Are you going to be priced off the roads?

[Scotty1.7]

Witht he rise in Fuel cost, Repair costs and then the Insurance costs, How many of you are close to being literally priced off the road?

I'm expecting to be very close this year dependent upon the renwell cost for the Puma.

Currently working on about £250 (1/4 of my pay) a month just to keep the Puma going in fuel, Insurance and poss repairs.

How about everyone else?

 

[crispy1980]

this is a very real possibility for me at the moment as my puma may be going soon as the insurance has gone daft.ok we have another car between us so not exactly off the road, but its the first time we will only have one car between us since we have been together ( 9 years ) and ive only ever been without a car for a few months in my 14 years of driving.

 

[JonB]

I need to drive to get to work, so no vehicle = no money.
The real question is probably more like "Are you prepared to drive illegally due to financial reasons?" and I would rather not answer that on a public forum.

 

[martinthrapston]

and this is the reason people drive without insurance,being ripped of by the goverment on fuel prices and insurance fat cats who charge what ever they want too

 

[warrenpenalver]

driving illegally raises the cost for all motorists so its actually a false economy. even from the individual point, there are now too many ANPR cameras and ANPR cars on the road and the ANPR network is growing rapidly to get away with it long term without getting caught or going to stupid lengths to drive backward routes to avoid fixed cameras.

the arguement of "so what if i get caught" doesnt hold water unless you totally give up on society. You work for a living and your fines WILL be high. Also refusing to pay them will mean they will take it from your wages on a court order, take property from your house and when the figures get high enough, take your house if you have equity. All without having to go bankrupt and all on a court order. Oh plus eventually they will imprison you for contempt of court, plus if you keep getting caught take and crush your cars and lock you up for the driving offences....

so the only way to "get away" with it is to become a scum benefit scrounger. Do it properly and they wont get more than £5 a week off you and the once every 2 years prison sentance of a month or two will reset all the fines to zero allowing you to start again. That is how petty criminals continue to survive in the UK. You deliberately choose not to have a bank account and the benefits agency will give you an "emergency giro" (yes despite its deliberate and not an emergency) of which they can only take £5 a week in fines. Then you will live in a house you rent off a social landlord/council with your teen pregnancy slut missus with multiple kids. Then the court appointed debt collectors wont be able to take anything as its not yours, its hers. Plus they cant force her door to take items anyway so she can just tell them to f*ck off when they knock anyway...... your income would be limited to £26k under new rules but that wouldnt stop you claiming DLA for a "having to do an honest days work activated" back problem. plus of course you will obviously commit other petty crimes and work cash in hand to fund a decent lifestyle. And then you will laugh all the way to the bank at the "stupid people" who work for a living.

so no, for someone with any sense of moral fibre, driving illegally isnt a viable option.

 

[warrenpenalver]

oh and on the original question of getting priced off the roads....

my car is a toy, i dont really need a car for work, nor will i for the type of work i plan to do as i will have company/and or expenses covered.

being a toy, the fuel would have to be 10 times the price it is now to make it not worth driving.

that simply wont happen in our lifetime without it causing massive civil unrest and governments of certain western nations taking "direct" political actions to keep things sane oil price wise. And yes that probably means war.

Why do people think we still have an interest in iraq, libya, nigeria etc yet dont give a shit about the rest of africa?? thats right .... black gold. Wouldnt surprise me if certain agencies are giving indirect assistance to uprising leaders across the middle east. Its in our financial interest to have them on our side and preferably total destruction of OPEC. A considerable western political bias in OPEC is a worth while second prize though.

yes its selfish but i dont doubt for a second that our western nations are willing and will do anything to secure affordable oil even at the expense of others, for the forseable future.

in the short/medium term when it starts to seriously impact economies is when the governments will do something and the rises will plateau. Its all about supply and demand really (its obvious) and as pressure and laws force us ordinary folk into shit eco cars the demand from the west will drop hence dropping the price. The main thing to screw it up is the growth of the far east, specifically china which i suspect america and other states will when necessary start messing with the global markets to disadvantage the chinese and slow their growth in many ways. Lets just hope for our sakes that we havent left it too late and china is too powerful to be slowed....

erm ok.... bit of a diversion into how it will effect the world rather than me...

ok id probably end up with 2 cars, so more motoring for me. A diesel runaround run on biodiesel for daily use and the toy for weekends/fun. The price of vegetable and waste vegetable oil will not keep pace with diesel costs as its approaching the point where its priced now to discourage car use is almost becoming dangerously harmful to the catering industry and eventually it would force the government to investigate price fixing to help the catering industry. Might mean we loose or get more restrictions put on the use of vegetable oils tax free as fuels. The sole reason veg oils are so expensive is that everyone in the country can legally use 2500 litres in their vehicle without paying tax, so the demand has gone up especially for Waste veg oil and hence the prices as the oil producers again get rich.

Although the government would struggle to justify total removal of tax discounts on veg oil fuels due to the environmental reasons.

also increasingly land use is changing towards veg oil production for fuel usage, again further reducing costs to the consumer.

so running a diesel would still be affordable on WVO/VO.

 

[Neil]

Let's keep this limited to the road price issue please.

 

[Tom B]

Im paying well over 25% of my wages on the Puma, Insurance and petrol kill me

And i don't think the price of fuel will ever come down now, i believe its a ploy for the government to make back the money they will be loosing when electric cars come into the market properly in the next few years, at least it will give them some time to work out a way to rip us off on electricity bills too!!! :evil:

 

[warrenpenalver]

Let's keep this limited to the road price issue please.

everything ive said directly impacts road pricing.........

 

[expatscot]

Not really.... when I was self-employed my work fuel costs were added on to my invoice... and the insurance wasn't that high.

With the job I am due to start I will have a train commute and so my car will pretty much be a weekend only deal.

 

[Zara]

personally if it gets to the point of being priced off the road, as I need to drive to work id do the sensible thing and sell the FRP and buy a cheaper car rather than leave myself in the shit just to have a nice car tbh

 

[Reechard]

I currently get a lift in to work with another person, cheaper for me to. Car is currently only used on weekend, however if I did need to use it daily I can at the moment. However it is rather expensive, insurance is under £1k still though so thats ok, can use £40 a week on fuel, the same as my mr2 was doing!

If fuel gets much higher then even as a track/weekend car I will start to struggle. Other factors affecting this aswell though.

 

[Dal]

personally if it gets to the point of being priced off the road, as I need to drive to work id do the sensible thing and sell the FRP and buy a cheaper car rather than leave myself in the shit just to have a nice car tbh

Exactly.

There's nothing stopping anyone selling a car they can't afford to run and getting something cheaper. My eldest daughter bought a little Citroen C1 that costs peanuts to run (£20 tax and 60+mpg) and even her insurance being a 20 year old was only £240 last year.

 

[Zara]

I currently get a lift in to work with another person, cheaper for me to. Car is currently only used on weekend, however if I did need to use it daily I can at the moment. However it is rather expensive, insurance is under £1k still though so thats ok, can use £40 a week on fuel, the same as my mr2 was doing!

If fuel gets much higher then even as a track/weekend car I will start to struggle. Other factors affecting this aswell though.

me and my house mate car share also when we are in work the same shift together every little helps and all that

 

[deejames]

me and the wife share a car these days and as we both work in the city it mainly gets used at weekends - when you take into account how much a weekly train ticket costs these days it makes the Puma seem good value!

 

[Chrissy B]

I do a round trip of about 90 miles to work and back each day so costs me an arm and a leg with fuel, insurance etc.

Recently I looked at moving closer to work to avoid the costs but the cost of rent, rates etc would mean I wouldn't be a great deal better off financially but would be worse off socially as I would be living near work on my own whilst all my friends and family would be 45 miles down the road.

I used to drive a 1.6i Honda Civic so when it came to replacing it I did consider getting a diesel to lighten the cost but then I really enjoy driving so saw little point in making the hours I spend in a car a week a chore rather then something that is enjoyable hence the fact I bought a Puma

At the moment I can afford the costs due to no kids, mortgage etc so have a fair amount of disposable income but as life changes so will my view towards the cost

 

[yippeekiay]

My eldest daughter bought a little Citroen C1 that costs peanuts to run (£20 tax and 60+mpg) and even her insurance being a 20 year old was only £240 last year.

How the hell did she manage such a low quote? My daughters came in at around £1400 thus the reason we scrapped the car idea for her. Your daughter must have a few years of NCB and a limited policy surely.

Suppose it doesn't matter now as she's got her new stuff now and I ain't coughing up for a car aswell...lol.

 

[Dal]

Yes, she's in her 4th year now I think with NCB and lives in a semi rural area which helps.

 

[Cherie]

I do a round trip of about 90 miles to work and back each day so costs me an arm and a leg with fuel, insurance etc.

Recently I looked at moving closer to work to avoid the costs but the cost of rent, rates etc would mean I wouldn't be a great deal better off financially but would be worse off socially as I would be living near work on my own whilst all my friends and family would be 45 miles down the road.

I used to drive a 1.6i Honda Civic so when it came to replacing it I did consider getting a diesel to lighten the cost but then I really enjoy driving so saw little point in making the hours I spend in a car a week a chore rather then something that is enjoyable hence the fact I bought a Puma

At the moment I can afford the costs due to no kids, mortgage etc so have a fair amount of disposable income but as life changes so will my view towards the cost

I really don't get why people seem to believe that a diesel is a boring car to drive. Modern diesels are far and away better car than they used to be. I've just gone from a Puma to a 1.6 Fiesta Zetec S TDCi, granted you lose some of the initial grunt, but it more than makes up for it in torque. It makes overtaking a doddle! Then if there's not enough power, a few hundred quid can get a couple of relatively minor modifications and you can add 50% more BHP on!

Also, by changing to the ZS, my tax has gone from £205 to £30, my insurance has dropped just over £70, my fuel bill each month will drop about £50... just for a slightly higher initial outlay on the cost of the car. That'll pay for itself in a few years so long as I keep the car.

 

[Chrissy B]

To be fair Cherie I should have said in my post that my budget only allowed for a tractor like the 1.8 Turbo Diesel Escort I previously had and didn't want to go back to that. I agree there is very little difference between a modern diesel