To be car-free, or is it more simply stated no-car? What might a group of people be called who do not own a car? Somebody’s lack of car ownership could be because it is unachievable due to the financial cost, and/or some ethical judgement about the ‘goodness’ of not-owning.

Although the word ‘car’ is somewhat ambiguous. For instance, if we look at the origins of the word it is suggested to originate from the Latin carrus/carrum “wheeled vehicle” or (via Old North French) Middle English carre “two-wheeled cart,” both of which in turn derive from Gaulish karros “chariot”. Which means it could be seen to be a bit unclear as to what we are referring to when we speak about cars, as wheeled vehicles – as would this not include bicycles?

In answer – ‘very unlikely’. As with later derivations including ‘motor car’ and ‘autocar’, we start to get a sense about what we mean about a car today. I can’t recall of conversations in which the idea of a ‘car’ was hugely different from a motor powered vehicle, typically with four wheels. So that is what in this blog we are free-of or without.

We, my family and I, are car-free. None of us, not even individually in the distant past, have owned a car. Some of that lack ownership was, as above, about a financial incapability to own one (including periods of impracticality due to big-city living), and in more recent times a general insistence that owning a car is ‘bad’.

We live in the UK and based on some statistics that in 2020 17 million households owned no cars we are not alone. But when I looked around to find content online about being a car-free family there is not much about experiences, reflections and advice about living car-free. Which set against all those car ads telling us to buy cars, pretty much everywhere you turn, it seems there is a lack. And, so this blog is to connect with what is ‘out there’ (I did quite a lot of web-searching before beginning) and add something about an aspect of living that we think is important to explore.

So with some short-ish sporadic (when the mood takes us) blog entries like this one, for as long as I/we can keep the energy going – welcome.