Car(e)less for a year

In January 2020 we noticed a problem with the brakes in our car, a 2006 Ford Focus Ghia. It seemed that as we would come up on a roundabout and touch the brakes they would work 9 times out of 10. But there was that 1 time out of 10 that the car would roll on still a little. We would stand on the brake and then let go and hit it hard again in panic. And then it would work. It was terrifying. We lost confidence in the car. That extra meter of rolling on is what could kill a pedestrian.

We brought the car for it's general service and to get this checked. The mechanic rang me later in the day to say he couldn't find anything wrong. When I went to collect the car that evening he had taken it out for another run and experienced what we had. He needed to think about it. He rang back a few days later and didn't think it was the brake pump. Something else. He reckoned it would cost about 800euro to get that fixed but there was no guarantee that this idea would fix the problem. He's a pretty decent mechanic and had served us well in the past so I trusted him. The NCT (national car test) was the following week and rightly they discovered this problem too and failed the car. We would need to get it fixed and repeat the test in a number of weeks. This was late February 2020. We didn't know what to do and we sat on things for a week or so. The cost of repairing this brake issue was looking like it would cost more than the car was worth. And this was probably the start of more things that could go wrong with our car. Our car was worth maybe 1000euro but worth a lot more to us. We didn't have raw cash sitting in the bank to go out and buy a newer second hand car. Getting a loan for a car was out of the question for me since I was deep in the MMM train of thought. We were debt free and intended to stay that way. We would have to procrastinate some more. I was getting the bus into the city anyway for work so the car could sit there another while. There was no urgency yet. We chanced the car once more and gently crawled to our local Tesco and did a big grocery shop.

March 2020 came. Covid-19 came. Friday March 13th came and work from home began. And soon Ireland went into full lockdown. No point moving our car if we couldn't travel more than 2km. The NCT centres were closed now too and we were still mulling over what to do. We pulled out our big backpacks and walked to the supermarkets. All the shops are in walking distance. We were very lucky.

After a few weeks we remembered that the car sharing company GoCar had a rather nice car parked at our local train station. We signed up, rented the car for 2 hours and did a big grocery shop again. All the heavy stuff. A few weeks later GoCar conveniently placed a van outside our local shopping centre. Serendipity. Now once a month we could walk the 10 minutes walk to this shopping centre, do the heavy grocery shop and have the van booked for when we come out with the shopping. Drive it home, empty it, drive it back and walk home. Just one hour rent. 13euro. Once a month. Not bad.

Our car insurance was expiring at the end of June 2020 and we made the decision to let our car go then. We had brought our baby daughter home in it from the hospital, terrified for all that journey that we were now responsible for this tiny fragile new human being. We had brought our doggie Renee home in it from the Dogs Trust as a manic "teenager". We had brought her on so many journeys seeking answers to her ill health. We had brought her on her last journey to the vet in it only a few weeks before.

Our car had unfairly seen more dog hair than most of its peers, choked on the smell of damp upholstery that a fresh-from-the-sea Labrador stretched out on it can cause. Never mind the smell of baby vomit. It had served us well for all the years. So reliable. It had seen lots of laughter and happy road trips through Ireland and France. We had a little cry as we watched it leave our estate on the back of the dismantler truck. We cried for Renee and we cried for the car. June 2020 was to be a month of goodbyes it seemed.

So now we were carless. It was July and we were allowed to travel between counties again. We booked a rental car in the airport to get to Cork at last to see my family and also to see friends in Galway. We got a spotless clean SUV with all the modern stuff. Everything worked perfectly. We could charge our mobiles and cast our iPhone maps app onto the screen on the dashboard. Very nice.

We hired another spotless clean SUV at Christmas and visited the folks again. In between we used GoCar for grocery shops and some trips to forests as restrictions allowed. We walked, we scootered, we got the bus, we got the train. We sat about and relaxed and we saved hard cash.

And now we are at the end of June 2021 and we are a year without a car. I honestly don't want to get another one but I don't know as society opens up again whether this will be possible. We have a child who will be invited to parties in places not easy to access by foot or by public transport. We have a puppy now that we will want to bring on exciting walks when she is old enough. GoCar won't appreciate the muddy artwork on the back seat. Will we feel stuck in our town when everyone is back whizzing about in their cars? It didn't matter during restrictions, we were supposed to stay local. We want to go back to France when "all this is over". The cost of camping and the ferry was something we always had to consider before, now we have to factor in the cost of a car solution for this trip.

Apart from savings we have made from the regular running costs of a car, I have felt a sense of relief not to be a car owner. Neither of us are very good at car maintenance. Every time something went wrong with the car I would get a little stressed. I really felt like you could just pick a random number out of thin air as to what it would cost to fix it. 350euro! 500 euro! Plus VAT! And thither went the cream of that month's income again, just when we thought we could have saved a little for once. The offending engine part might cost 10euro to buy but the labour could run in to hundreds. I've had a discussion with a friend and we agreed that it is actually impossible to be a car owner for less that 350euro a month. So few people think about this. There are so many costs beyond the obvious. What about depreciation? And if your car packed up tomorrow, like ours did, do you have the cash to buy a new one? You are always paying for the purchase price of a car, either in the form of a loan you are currently servicing or in the saving you should maybe be doing for the cash to buy your next car.

It's also nice not to have a car outside that needs to be cleaned and washed regularly. Don't need to check tyres, oil or water. Less jobs to do. And it is a relief not to worry about whether it will be stolen or broken into. Driving is also a dangerous thing, we are maybe a little immune to that but the more you walk or cycle, the more you realise this. When you walk along slowly and observe, you see the near misses, children whizzing along on their little scooters on tiny footpaths as huge cars go by so fast. You see all the roadkill at the edge of roads. You see how unwilling drivers are to slow down and let pedestrians cross a street. When you really think about it, it is shocking that we let so many cars and trucks through residential areas at 50km an hour (and hands up who honestly even adheres to that). Or let them sit in traffic in these areas, engines running and pumping toxic fumes out exhaust pipes into the faces of little children and dogs.

I am hoping we will find creative ways to avoid car ownership in the new world after Covid-19. In recent weeks Bleeper bikes have arrived in our town. We can cycle out of town now to a local organic farm for vegetables. We have a local bus service circling our town, we have a local bus service to the next town, we have a good train and express bus service to the city centre, we have GoCar and we can get a rental for extended periods and trips further afield. We are incredibly fortunate in this respect.

If I consider the 80/20 rule, 80% of the time in the world pre-Covid we definitely did not need a car. We made some silly trips. We foolishly drove to the school on rainy days, though the school is in walking distance. We would have been faster and had more fun walking and singing in the rain in "wizard" ponchos and wellies as we do now. Our daughter still got wet, because, of course, you are not allowed to drive your car right into your child's classroom. On those days we sat stressed (but dry, cosy and righteous) behind the steering wheel of our big metal moving monster, cursing other drivers and the traffic problem up at the school. Cursing vulnerable pedestrians and cyclists trying to get themselves out of the rain. They were in our way.

We had no business being there. We had no business doing a lot of our little trips around the town in the car. Driving over to collect our daughter from our childminder's home, driving round to Lidl for milk, bread and some apples. All 7/8 minute walks. Stupid. We had lost all sense. We were part of the traffic problem we bemoaned.

And we denied ourselves the opportunity to move our bodies, take in the sights, meet people along the way, have conversations, be in our community and relax.