Pros and Cons To Consider if You Are Thinking About Giving Up Your Car

There are a lot of people voluntarily giving up their vehicles to pursue other alternatives. That is not particularly new as there have always been reasons for people to give up their driver’s license. The most common reason is that they have aged out of safe driving. Similarly, people will often quit driving a car after one accident too many and realize that they are not a particularly good driver. Another reason is money. Driving and maintaining a vehicle is one of the most expensive options for getting around. 

That said, there are plenty of reasons to go with a traditional vehicle. There are also a lot of questions to be researched and answered before purchasing your first car. If you have never owned a car, you might have asked, “Can I buy a car without insurance?” 

Surprisingly, you can’t. You will not be allowed to drive off the lot with your new car without insurance. The transaction will not be completed until you provide proof of insurance. Most dealers have arrangements with insurance companies so that you can get some initial insurance right away. While there are issues like this to navigate when buying a car, that option affords you the most freedom of all the options. That said, if you are thinking about giving up your car or skipping it altogether, here are your best options:

Electric Scooters

It is possible to use one of many popular electric scooter versions as your main transportation. That said, there is a difference between your main source of transportation and your only source of transportation. You will not be going many places on a scooter in the rain. That is a problem shared by all rideables. 

This type of transport is often referred to as last-mile transportation. Public transportation will only get you so far, depending on the route. It will get you from point B to point Y. But you have to get from point A to point B, and point Y to point Z by other means. That is where last-mile options come in. They were never intended to get you the entire way. That said, commuter variants offer longer ranges, longer wheelbases, wider boards, better shocks, and much more comfort for significantly longer rides. Given favorable climate, traffic, and regulations where you live, a modern electric scooter is an affordable and viable option for transportation. 

Ride Sharing

Ride sharing is mostly about Lyft and Uber in the US. They compete with the traditional taxi service which historically has not had to deal with competition. The success of ride sharing is down to the app-based mechanism. You don’t have to pick up a phone and wait on hold, only to finally get someone who makes it clear they really would rather be doing anything else besides talking to you. Instead, you open the app and it already knows your location. 

Just input where you want to go. You don’t even have to know the address. Next, you approve the price which tends to be much lower than traditional taxi fares. From that point, you just wait for your car to pull up. You can track the car as it gets to you. And there are no shenanigans about the amount of fare based on the driver taking a longer route. If you spent $20 every workday on a ride share service, you would still beat the price of car ownership in most situations.

Public Transportation

Public transportation is arguably the best of all the compromises. You can take your rideable on the bus or train in most places to perform those last-mile duties. It costs less than ride-sharing. And it is good for the environment. The downside is that on any given trip, you could be packed into a standing-room-only situation with a lot of people. Not all cities have good public transportation. And there are always places that can’t be reached using public transportation alone. Even so, if you have access to a good public transportation system, start there and layer on the other options as needed.

There are lots of reasons to avoid driving a car. If you find those reasons compelling, check out electric scooters, ride-sharing, and public transportation. The best option is to use them all.