Is it a right or is it a privilege to have a car ?

Depends on how you define necessary.

Perhaps if we work through an example that might be useful. My colleague is a duty social worker and number of times throughout the year will be called out during the night to attend a domestic situation where there is concern for the safety of a child. Even if the location of the call out were on a public transport route, at the time of night, the services simply aren't running. Due to the sensitive nature of the work, use of a taxi service isn't appropriate and given that there may be a need to transport vulnerable children neither is a bicycle.

What do you feel makes the ownership of a private vehicle and use in these circumstances immoral?

The same as it's your right to own a chair or a bicycle or pack of cards or a bar of chocolate if you have a legitimate means of purchase. There are a number of pieces of legislation associated with the ownership of a car such as the obligation for insurance, payment of duty, a duty of care regarding it's roadworthiness etc. Failure to meet these obligations can lead to a specific car being seized as a penalty. However, the ownership of a car is in no way proscribed.

Are rights defined by proscription or prescription?

Are all unbanned things a right?

I passed and got my Licence nearly 2 years ago. Have been saving for a car since but it only takes me 4mins to ride to work. I certainly have enough for a car now but still have not.
I've got a feel this money won't even go on a car in the end. Just a big luxury for me I suppose.

read on

read on

Same applies to mobile 'phones and washing machines
in my opinion

sofify

Idk if it's a privilege. I'd say probably. Because you need the financial ability to drive legally.

But because the Google English Dictionary says a Right is;

1. that which is morally correct, just, or honourable.
   
2. a moral or legal entitlement to have or do something.
   

I'd say once you fulfil the relevant requirements* you are legally entitled to do so. So it's a right.

*and you have the money

As for it being immoral... probably. But unless you have private health cover / financial ability to cover heath costs you can argue it's immoral to drink, eat unhealthy food or do any potentially dangerous / damaging activity (like non-essential cycling) as they are selfish unnecessary actions that result in a cost to society.

I used to drive my Uncles tractor when I was about 12 on private land

euphemism ?

Perhaps in that circumstance the vehicle is not a privately owned machine but a work tool for the social worker for such things.

Morality is subjective so its really just my opinion (as it is that morality is subjective).

The reason I hold this view is because of the harm drivers cause to other people from their filthy habit. Not just the damage they cause to people and property when they get it wrong but the severe harm to the air, the environment to everyones health including theirs and their passengers .

I understand that few drivers intentionally mean any harm. It more a cultural tolerance, a mass brainwashing where such views as mine are considered bonkers while driving is just what people need to do

That's pretty much how it goes, yes.

Read on to what?

You picked a poor point mentioning guns and the USA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGQaH3-LK54
)

Also you learnt to pass a test and then you continue learning how to drive on the road.

All this

Outside of London the infrastructure that was public transport can be near non-existent. Without a car my dear old mum would be pretty much house bound, no way can she ride a bike but she would fall far short of having an assessed mobility need. Her best friend, who is reliant on my mum to get about is a blue badge holder but cannot drive herself. It's not a right for her own a car nor is it a privilege, she could use mini cabs and trains so it's not even a necessity, she chooses to have one though because it provides her with a sense of independence to go where she likes when she likes.

When I think of this I see the car as both the problem and the solution kinda chicken+egg. A large part of why our public transport is non-existent or greatly impaired to the point it's unusable is the vast number of drivers both in that they have opted out of public transport and that they are taking up more physical space and so need more roads/space to facilitate them driving or the public transport suffers as they are forced to share the same amount of space. The demands or expectations that people who wouldn't have before should travel 100+ miles to work each day is entirely the result of now being able to by car. It's so ingrained in us by now that most feel it's a normal and acceptable way of life to wake up at 6am to be in the car before 7am and then return home around 9pm to eat a takeaway or ready meal before sleeping and repeating it again, before even getting onto the air quality and environment issues think of how much harm that lifestyle will do both mentally and physically to that person and then to the family they have but can only see on weekends. If a car was a person it's stockholm syndrome.

edit - should answer the question too

I think the ability to travel is a right and I identify a car as a means of travel but I feel the cost to the individuals taking part in no way reflects the damage done to others and so by essentially subsidising the car use of individuals with the health of everyone it has made the viability of cars for those individuals by far outweigh the cost. For the same reasons we all have a right to fly around in helicopters but we don't as it doesn't weigh up as a viable option. I also think that a means of travel means passenger, I don't think the right it's greatly diminished by not being the person with a foot on the throttle, in many cases suitable public transport would be acceptable imo.

I agree, @skydancer you're falling into that trap of treating the whole country as if it were all like North London. It's a dangerous fallacy.

I made this mistake when I lived in London I made a spur of the moment trip to visit my parents who lived near Cirencester. The closest rail station to that moderate sized town is Kemble, and I arrived a little after 7pm. Much to my surprise, despite their being further trains arriving later on, bus services had already stopped for the day, there were no taxis, the station was unmanned and there wasn't a public telephone. Nor was there any mobile phone reception. My only remaining option was a 4.5 mile walk, with luggage along a busy, fast major road in failing light. Fine for me but hardly an expectation that I would willingly place on anyone else. The alternatives, which would have mitigate that were either to not go or to have previously arranged for my parents to come and collect me, by car.

Laying this claim of immorality is all well and good where facilities, services and infrastructure are abundant but I don't think that castigating people living in the majority of the country is fair. If, for instance, someone lives out in the countryside away from any urban centre then, for the most part, a private vehicle is the only functional option for a lot of necessary actions for daily life. I don't think it's then reasonable that they are demonised for a "filthy habit" as soon as they cross the town line.

I agree absolutely that we need to get clear of our near absolute dependence on private cars. However, for many the challenges that they face are far higher than will be solved by the equivalent of a handful of segregated cycle lanes in Hackney. Until even a minimal functional infrastructure has been provided for everyone then I think you opinion on the morality of the majority is dangerously flawed. Perhaps take a step outside of your rose-tinted London bubble and see what transport challenges are faced by people actually living in towns and rural areas.

You are right @Clockwise and @The_Seldom_Killer. My comments should be taken with a pinch of salt. This is not an issue of individual morality since individuals have to make what they can out of the situation creating by repeated cutting back on the state offer to support peoples transportation, from Beeching through to Thatcher, Blair up to Cameron, all of whom contributed and continue contributing to creating a motor centric country. Even in London with what seems apparently significant steps forward in redistributing road space and creating more urban realm spaces. TfL hasn't actually gone as far as to really prioritise Cyclist and walkers at junctions like they do in North Europe, nor to take significant space from drivers to create the new cycleways, apart from the odd exception.

Very true about TfL, many of the cycle routes that are going in are little more than a trade off between losing an entire "car lane" to the vast number of cyclists commuting and so by shoving them into a 1/2 or even 1/4 lane wide cycle track they impose less on the drivers. In a couple of places I can think where the changes have caused conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists as neither path/track is wide enough(but they have maintained 4 traffic + 2 parking lanes for drivers). Not to say they are a bad thing but when they have sections that don't work well and the design is little more than filling the gaps between the 2 working sections then it should be explained how/why that crappy part has been made. One that springs to mind most is the less than 20m to get across 2 lanes of traffic to make a right turn from the cycle track around kennington park onto brixton road, the trial by fire learning path cyclists need to take part in to get used to the traffic light timings and develop an obscure solution to get across safely isn't how it should be designed. Ugh I could rant about some of this stuff for days.

I recently passed a driving test. Driving is shit, I now have earned the right to sit in a metal box that barely moves while watching people pedal past.

It's your right to choose to do journeys using a wholly inappropriate mode of transport. This is not specific to motor vehicles.

We don't own a car (we live in London and have one child, the vast majority of our journeys can be done on foot/bike/bus/train) but there are some where it is simply easier to rent a car (probably 6-10 times a year maybe). Much as I don't mind walking it's nicer, faster and often cheaper to get to my brother's house in a Hampshire village by car than any other method (train/taxi, no buses, walking the 7 miles from the nearest station, etc).

I don't get the vehement anti-motoring argument. It doesn't seem any different from the people who think that bikes should be outright banned.

The bigger debate (in my mind and probably town/city centric) is whether it's a right to be able to park your car on the road near your house.

The bigger debate (in my mind and probably town/city centric) is whether it's a right to be able to park your car on the road near your house.

Not a fucking chance - that is indeed a rare privilege.

I don't understand this thread at all. I don't get why people aren't being more emphatic! Have you all drank the cultural tolerance kool aid that @skydancer is talking about? He's spot on but even he is saying to take his own views with a pinch of salt!

You can argue why cars are needed all you like - crap public transport, rural necessity, independence for people who would otherwise not have it, all valid arguments sure - and blame politicians for the mistakes of the past (and present) but none of this changes the facts: through any objective lens cars are unsustainable, evil things.

They pollute the environment, kill people - both directly on the road (between 1951 and 2006 a total of 309,144 people, plus 17.6 million injuries in accidents on British roads) and indirectly through air pollution. They have a wider significant effect on public health as significant contributors to obesity, heart disease, diabetes and so on. They discourage people from choosing environmentally friendly forms of transport such as cycling or walking. They cause massive noise pollution and kill animals. They are still largely dependant on fossil fuels.

So yes, of course it's a privilege.

There is some good news I guess: driverless cars will result in far fewer preventable incidents, emissions from modern cars are falling all the time and young people are buying fewer cars:
http://cityobservatory.org/young-people-are-buying-fewer-cars/

Modern society is full of things that are utterly insane to be legal when you think about them in isolation.

Cars, alcohol, tobacco, cheap airline flights, bonkers walk up train fares, etc, etc.

Society would not cope well with a sudden outright ban on any of the first 3, but they'll (hopefully) dwindle over time with the slow pressure of Government policy, societal changes and technological advances.

You can argue why cars are needed all you like - crap public transport, rural necessity, independence for people who would otherwise not have it, all valid arguments sure - and blame politicians for the mistakes of the past (and present) but none of this changes the facts: through any objective lens cars are unsustainable, evil things.

The point isn't that these things magically make cars sustainable and good. It's that at the moment we're currently operating under the legacy of our own history. Waving your arms and shouting the effects of cars on our society and environment doesn't in itself change that we have inherited the burden of cars not as a functional choice but as a functional necessity. Demonising cars is effectively demonising car owners and users. Be in light of that necessity, that isn't really a fair application of morality. That morality really does vary depending on where you live and what you do. It's a spectrum not a binary.

The effects of cars absolutely should guide how we make decisions about the design and implementation of infrastructure, both future and remedial. But until we address this legacy we've inherited, then blanket demonisation is frankly ridiculous.

As for rights and privilege, those isn't thing that will change. Until cars are proscribed, then the right of ownership remains as it does with any other physical object. Until the methods of licensing are changed, the system privilege to operate a car will continue as it does today.