Stop Owning a Car
Owning a good car is a great joy and they are pretty useful. And they are needed by people and businesses for a variety of tasks like transferring goods, deliveries, vacations, and moving families. In some countries, houses, and shops are far away and it’s impossible to go without a car. But we have reached a saturation point where endless usage of cars has resulted in various negative effects in our society. Today, it’s not necessary for residents of several places to own a car because there are affordable alternatives. Here are a bunch of reasons why you may not need to own a car.
Cars are Costly — Owning a good and reliable car is a big expense. You have to pay for ever-increasing fuel costs, inadequate parking, expensive parts, costly servicing, and high insurance payments. It’s more economical to rent a car by the hour or take a taxi for your travel needs.
Owning a Car is Inefficient — A car is an inefficient and depreciating asset. Most personal cars in the world are parked most of the time. Except for the top management most ordinary employees will not get parking in their offices. Nowadays, many top companies provide subsidized company transportation like buses to pick up and drop off employees at convenient locations. The question you should ask is — why should you own a car that costs hundreds of dollars a month only to spend 90% of its lifetime sitting outside your house or in a garage?
No parking space — There are nearly 1.5 billion cars in the world today. And new models are being released every month. This has caused a lot of problems, the biggest one being parking. Millions of square kilometers of real estate are needed to park the cars. Gardens and trees are being destroyed to convert the land into parking. Streets are clogged up with parked cars, and properties are converted to extra parking spaces. Parking problems cause frustration, road rage, and stress for drivers. If people didn’t own so many cars, we wouldn’t have such parking headaches.
They are a health hazard — Countless people around the world live in areas with poor air quality caused by pollution from vehicles. Running your car involves the burning of fossil fuels that emits plenty of harmful gases that destroy our environment. More than half of the world’s air pollution is caused by vehicles. There will certainly be a big difference if many people would start reducing their car usage. Also, frequent driving is bad for our health. Driving is also linked with various health issues including obesity, stress, insomnia, and heart disease.
Ride sharing is more cost-efficient — App-based ridesharing like Uber, Lyft, Ola, etc., make travel easy and stress-free. Plus you’ll only have to spend money when you need a ride. Such services are a great mobility innovation because it reduces the number of personal vehicles in the city and also meet people’s demand for travel. But with your car, you have to take the trouble of driving and finding suitable parking wherever you go.
Running costs — Think about the repair and service costs. Plus there will be regular expenses for new batteries, tires, plastic parts, etc., that are not covered by insurance. And if there are accidents you will incur more expenses as not every damage is covered by insurance.
Parking anxiety — This is big stress if you’re living in the city. In some cities, it is impossible to find a single parking even if you go round and round.
Towing and parking ticket anxiety — This is another headache if you find some parking that is not a parking area. The police will tow your vehicle away and you will have to pay hefty fines and waste time to get it released. Even if you find some good parking there will be parking fees in many areas that will keep bleeding your purse.
Some Famous Quotes
We aren’t addicted to oil, but our cars are –James Woolsey
A car is like a mother-in-law; if you let it, it will rule your life –Jaime Lerner
A long drive alone in a car proves straight away, you are facing the essence of boredom.
The car was invented as a convenient place to sit out traffic jams –Evan Essar
Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly.
Faster roads are not always the safer roads, and virtually all societies, democratic or authoritarian, prefer safety over speed, even if many of their citizens enjoy fast driving.
One way to solve the traffic problem is to keep all the cars that are not paid for off the streets — Will Rogers
There is no magical solution because urban traffic congestion arises from the fact that a lot of people want to be in the same place at the same time often — William J. Mitchell
If I complain about a traffic jam, I have no one to blame but myself — Steve Wynn
✅ Thanks for reading.
~ 🤵 About the Author — Thejendra Sreenivas was a Technology Manager in the IT industry for nearly 30 years. He is now an Author and Book Publishing Coach and helps authors to Self-Publish their books Worldwide on Amazon and Non-Amazon retailers. He has written 30+ books on various topics. Visit his online cave — www.thejendra.com for more details.
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