that industrialised early.
I don’t really understand the hostility people have to making the continuance of human civilisation a priority. What’s the alternative - enjoy the champagne as the Titanic heads towards the iceberg despite knowing the iceberg is coming? And occasionally also throw a life boat overboard because why should we be so negative as to assume we’ll need them.
Forgetting OGH Jr??
My market on your ban is 3-5 weeks.
The same, I am guessing, will happen here: as non-private driverless e-cars arise in the cities, many hicks, yokels, red-brick Barratt Home semi-detached house dwellers, and splenetic clodhoppers like @Casino_Royale, @malcolmg and @BartholomewRoberts will continue, doggedly, to use their funny tradtional "cars", like the ancient farmer of 1910 with his spavined old carthorse
Just a matter of time.
In 2005 82% of Britons had their drivers licence of 30-39 year olds had their drivers licence, that's 79% in 2019. Virtually no difference at all.
Rather than the UK following America here, Americans seem to be catching up with Britons with more Americans now learning to drive in their twenties as has always been the case in the UK.
Its part and parcel of adolescence lasting longer, people are taking longer to grow up and do the things that grown ups do like learn to drive, but they're still doing it - just many in their twenties (as has always been the case here, and is now the case in America).
No-one is going to volunteer to eat mung beans on toast forevermore.
The rest is our Judeo-Christian culture of publicly demonstrative self-sacrifice feeding through, which is mainly about abrogating guilt and social proof, and not a serious examination of solutions.
2019 figures for England & Wales
Towns 32.9M
Cities 17M
Most people are in towns but "miniscule minority" in cities is a Trump-level alternative fact.
There is considerably more population growth in the cities compared to towns.
Each "side" creates an extreme vision of the other side's world view which they then critique:
Thesis: Eco-warriors dream of a future where nobody is allowed to drive a car and we all travel around on bikes or subsidised public transport
Antithesis: petrolheads want a dystopian world where all journeys are in gas-guzzling SUVs along traffic choked multi-lane highways to vast car parks (i.e. small town America)
Synthesis: an increasingly urbanised population will gradually drive less and less, more public transport investment could accelerate this as could things like greater availability of ride hailing, a diminishing but still significant proportion of people will still rely on their own cars, and town and city centres may well become configured more for walking and cycling and less for traffic in future as has happened in many other European countries and already in several UK cities.
Most of us are multi-modal. I own 2 cars (an electric one for local shopping trips and a diesel for long haul), I walk to most places locally, I occasionally cycle though not as often as I'd like, and I take tubes, buses, trains and light rail to various places around town every week.
"Fewer and fewer young adults are learning to drive. In April 2021, the Guardian broke the story that the number of young adults with a full driving license has fallen to a recent low. In fact, there are 18% fewer teenagers with a license than there was ten years ago"
https://topicuk.co.uk/why-are-fewer-brits-learning-to-drive/
Snap out of it.
I gave my example. We have two cars. We don't need two but keep two for the occasional inconvenience of not having a spare car. Financially it makes no sense for us to have the 2nd car, but we don't give it up. Things will have to change a lot for us to do that and a driverless taxis alone is not the answer.
But that is not what either @leon or I are arguing. We are looking into a possible future where the convenience is so overwhelming that owning a car becomes equivalent to keeping a horse for personal transport. Nice to have if you are into cars/horses but less convenient than the alternative.
Until the bots take over.
It's should be "how can we make this safer?", not "who can I blame for this?".
E01011267 Leeds 009B 1,506 0.45 3,353
E01009561 Coventry 040B 1,723 0.51 3,353
E01006341 Wigan 040D 1,708 0.51 3,353
W01001666 Newport 010B 1,415 0.42 3,353
E01014351 Stoke-on-Trent 034C 1,344 0.40 3,353
E01029855 Tamworth 008A 1,492 0.44 3,354
Everyone has as exactly the same access as you do to information about climate change. And a large number of such people choose not to make the choices you have taken. You can say that they are ill-informed but that is counter-productive because then you set yourself up as an elite and no one likes those. So you need to bring people with you and shouting at them we're all going to die ain't (imo) the way to do it.
If you want to do the things you say you want then it is about baby steps and incentives and building on success. Having people in orange jackets lying down in front of lorries bringing you tins of tofu is going to be counterproductive because there is no over-arching power who will step in and make everyone "see sense" in your meaning of the word "sense".
It would be like asking you to give up all your international travel.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/07/29/britain-uk-carbon-emissions-compared-to-china/
He'll bring those newfangled US notions back with him.
- Those washing their car in their driveway on a Saturday morning.
Slightly disconcertingly for the blue meanies, apart from my Dad, I don't know anyone who does this now. Why bother when its a tenner at the local hand car wash?
Taxis already exist. Whether they're driverless or not, they're inconvenient and not of interest to all but a tiny minority. Making taxis driverless isn't going to change that fact.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/314898/share-driving-licence-holders-by-age-england/
The increase in total share of the population who have driving licences is driven by those passing into the 60+ cohorts. Very few of those born in 1905 still had driving licences by the age of 70, quite a lot of those born in 1945 did.
But the most recent figures have fewer twentysomethings with driving licences than seventysomethings. That feels significant.
(Must resist the temptation to say Boomer Bulge messing up the stats... oh dear, failed miserably there, didn't I?)
* Don't make a habit out of it.
Rishi is trying to sure up his base. His base largely drive cars.
This is the first good bit of political nous I've seen since his not buckling to strikes.
Your transport vision of the future sees us moving from spontaneous choice with our own vehicles to a far more centralised and controlled system with less choice and less freedom.
Proof that car is not what it once was.
Such as all figures have always in all years had fewer twentysomethings having driving licences than thirtysomethings. Lots of people only learn to drive in their twenties which has always been the case, something now being adopted in America as people are living 'at home' with parents for longer than used to be the case.
From 2005 to today almost all those lines (besides the anomaly of 70+) has flatlined.
Despite this, there is no way to walk or cycle to station from the town centre without crossing and then going down a major road. Roughly half a mile.
So even if you use public transport, the whole system is still set up for car owners. That's the culture we need to fight.
But then cantering a horse across green hills and through woods without having to worry about cars and roads and all that danger was surely wonderful, as well; but it disappeared, and progress had its way
It's only just started, then.
Just don't mention cash, or PR, and we'll be fine.
If posession of a car is a sign of having, in some sense, made it, having it as a source of pride to be cossetted is sensible. If it's a machine for getting around in (especially now the bodywork quality lasts better), why bother?
But it strikes at the heart of the gammonry whose self-image is bound up with their Rover 2000s and backless gloves.
He is pretty obviously friendly, unlike some dogs, and not that big, but if you are frightened of dogs that is no consolation, particularly if one barks at you. It is usually one bark and then a lot of friendly gestures.
Down below I said how often I see 'inconsiderate' drivers or cyclists. Let me put it another way: I perhaps see inconsiderate people 0.1% of the time. That means for 99.9% of the time I see considerate people.
Think about that for a moment: whenever a car stops to allow me to pull out of a junction; whenever a driver overtakes and leaves loads of room (whether I am running or on a bike): I am seeing considerate behaviour. It is massively common.
That's rather uplifting IMV.
See a well kept garden and a pristine Jag on the driveway?
You don't even need to bother knocking on the door.
But it is not a strategy for recovering from Lab 48%, Con 25%. It is not a strategy for regaining councils in the South. The notion that Oxford is suddenly going to start voting Conservative because Rishi doesn't like LTNs is for the Xs*. So is the notion that Tiverton & Honiton is going to swing back to Rishi because he doesn't like 20mph limits.
The Conservatives are going to be reduced to a rump of the East Coast, Outer Suburbiton, Continuity Red Wall and General Sir Bufton Tufton (Rtd) at the next election. This is a policy that appeals to all those demographics. It is not a policy that will win back the 48% who say they're going to vote for Starmer.
* formerly known as birds
What percentage of transportation across the UK was Uber?
Uber largely displaced older taxi services more than it displaced people owning their own vehicles.
Oh, and reversing cameras / sensors need cleaning occasionally as well.
Got to take the dog for a walk, so apologies if I don't reply for a bit.
And no, his proposed service is a driverless taxi. He just doesn't use the word taxi as he likes to pretend its some novel/futuristic invention.
Its about as good an idea as what3words.
I make it 2500 railway stations plus heritage lines plus systems such as metro or light rail. I have a light rail station just under 2 miles away which is 12-14 minutes on a bicycle, where previously I had no station for 30 years until the 1990s. I can either take the hack-bike and park it at the station, or (if and when I get one) take a Brompton and take it with me, or take the car.
I'd agree that approx 10% of villages have stations.
And proper funding of Local Authorities is a huge issue to be addressed - they have been salami sliced by about 1/3 to 1/2 across the country since 2010. These are decisions we need to make.
But I bet it will benefit the individual as well: owning a car is a hassle, you have to clean and maintain it, you have to pay tons for it, you gotta fill it up, insure it, MOT it, blah blah - and there is always the chance you will mow someone down in it, or get killed in it yourself by some other terrible human driver
That will all go. ALL of it. In the end we will wonder why we never did it before and the Age of the Car will be seen as an aberration
And you will get around just as fast: by autonomous e-cars. Indeed, you will likely get about faster as these machines will not get stuck in traffic jams: autonomous e-traffic will be all be smoothed out by a central computer so there is zero congestion, like wot they have in Singapore now
Firstly people will do what's in their own interest, as they should, not some ephemeral and supposed "societal" interest.
Car parks aren't horrible, they're practical and useful.
And as for going to fill up your car, maybe you've missed the fact that increasing numbers of people will be charging their car at home in the future? Why would I rely on a taxi, in order to avoid plugging my car into its charger dock that's already on my house, when I park it on my driveway?
E-cars are not instead of cars, they are cars, they just have a different motor. And yes they are the future. And yes, we will have them parked at our own home when we've not taken them out or are using them.
I use it a lot.
It's like growing all your own veg versus "just going to the supermarket". A few cranks will do it; most will shrug and say SUPERMARKET
https://datomni.com/blog/cohort-chart/
A stimulating debate
Later