Posts Tagged ‘driving’
Why it might be better not to own a car
Over the last few of weeks the UK has been hit with some of the most extreme weather we’ve had in a long time. The first week of February brought the heaviest snowfall we’ve seen for 18 years, causing schools to close and leaving over 6 million people unable to get to work. Most public transport was cancelled and many roads were deemed unsafe due to the icy conditions.
The continuing bad weather is a real worry for drivers everywhere, with an increased risk of accidents on the icy roads as well as all sorts of further problems caused by the extreme conditions. There have been a number of incidents of sudden heavy snowfall trapping drivers in their cars and causing them to have to be dug out, while in other parts of the country the melting snow has been replaced with heavy rains and severe flood warnings have been issued.
All this is bad news for car owners, not only because of the heightened personal risk of driving on the roads, but also because a damaged car can be a costly business. With the recession affecting us all, most people just couldn’t afford to splash out on a new car if something happened to theirs. And this is the real problem with owning a car. It’s brilliant until something goes wrong, but then it can just become really expensive. You might think it won’t apply to you, that you’re a safe driver who won’t get into that sort of situation. But as the last few weeks have proved, you can never predict what will happen on the roads, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it.
The problem is that once you have paid for a car it becomes entirely your responsibility. Then the car is more likely to go wrong the older it gets, especially in extreme weather conditions, and the more it will cost you when it does. And even when you get it fixed, it still won’t be worth half what you paid for it in the first place as a car only ever decreases in value over time.
The people who manage to avoid these worries are those who opt for a car contract hire deal instead of buying a car outright. It doesn’t mean the car’s not yours, it just means that you pay for it in regular monthly instalments and you often get extra benefits thrown in like road tax and servicing costs. So if something did happen, you wouldn’t have to cover the whole bill yourself. And the best thing is that when the contract hire expires after a couple of years you can trade the car in for a new one, meaning you’ve always got the latest updated model. And as you’ll always be driving a new car, it’s less likely to break down in the first place as it won’t have had time to wear out!