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A researcher asked 10 people to go car-free for 20 days. None wanted to continue
(www.brisbanetimes.com.au)
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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I went without a car for 8 almost 9 years. Bus, train, biking. Etc. everywhere. It's honestly such a limited existence compared to having a car. When I can just jump in and go anywhere I want. I regularly go on long road trips I go visit multiple states. In the first year I had a car I visited probably eight different states. Where is in the previous 8 years the farthest trip I had taken was bumming a ride up into the mountains to do a camping trip and waiting in the rain for my friend to show back up to pick me back up. As much as I love my bike and as much as I love walking and I honestly don't even mind the bus system having a car is something I'll never go without again.
It really depends on how easy and expensive it is to rent a car last minute.
Also depends on where you live.
When I lived near Central London I ended up selling my very nice car and started cycling because almost all the nice places to go out to were more easilly reached by public transport (plus you could get piss drunk if you felt like without risking anybody's life driving back like that).
Sure, you could use a car to go out to the countryside, but given that it took almost an hour just to drive out from London, it wasn't worth it to do on impulse and to do it for vacations I could just rent a car (or, even better, fly away to a country with better weather and rent a car there).
In practice what was happenning was that I was paying around half the value of the car every year for renting a garage and car insurance whilst I only used the car maybe once every 2 months, which financially was incredibly dumb, so I just sold it.
Living in England would be so weird to me. You talk about going an hour like it's the trip of a lifetime. Just Saturday alone I drove something like 175 miles just to shop, pick up a load of bricks and a fountain for my garden. I watch shows like Clarkson's farm where his helper said he's never left their village and that blows my mind.
It's not a "trip of a lifetime" (closest I did to a driving "trip of a lifetime" in Europe was driving from Lisbon to Amsterdam, about 2000km which I did in 2 days), it's just part of my mental calculation of whether something is fun or not.
City driving is not fun for me, so having to spend 1h each way just to go somewhere to have fun reduces the overall appeal of it vs spending 15m in the tube each way to go somewhere to have fun.
Back when I lived in Lisbon I used to have a 1h commute by car to work because I lived in the outskirts and had to endure traffic jams on the way in, but over the years I lost patience with spending a significant fraction of my life in city traffic and, frankly, don't have to endure it anymore.
More broadly I would say that your use of miles vs my use of time isn't a like to like comparison: the problem isn't distance if you can get there fast or at least in a relaxed way, the problem is when it takes quite a bit to get there and the driving is stressful. Driving out of the city starting from Central London would be like driving out New York from Manhattan: a lot of pain in the arse city driving in the transit just to get to the nearest freeway and then some extra pain from driving in a freeway with lots of traffic until you're far out enough that there's a lot less traffic and you can relax, and all this is if you're lucky and don't get a traffic jam.
Driving a long distance starting from suburbia can actually be fun, but driving anywhere starting from the center of a big city is not fun.
Anthropogenic climate change cascade says "Good luck".
Yes and no.
I lived without a car for about 5 years and never missed it, since I could consistently bum rides with friends who had cars.
To your point about the convenience of having a car and being able to travel - with better infrastructure and built environments, these things would not be issues. Daily necessities within walking distance + transit frequent enough that you don't need to plan for it + high speed intercity rail covers about the same use case. More pleasant to run daily errands, since no traffic. High speed rail is faster than driving, plus you can get up and walk around whenever you feel like it, and even get a bunk in a sleeper car to travel while you sleep. Of course, it is still less private, and you are on the train's schedule - but you also never have to change the oil or stop for gas.
I currently can't imagine living my life the way I want to live it without a car. For example, today I am returning home from a weekend trip climbing in the desert. To do this, I wrapped up the work I was doing (late), threw all my shit in my car, and drove for several hours into the night before sleeping in my car at a highway pull off. Then I finished the drive early in the morning, going from interstate to rural highway to rural desert road to dirt road to get to the random patch of dirt my friends were camped at. And doing this, I had a car full of water, food, camping gear, and climbing gear. Making this trip without a car would be literally impossible with our current transit infrastructure. And even with some futuristic infrastructure, the trip would take significantly longer since any transit to remote areas will always be less frequent than you want it to be.
At the same time - maybe I could catch a night train to the desert. Wake in the morning in a small desert town, and strap my haul bag onto my back and mosey over to a sunblasted diner, drinking a cup or two of cheap, weak coffee (the kind that makes Mormon Jesus cry as little as possible), before catching the twice daily NP shuttle to a remote desert outpost. Watching the barren scrub plains roll by until I'm just about there, then tapping the driver on the shoulder and asking to be let off at the unmarked dirt road so I can hump my 100lb load a 1/4 mile to camp. Certainly, the trip would be less convenient and a bit longer. But at the same time, being without a car could enhance the quality of the adventure - which is kind of the point in the first place
You must live in Utah based on your description of things. I do pretty much the same. Get done with work, or often times I'll take a job in say Moab, cruise down there, work, then spend the weekend in the desert climbing, 4x4ing, just sitting under the stars watching the world go by. No train goes there, very few public transport options that don't cost a bunch. And no way to work the way I do.