Why I stopped learning to drive (for now)

As some readers will know, I eventually started learning to drive last October, after years of not getting round to it. Since I don’t live with my parents, my only experience of driving has been lessons with my instructor. I’m not a bad driver (according to my instructor anyway), but recently failed my second practical test, due mainly to nerves both times. Aside: I’m not used to being nervous – exams don’t have much impact, job interviews are fine, and public speaking isn’t a problem. It’s interesting what effect a simple driving test can have on a reasonably sound individual. After failing my second test, I decided to re-evaluate “the whole driving thing”. My decision to stop was not entirely down to cowardice.

Why start learning?

I started learning for three main reasons: to know what it was like, to be able to drive on occasions (poor weather, long journeys, heavy loads), and to stop people asking me about it. I discovered driving isn’t particularly interesting, for me at least. As for people asking when I’ll start learning to drive, I’ll have to get used to fobbing them off.

How useful would driving (and owning a car) be to me?

I currently live 15 minutes walk from my place of work, and I love that I can walk to work. Weather isn’t a problem on such a short walk, and unlike driving I can walk to work half asleep, which is rather handy some mornings. The city centre is 45 minutes walk away, so I tend to get a bus or a taxi instead. I get my groceries delivered, so its only on rare occasions that I’d actually have a need to drive. So what about those rare occasions? Driving from my flat in Norwich to my parents house in Somerset would take about 4.5 hours, according to Google Maps. The same journey on public transport takes another 2 hours, but I don’t have to pay attention to what I’m doing, and can usually read a book or watch a film en route. Similar numbers apply to other journeys outside of Norwich.

Public transport

But surely public transport is really expensive, unreliable and inconvenient? It depends. Public transport in the UK is expensive if you use it daily, compared to the cost of running and using a car daily. But, if you only use it once or twice a week, and would make the same use of a car, I reckon its cheaper (and I’ll attempt to prove it below). Yes, public transport can be unreliable, particularly trains. In my current situation though, I rarely use trains. I did have some trouble in the snowy weather last year, but would have had similar trouble driving on some of those journeys. Similarly, if I did own a car, it might be just as unreliable (not forgetting that when a car is unreliable, it usually makes you pay to sort it out). I’ve been covering for the inconvenience of public transport with its scheduled departure times and longer journeys, by using taxis.

Alt-Dan and his Vauxhall Corsa

Here’s where I have a stab at working out how much running a car costs. I don’t have experience of this myself, but I’ll be basing my research on other research to give some vague credibility. These numbers will be based on a 22-year-old guy, who has newly passed his driving test. Let’s call him Alt-Dan. Alt-Dan buys a ’99 Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 litre, with 50,000 miles on the clock. A fairly boring vehicle, but it does look like its reasonably car-shaped. Alt-Dan drives maybe 20 miles a week, plus a couple of miscellaneous longer journeys, lets say 2,000 miles a year. He keeps the car for 3 years, before deciding to become a monk, and abruptly selling it.

• Buying the car: £1,195
• Road tax: £375 (£125/year)
• Insurance: £7,427 (Third-party only, quotes from Confused.com ranged between £1771 and £4198 a year. I chose a cheapish provider. I didn’t factor in potential reductions for the second and third year, the impact of any accidents I might have, or other variations).
• Depreciation: £1,195+ (at the end of the 3 years, if the car still moved, it would be effectively worthless according to the AA)
• Breakdown cover: £150 (£50/year)
• Fuel: ~£300 (assuming 40 mpg, and an average cost of 133.34p, though it seems petrol prices will only go up)
• Tyres: £30 (for 2000 miles, based on AA figures)
• MOT: £240 (supposing it costs £50 a year, and one or two things go wrong)
• Other servicing and parts £110 (though since the car is used, and applying Murphy’s Law, probably a lot more)
• Parking and tolls: £36

So in this rather basic scenario, it costs Alt-Dan about £9,800 over the 3 years to own a car, and drive it 2000 miles during that time (not a great distance, but he only drives occasionally). I’ve skipped depreciation costs, since if the car is worthless at the end of the period, Alt-Dan will either torch it, or attempt to sell it for tuppence.

Back in the Real World

So, the best part of £10,000. Admittedly less than the vague, monstrous figure I had in my head, but still a fair chunk of money. For this sum of money, Alt-Dan travels 2,000 miles over 3 years, or 12.8 miles a week. It also works out as about £5 a mile. The cost to take a taxi in Norwich is about £2 per mile, plus £3.50 fixed per journey, which means owning and running a car is cheaper than taking a taxi everywhere (on that ‘bombshell’..). Meanwhile, a single bus ticket costs £2.30, for which I can travel anywhere between 300 yards and 6 miles in Norwich. Lets say my bus journeys average 2 miles each time, assuming that if I make a particularly long journey I have to take quite a few buses. 2000 miles / 2 per journey = 1000 bus journeys for a total of £2,300, or £8000 less than the car. Even if I do a fair number of non-booked train journeys instead of bus journeys, £10,000 would be a hard figure to reach.

Get to the point already

So from my research, it seems to me that owning and running a car would be daft in my current situation, and not dissimilar to getting a taxi almost everywhere. Granted, my research and figures for public transport are a lot less thorough, but the costs are a lot more transparent. I acknowledge that there are some places that simply can’t be reached by bus or train; in these cases you may assume I took a taxi, walked, biked, or hired a friend to drive me – the scenario is sufficiently rare that I can probably pay £30 an hour. I haven’t considered the green argument, but it seems likely that I’d be polluting less by using public transport. I expect car ownership would be viable if I needed to drive to work every day, lived in an area with less public transport, or lived in a rural area. As long as that’s not the case though, I won’t be driving.

P.S. Thanks to Dave for assisting me with the fuel costs. I suck at Maths without Red Bull.