I finaly snapped. After 15 years as a car owner i've said enough is enough, and got rid of my car!

The damned thing sucks money away and driving on the roads just isnt fun like on a race track, I usually drive reasonably powerful cars, my favorite car was an Alfa Romeo 164 with a 3 litre V6 engine - a wonderful beast that handled better than any other car i've ever driven. My last was a Saab, 2 litre turbo although aged a little it had some nasty turbo lag. I've had some light sporty cars too, even an NG TF Roadster once, though I only had it an hour and my brother begged me to let him have it.

On Monday I did the deed, I took my car to the scrap yard, got £20 for it and £80 for the wheels lolz. I've already saved £800 in car tax and MOT costs, and earned a £100 from getting it crushed!

This weekend i'll be getting a bicycle for the ocassional trip into the office or down to the shops, and I may (because I am moving to a village soon) get myself a moped for getting into town.

So that's it for me, no more car! The only time i'll get behind the wheel again is if I return to the race track, but more likely just in LFS.

So far i've not minded the loss at all, although I do want to go look at sofa's in a shop out in one of the villages - i'm going to go with my Mum tomorrow so that one is sorted.

So i'm pledging myself to a greener lifestyle for a few months to see how it goes, a combination of bicycle, train and where necessary taxi.

I'll post again to let you know how it went!

I applaud you, and I'd be exceptionally interested in seeing how things turn out Will things annoy you, etc.?

Nick Kew swears by this sort of living, but it'll be interesting in seeing a real person try it out

Ouch!
I bet you'll end up hating that when you're stuck on a bus with screaming teenagers playing crappy music way too loud on their phones, talking about mindless drivel in voices that make them sound even more stupid than they are.

I hate public transport and can't wait to actually get a car so I don't have to rely on other people's timescales and put up with the other people who use it. It might just be worse in this area, but it was the same in my home town and when I lived in Derby, so I'm not convinced.

I'm interested to see how the plan goes from the opposite perspective - keep us informed

Quote from Dajmin :

Ouch!
I bet you'll end up hating that when you're stuck on a bus with screaming teenagers playing crappy music way too loud on their phones, talking about mindless drivel in voices that make them sound even more stupid than they are.

I hate public transport and can't wait to actually get a car so I don't have to rely on other people's timescales and put up with the other people who use it. It might just be worse in this area, but it was the same in my home town and when I lived in Derby, so I'm not convinced.

I'm interested to see how the plan goes from the opposite perspective - keep us informed

I enjoy being on the bus with those type of people, it makes you realise how much of a nice person you are.

Good luck with your plans becky! Once your out in your little village you should get an old mod-style scooter covered in mirrors.

Woo! SCOOTER BUDDIES!

If that wont get you back in a car nothing will!

WoW £100 for a crushed "car" is not bad. Once you'll have a bike, watch out for the cars.

Nah being green, something what I'm not never gonna try out, at least when it comes to cars. I have started to feel angry when I read headlines like "going green". It is just that nowadays you can't be in this world without getting your eyes to some hippie talk. Almost every single newspaper haves some article about being green and how we are the cause of climate change with our CO2 pollution.
I'm pretty sure that CO2 isn't even the fooking reason for earth getting warmer, there's no real evidence, politicians just use this pseudo-science to get more votes and taxes.

Earth is not even warm yet, judging by how it has been even before human started polluting.

I understand that we pollute yes, but did you know that ~70% of CO2 is caused by nature?

But don't get me wrong. If you want live green, then do, it isn't a bad thing after all. At least you are saving money.

I bike to work and into town to the shops. MILES nicer than either a car or a bus, plus it's free, stops be being fat and is a lot quicker.

I'm somewhere in the middle really. I walk to work, I walk to my GF's, I walk to the local shop, I'll sometimes walk into town. But living in a fairly remote town, I have to drive to Plymouth a lot, and sometimes I get lazy and drive into town centre.

Easy to understand how people do it, I've in the last week paid out for tax, mot, insurance, repairs and had several Ford recall parts fitted. I did however get £60 back for scrapping my old 106, and that didn't have fancy wheels on it

Do let us know how it works out. It'll be quite interesting. It's a beautiful day today, and I drove to work with all the windows down and the warm fresh air blowing through the car. I would've gladly cycled or walked to work today if (a) I had anywhere to keep my bike at the flat, and (b) I didn't have an injured knee.

But come the winter and the cold, frosty, windy dark mornings and evenings, and I'd never consider anything other than the car.

So I'll be interested whether you can keep the no-car thing going after the summer too.

Quote :

I understand that we pollute yes, but did you know that ~70% of CO2 is caused by nature?

Aren't exhaust fumes carbonmonoxide not carbondioxide? Thus, why would car exhaust pollution be effecting the photosynthesis cycle anyway? I'm happy to accept the argument that global warming isnt human made, more than ready to as it goes, but I would rather stick to rellevent facts related to the debate - you crafty little politician you :P

Just use the best way to go afair amount of distance use a bicycle

It keeops you in shaape and its good for blood circulation when you put a fair amount of effort in it that is

Sop popel stop beighn so dam lazy end get urself a bike ride to work

As much as i love cars as much i hate speed limits of motorized vichecles on public roads
(wich my bike is not)
U could go 40KM/H on a 30KM/H raod without getting fined

Quote from Becky Rose :

Aren't exhaust fumes carbonmonoxide not carbondioxide?

No - cars with catalytic converters mostly emit carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Did you know that nature turns all that CO2 back to O again during daylight hours ? :P

No - mainly because it doesn't.

OK take your point on catalytic convertors Strobe, but maybe I just dont remember the lesson on photosynthesis too well, I was 11 or 12 or something at the time it was covered in school, but this diagram shows the process in daylight (I got that crossed coz i'm a muppet with zero interest in science.



On the original subject, i'm mostly giving up the car because of money and fitness. I used to be exceptionally fit and now i'm just exceptionally middle aged! I figured dying of a heart attach from over exertion is less embarassing whilst cycling than when doing something else! No really, I just want to be fitter again, I even started drinking more water and less coffee recently.

I do care about the environment, but at a more interpersonal level than greenhouse gases. I dont want to make a mess my neighbours have to clean up - but climate change is all a bit beyond me and the only way to get well informed is to learn about stuff I dont care about.

Well, keeping things even, I bought my first car two weeks ago having been cycling everywhere since, well, what feels like forever. I'm still generally cycling everywhere but bought a car for those few occasions where they come in handy, like when I want to travel more than 20 miles, when I'm not going somwhere alone, when I need to carry something larger than a bag of groceries, when I've got yet another bleedin' puncture, when you need to get somewhere FAST (and it doesn't involve going through the town centre), when I want to go to the gym (I'm not fit enough to cycle home after a proper workout - especially if I did legs that day, I can barely walk)... or when it's raining.

Busses are are false economy since they're a) slower the a bicycle for most short distance trips (especially through town) b) put out 150 times more emmisions that a car, so it's actually greener to drive alone c) cost more for a ticket than the petrol would to drive d) not regular enough e) generally full of scum. I see them as most useful when you're drunk, when driving becomes unacceptable and cycling becomes unappealing, but then there are taxis for such occasions (and so long as there are 2 or more of you, generally cheaper than seperate bus tickets). So in short, BAN BUSSES (sorry bladey).

Quote from Bob Smith :

Well, keeping things even, I bought my first car two weeks ago having been cycling everywhere since, well, what feels like forever. I'm still generally cycling everywhere but bought a car for those few occasions where they come in handy, like when I want to travel more than 20 miles, when I'm not going somwhere alone, when I need to carry something larger than a bag of groceries, when I've got yet another bleedin' puncture, when I want to go to the gym (I'm not fit enough to cycle home after a proper workout - especially if I did legs that day, I can barely walk)... or when it's raining.

That's great, you can come pick me up for the karting meet :P

well good luck with it becky,

Personally im young, getting to that stage where more and more long trips are needed, Busses really are total scum (here at least) especially at 3:30 - 4PM when i tend to have to head out somewhere!.

So for me im more going the opposite direction, Looking to ditch the public transport and be able to go places based on my time table and not the trains + Busses.

Quote from STROBE :

No - cars with catalytic converters mostly emit carbon dioxide and nitrogen.


No - mainly because it doesn't.

STROBE here said what I was gonna say.
But i'm gonna add that one of my points was that politicians and government keeps telling us that CO2 pollution is bad and is causing earth to get warmer and that's just not true.

Becky Rose, you're right with that carbon monoxide thing, it's far more dangerous than CO2 and that's one reason why I think it is rather stupid that government keeps taxing us by CO2 pollution.

And one thing, I have seen too many false documents about human creating CO2 "pollution" and getting earth warmer and at the same time I have seen enough documents about how that is false.

If I remember right, the theory about CO2 causing climate change was founded somewhere around 70's. And it didn't take long that it got proven wrong and a complete false theory, but politicians already had adopted that theory and they are using it still. That's one reason why there is going millions of euros to "investigation" of this "scientific fact". People even use climate change as a excuse of getting money support for their scientific research, when their project doesn't maybe have anything to do with climate changes. Government likes to pay money for getting more support for theory of CO2 and human causing earth to get warmer, but at the same time it is very hard to get any support for far more important projects.

The thing is that earth is maybe getting warmer and for now we can't do anything for preventing it happening.

Goddamn this is hard stuff to explain/wrote in English.

Quote from BigPeBe :

did you know that ~70% of CO2 is caused by nature?

Did you know that none of those 70% lead to an actual increase of the amount of CO2 in the air, because it is converted into biomass again? (Except maybe where forests are burned down by humans.)

Quote from BigPeBe :

And one thing, I have seen too many false documents about human creating CO2 "pollution" and getting earth warmer and at the same time I have seen enough documents about how that is false.

You seem to have enough expertise to see which documents are false and which are right. Yet you failed to see Becky's error in distinguishing between CO and CO2...

Oh, go on believing what you want to.
[/OT]

I have been car-less for 9 years now. Bike to work and shop, train or bus where practical, rented car otherwise. A rented car is more expensive per mile, but because you use it only when needed, it turns out much cheaper per year. (And you can adapt the car's size to what you need for the trip. And no worries about maintenance, tax, and insurance.)

Becky, think again about the moped. IIRC it's more polluting than a car, even if driven alone (dirtier fuel, no catalytic converter).

Good for you Becky. You'll save tons of cash.

I've never owned a car and propably never will. If I can't get to place B by foot, bicycle or skateboard, then I'll have to use public transports . I much more prefer other means of transportations over the public ones, but that's just because I hate people.


Aand about the pollution and such. With bicycle I atleast don't produce huge amounts of small particles into the air. If carbon mon/dioxides aren't worrying then at least the unnecessary particles in lungs are. Or at least they should be. So what if the average temperature changes, but what if lungs get sick prematurely?

If winsda has been carless for some years now, that offsets some of my cars! Now Becky is carless that offsets my racing.

Thanks guys. I'm now green again

I've probably done less than 1000 miles in a car in the last 10 years. I haven't owned a car since 1997, my girlfriend's got one I can use but I never have. I also live in the middle of town so I don't need buses or taxis to bookend a night out, and I work from home.

Quote from wsinda :

his post

I first thought I should reply but then I realized that it wouldn't be worth the effort.

I didn't post because I want to argue if things are true or not, or to make someone look stupid.

I don't need education for judging if those documents are real or not, I have my eyes and my brain. The main thing between these two types of documents, is that when they try to say us that we are causing earth get warmer, they don't really show us any real evidence that CO2 does that and that we are producing it enough for it being a problem. When I see documents what prevent that theory, I have seen some pretty good evidence about how CO2 doesn't have anything to do with it.
These first type of documents tend to show us diagrams about CO2 amount in the air from past 100 years, but documents preventing that theory like to show them from past millions of years.

Now I'm thinking why I wrote this, because there is always someone who has a good argument to make this look wrong.

I'm looking seriously into either a) ditching my car entirely and going with a bicycle/public transport or b) buying a motorcycle to use in the warm months and using my (paid off and fairly fuel-efficient) car in the snowy months when I move to Santa Fe later this summer.

I've been commuting 1:20 each day for the past 2 years and I'm so very sick of it.

Quote from wsinda :

(...)I have been car-less for 9 years now. Bike to work and shop, train or bus where practical, rented car otherwise. A rented car is more expensive per mile, but because you use it only when needed, it turns out much cheaper per year. (And you can adapt the car's size to what you need for the trip. And no worries about maintenance, tax, and insurance.)(...)

Thats no problem when you live in country without big hills
In my trip to Netherlands i enjoyed a lot riding in bike everywhere we needed to go in town, or catch the efficient train. Not like trains in Portugal which are crap, and we have a LOT of hills for daily bike lol.
Anyway... i enjoyed Netherlands:banana_ra