Life without the car from monday.

[Chris-H]

Well done for having the courage to ditch the car! I'd love to as all it does is eat and drink money, but the wife and kids might moan...

Keep us up to date with how its going; maybe do a blog/vlog?

Will certainly keep you all updated with the progress.We will bbe keeping the car on the drive just in case things dont work out but only untill the end of January,on monday it will be put on sorn,the insurance and breakdown cover will be cancelled and it will have a cover thrown over it.
If by the end of January we still find we are coping without it then it will be sold and i will buy myself and the wife a new bike each
Hav'nt told our 2 lazy teenage daughters yet they are away on holiday

 

[400bhp]

I would personally keep the breakdown, tax and insurance cover until it is sold. You just never know.

 

[smokeysmoo]

I would personally keep the breakdown, tax and insurance cover until it is sold. You just never know.

+1 for at least the insurance, if something did happen to it your new bike fund would be goosed

 

[400bhp]

And, don't just leave the car sat on the drive. Drive it for 30 mins or so once a week.

 

[al78]

I was thinking of selling my car when the VED is due at the end of February. I'm currently minimizing its use until then to see that I can get through a winter with just a bike as transport (with the exception of giving it a run once a fortnight or so). I've worked out that the occasions where a car is essential are so few and far between that I could just hire one in those cases. The only issue is that riding a bike day after day after day after day is going to take its toll on me eventually, it shouldn't do but occasionally I do get these run down feelings where every ride feels like a huge effort, and there is no public transport option to get to work.

 

[cloggsy]

It might be more trouble than it is worth keeping it; you may as well get it sold than leave it to rot on your driveway...

I don't know what car it is, but £100 to X x thousands of pounds will be better in your bank account than sat on your drive won't it?

 

[Little yellow Brompton]

I sold my car 2 weeks ago. It It feels [strangely?] liberating. I'm a big petrolhead and it was my pride and joy.

However, it has been sat on the drive more and more over the last 18 months. IIRC I had driven 2k miles over the last year and certainly in the last 2-3 months of ownership it was only driven to a mechanics for work to be done on it.It was costing upwards of £2k p.a without the accelerator pedal being lifted and ignoring depreciation.

I found that driving was becoming less enjoyable, more crowded, less free. I'd often wish I had taken the bike.

We still have a car in the family, for one my wife needs it for her work.

Cycled 15 miles this morning down the Trans Pennine Trail with my daughter in a bike seat, to have breakfast with my mum. The freedom the bicycle appears to give is very nice.

Liberating is exactly how it feels. This is from someone that was involved in motorpsort at an international level for over 30years. It'#s a wonderful feeling and it's only family circumstances that have drawn me back in, and even now I feel the morass dragging me deeper and deeper into dependancy! :-(

 

[Chris-H]

The insurance and breakdown cover is costing us 50 odd quid a month alone so to be paying that with the car being idle would be a waste,theres no issues with anything happening to the car to have to make a claim,we're lucky enough to have an off road driveway behind a heavy set of farm gates and hidden by our hedgerow,plus we live out a bit in the sticks so could pretty much say theres no risk of anything happening to it.
I do all my own maintenance and repairs so if in 3 months time it was to go back on the road then it would only take an hour tops to have it ready,quick phone call and its insured then straight online and its taxed.After January it'll either be sold or back on the road.

 

[Cycletrax]

+1 for it being liberating, we,ve ditched two vehicles in the last year and have not owned a car for 6 months now and can honestly say that upto date, we have not missed it one bit. And more then ever it made us both realize just what a slave we were to it. For us the negatives far out weighed the positives of owning a car. What we have discovered is that we look after/clean our cycles a lot better then we looked after the cars.

We are geographically close to everything we need, work 0.3miles,doctors 80 yards away, hospital 0.3miles, Shopping facities 0.5 miles, City centre 0.8 miles, my beloved football stadium 0.2 miles, DIY shed 0.2 miles in fact the furthest we need to go is 1.8miles to our allotments.

Its amazing the reactions we got from some of our freinds/family etc when they discovered we dont drive anymore, "How do you get your shopping now", "what if its raining when you go to work", I even had my best mate pull me to one side "mate if you need to borrow a bit of cash to buy a cheap 2nd hand car, you know you only have to ask" which was nice, but made me laugh when next time he came to my house I brought down £5k cash, to show him I,m not skint and that I really dont want to drive anymore. Which to my mind shows how much it is instilled in us that we must want to have a car. No upto now We,re doing fine using our "Push Hogs" and our, "Shanksy,s Ponies" thankyou...

 

[jig-sore]

well done to anybody who gives up their car.

however there is an alternative if you find the "need" to go back... moped/motorbike.

50cc -125cc bikes only cost £16 a year tax. my 125 will do 90mpg and is only costing 20 a month insurance despite having not yet built up any no claims.

i know i should be 100% behind cycling but it's worth knowing the facts

 

[DiddlyDodds]

After a lot of thought and consideration after monday we will be ditching the car and seeing if we can live without it.

More room on road for me in my car then.

best of luck , i did it for 2 years and in the end got sick of delayed and cancelled trains , cold winter days in traffic commuting and instead of thinking " i will just nip over to ..." having to decide how long it would take on the bike , and what time i would get back , the weather and what i needed to cary etc ,,,


Thank god for Cars and bikes ,, i love em both and god help anyone who tries to take one of them off me.

 

[biggs682]

on average we only do about 70 miles a week in ours and if i had my way it would be far less .

 

[Bluebell72]

I drive too far for work to do it, and my OH also has a van for his job.
But this fortnight we've had both our cars MOT'd and taxed, it sure mounts up.

I have really tried to do more 'social' journeys on my bike this summer and keep a tally of the mileage, and was amazed - 2 trips to corner shop a week, 3 trips to see the in-laws, 1 to my sister, 1 to the library and swimming baths, once a month to hairdresser. None of these trips need panniers, and I worked out that over the year, that is about 3400 miles.
Don't want to think how much that costs in diesel, but it's better off in my pocket!

 

[betty swollocks]

I ditched my car twenty five years ago.
Incredibly liberating.
On the rare occasions I require one now, I rent one.

Good luck and enjoy.

 

[Chris-H]

I have to admit that at the moment i do have reservations every now and then which is the reason we're goingto keep the car before deciding its fate.The thought of having to ride into town in pouring rain is'nt too appealing but we do have a bus stop at the top of our road,i hate public transport but i'm sure i'll get used to it if need be