car_ownership.html

---
title: On car ownership
description: Is car ownership a good idea?
keywords: car ownership, car, cars, cost, costs, car costs
layout: hh
---

<p><img src='picture/photo/luxembourg/avenue_de_la_liberte.jpeg' width='244' height='184' alt='Avénue de la Liberté, Luxembourg' title='Avénue de la Liberté, Luxembourg' style='float:right'>

Car ownership is a con. <strong>You may have thought that</strong> 
running a car is cheaper than using public transport; that owning a car is totally liberating; that you have a <i>right</i> to endanger other peoples’ lives, especially pedestrians’ and cyclists’; and that you have a <i>right</i> to damage the environment <strong>without ever questioning</strong> whether this is in fact true.</p>

<h2>Hidden costs</h2>

<p>It is unlikely that you have thought about</p>

<ul>
<li>exactly <strong>how much money you spend</strong> each year on fuel, 
depreciation on the value of the car, insurance, road tax, services, repairs, accessories, …</li>

<li><strong>how liberating it really is</strong> to sit in traffic jams, to 
look for parking spaces, to risk road-rage, to abstain from alcohol and not to get enough exercise</li>

<li><a href='http://www.multimania.com/hadwe'><img src='picture/photo/luxembourg/judith.jpeg' width='150' height='198' alt='Judith on the road' title='Judith on the road' style='float:right'></a><strong>how many people are killed</strong> or injured every day, not by cars;
but <strong>by people driving cars</strong></li>
</ul>

<p>I just thought I’d mention it.</p>

<p>Ben Elton puts it differently in his novel <em>Gridlock</em>, as does André Gorz in his 1973 essay,
<a href="http://unevenearth.org/2018/08/the-social-ideology-of-the-motorcar/">The Social Ideology of the Motorcar</a>.</p>

<p><em>1998</em></p>