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It would be good if there was just a standard range of cars (perhaps a communism state type of car). That would stop them being status symbols, you need an estate car, you get THE estate car, need a hatchback, you get THE hatchback etc. Remove the cult of cars.

Depends where you live. Not everyone lives in cities or places well served by public transport.

Whilst this is true, many people live in such places by choice - a choice that is facilitated and to some extent legitimised by the ubiquity of private motor vehicles.

Much - probably the majority - of the traffic blight suffered by residents of London is caused by people who choose to live 'in a lovely little village in Kent', but drive to work in New Cross.

If the right to drive in London was restricted to people who live in London, it would be a much better place.

Any ideas how to do this in more persuasive, less disagreeable ways?

You basically can't while you are up against the marketing budgets of the car manufacturers. Needs banning like tobacco advertising.

In London, the majority of driver still use their car for trip under 3km/day.

Not everyone lives in London ;)

When I moved back to London after a year away, I sold my car within 6 months as it was pretty much useless. bought another one later on though... I last lived in the UK in Surbiton and worked near Heathrow. 16 miles and I either rode to work or drove as public transport was a bastard. Three buses at least and the best part of two hours each way including waiting for buses. Sure, I'd chosen to live there but you can't move every time you get a new job.

If the right to drive in London was restricted to people who live in London, it would be a much better place.

Would be awkward for trades. I live in Barnet and any builder/roofer/plumber/etc lives in Hertfordshire and drives in.

We just need road pricing, that makes people think a bit harder before driving half a mile to pick up a newspaper.

For what it's worth, the concept of buying oversized luxury cars to give off an air of success and then replacing them on a regular basis is hideous on almost every level.

Would be awkward for trades.

I know, but that's part of the problem.

When I were a lad, tradespeople lived in the community they worked in. Now, for a great many reasons, they all live in Kent.

One of these reasons is the existence and popularity of the Transit van. Witness at A2 on any given morning.

Ultimately, if we're serious about saving the planet, we need to redically change the way we organise our lives, and commuting vast distances so you can live in a tudorbeathen village has to end.

A guy I worked with in Australia had a company Merc which got stolen around the time he stopped working with us and sort-of-retired. When he went to get a car for himself he realised that a luxury car was a waste of money so bought a 2nd hand car. He said that in retrospect he'd wasted a ton of money on a succession of fancy cars over the years.

I totally get the point about apparently taking aim at "aspirational" cars. I wish the point could be clearly made that this is not about aspiration (if you want to gold-plate your Tesla I don't give a shit). It's about a basic minimum expectation of acting as part of a society when using a public resource (the highway) and interacting with your fellow citizens (which all travel involves as it's inherently a public activity). SUVs (and I'm largely talking about urban use here) are just shit on every level: safety, emissions, space etc. etc. and the justifications are all crap: everything you can do in an urban SUV can be achieved more cheaply, equally safely, and in just as much comfort in a standard estate car (and I particularly hate the "they make me more confident in traffic" line, as if that isn't obviously starting a size-based arms-race for safety on the roads). They are purely about putting your own comfort and/or self-aggrandisement over the wellbeing of others and the planet and should be called out as such...

...but more importantly, they should be legislated against.

More emissions are (generally) released during manufacture than will be generated by the vehicle in it's lifetime, for example.

Do car share schemes help with this? I don't know the numbers but presumably each Zipcar (or similar) replaces more than 1 owned car. That gets cancelled out if they up the numbers for ease of use though.

Also leasing instead of owning - I know in some sectors this is seen as a critical move towards a functioning circular economy, but only if the leasing company genuinely retains the resource value of the things they take back. Needs both cultural and legislative change to work.

move the journey itself from car to train, rather from old car to new car.

Spot on, it's actually better to keep your existing car than to buy a new economical one that's better for the environment as we're only contributing to the increasing number of cars on the road and thee enviromental cost of building new cars.

I and my partner thought about getting a new car (she drive) that does slightly better mpg and better torque with much better safety feature but realised it's more economical to keep using our old Ford Fiesta from 2014 even if it mean we have to make several attempt to go up a 30% hill.

I’ve been near a foot of snow on the A9 in June in the last couple of years.

It might not last long but outside the central belt it can get pretty fucking touchy on the snow front, ice is an issue also.

It's very easy for someone to say "you're just envious of others success" when you target large and expensive cars.

If your the kind of person that would make this sort of disingenuous argument you’re just as likely to moan that you’re targeting working people just like the insulates Britain protests, if you take a different approach.

You’re never gonna win the argument with these people and it’s pointless trying to.

I think reducing car use in general is a more long term problem.

There is a (different) short term problem that SUVs are massively popular all of a sudden:

SUVs accounted for 21.2% of total vehicles sold in the UK [in 2018], up from 6.6% in 2009 and 13.5% in 2015.

This has driven emissions up overall despite most cars getting more efficient.

There is no way that in the last 10 years there's suddenly been some change in people's transportation needs that means SUVs are now necessary for 21% of people instead of 6.6%. It's utterly bonkers that we've allowed our CO2 emissions (and possibly ped. deaths) to increase no reason other than... fashion?

I guess the protesters targeted SUVs for this reason, as opposed to targeting cars in general

School run for is is either 20-30 by car or 3 buses and well over an hour.

It's only 8 miles but Belfast bus routes are weirdly connected.

Many of my colleagues have two cars due to sharing schoolruns among them one morning run, the other does the afternoon run.

Commute: 25 by bike or car, well over 45 by bus. So I cycle... :)

Some of my colleagues would swap cars for e-sooters I rather see them cycle but I guess it's better than one car with one person in it.

No need to take time to shower and when cycling you often have to.

Our car is a dinky old petrol Hyundai sure a modem hybrid be better...but I don't have £ to burn and it's still functioning.

Technically though I should change it if I want to be "good" like...owning an SUV ;)

School run for is is either 20-30 by car or 3 buses and well over an hour.

School run is a massive contributing factor to the traffic in London, which get alarmingly better during school holiday.

i am here to say that i love @Jingle_Jangle

And the discussion should be how do we effect modal change- move the journey itself from car to train, rather from old car to new car.

If you're worried about putting off Daily Mail types, telling people to use bus/bike/train is far more alien than suggesting people buy more sensible cars, given how car dominated/dependent most of this country's built infrastructure is.

fashion

Big part of the problem

i am here to say that i love @Jingle_Jangle

I aim to please.

I have a Toyota RAV4 SUV I need a largish hatchback for my work/dog/unusually tall family. It was the lowest emission car available at the time, it’s also a foot shorter than the Skoda estate it replaced because of the short but tall packaging of SUVs.
All SUV drivers buy them for ego, all cyclists jump red lights etc.

See also wood burning stoves in cities

SUVs (and I'm largely talking about urban use here) are just shit on every level:

Chris Harris of that motoring programme had a fantastic long form of your post in regards to the stupidity of SUVs.

There’s definitely a distinction between actual utility vehicle (comment up thread about a pick up on a farm?) and what most people actually use a motor car for.

I am a polluter: ironically purchased a car to get to cross races, now use it for visiting grandparents etc.

The cargo bike dream is just that though for nursery drop off - I don’t feel safe enough on the roads of zone 6 to risk it. If I can’t face it, how can we convince others to switch from the car?

...but more importantly, they should be legislated against.

Perhaps we can legislate towards greener choices, how many years would it take to switch the road mentality through education to respect ‘the lesser’ road user more?

Don't start, my neighbours are the worst.

I don't know the numbers but presumably each Zipcar (or similar) replaces more than 1 owned car.

Yes, Zipcar definitely results in a net lowering of cars. There did publish some research (obviously in their favour so no idea how factual it was) on this the other year.

Zipcars are mostly used for random shortish journeys where other things are far less practical.

Commuting in a Zipcar would be prohibitively expensive as the vast majority of them can't be used for point to point trips, so you'd need to be hiring it for a full day (8h is roughly the same price as 24h in Zipcar's pricing) with it sitting unused at your work for 7.5h or that.

Also family car use changes over time. We quite happily got by with no car for the first 6 years of MiniGB, using rentals or Zipcars for holidays or random journeys. But with changes in what we do, and specifically what MiniGB has become interested in, we have chosen to facilitate this using a car.

Often the reason to default to a car is time. It's often, by far and above, the quickest way to do a particular journey (as long as you don't go into central London).

Sure I can take my daughter to her half term cricket camp 4 miles away (as the crow flies) on public transport, but it would be nearly a 2 hour round trip by train/bus/etc, impractical if I'm working. Yet it is only a 25 minute round trip by car. She's not up for cycling there and back otherwise we'd do that.

20 miles in the car is ~£8 (at 40p a mile once you consider petrol, insurance, wear and tear, etc). No chance of doing the 4 journeys required for £2 each in an Uber. If we timed it right I might be able to do it for £4 each way in a Zipcar assuming I can guarantee to get it done in 30 minutes, otherwise it's an hour booking and that's £16 a day minimum.

Of course, we could try and find something a bit more local but we've chosen not to do that. We've chosen to keep her at the club where there's some family history, where she knows and enjoys playing, and where the standard of coaching is excellent.

Give it another year or so and she'll be happy going there and coming back on public transport on her own, and so we don't need to rely on a car for that. But my point is that there's a small window of a couple of years where using a car is, annoyingly, the easiest option for us in this specific situation.

Also good as the garage has said our car won't pass its MOT next year so we'll be getting rid of it, with no plans to replace it. We're already grandfathered in to Zipcar with no annual fees (we were early members of Streetcar which they acquired) so that and rental cars will do what we need.

Reducing the dependencies on cars needs this country to do a whole bunch of things it's been protecting car drivers from for years:-

• Reinstate the fuel duty escalator so that motorists aren't subsidised as much
  
• Increase VED rates
  
• Increase on-road parking costs for new permits
  
• Decrease numbers of on-road parking spaces
  
• Improve public transport so that it is a viable alternative and reliable
  etc
  
  

None of which are general vote winners so none of them will ever really happen.