We have been looking at transport again this week. My husband not only needs a car to get to work, but his work can involve driving and at times at short notice in bad weather to difficult places. The result is he needs a car to take him to work and stay with him.
Me? Well the year without a car has shown us we can largely do without a car other than for some of the kids after school activities and getting to the food co-op in the next village in bad weather.
Our resent purchase of a Zafira largely covers my husband's work needs and our needs when we travel as a whole family. However, those extra journey's that I drive are presenting us with a problem. Recently, I saw a Morris Minor Traveller which looked like it might do the job. Four seats, a large boot, fuel efficient petrol engine, no diesel particulate emissions, not too costly to buy and so far from new that it's effect on driving the consumerist society was minimal. Great all we need to do is find one. BUT
No surprise they don't have ABS brakes they in fact originally came with drum brakes but these can be improved with servos or changed to disk brakes OK. It only has two doors, one of my things about two doors is how quickly you can get out of the back in an emergency, generally the answer is not very. So this is a problem, the can would only be travelling locally but the impact of an accident isn't your speed it is the closing speed of the two vehicles and how heavy they are, so depends what hit you and how fast. Still locally we have speed limits no greater than 50 mph so should be OK. Then the deal breaker, head rests. I had a photo of a woman sat smiling in accident and emergency with a white T-shirt on and pink lipstick. On the middle of her T-shirt is a mark of the same colour pink. She has been in a car accident and her neck was bent so far forward that her lips touched her T-shirt! This wasn't a high speed impact. So we need head rests. We have looked and looked this doesn't seem an option so no Morris Traveller back to the drawing board:(.
Me? Well the year without a car has shown us we can largely do without a car other than for some of the kids after school activities and getting to the food co-op in the next village in bad weather.
Our resent purchase of a Zafira largely covers my husband's work needs and our needs when we travel as a whole family. However, those extra journey's that I drive are presenting us with a problem. Recently, I saw a Morris Minor Traveller which looked like it might do the job. Four seats, a large boot, fuel efficient petrol engine, no diesel particulate emissions, not too costly to buy and so far from new that it's effect on driving the consumerist society was minimal. Great all we need to do is find one. BUT
No surprise they don't have ABS brakes they in fact originally came with drum brakes but these can be improved with servos or changed to disk brakes OK. It only has two doors, one of my things about two doors is how quickly you can get out of the back in an emergency, generally the answer is not very. So this is a problem, the can would only be travelling locally but the impact of an accident isn't your speed it is the closing speed of the two vehicles and how heavy they are, so depends what hit you and how fast. Still locally we have speed limits no greater than 50 mph so should be OK. Then the deal breaker, head rests. I had a photo of a woman sat smiling in accident and emergency with a white T-shirt on and pink lipstick. On the middle of her T-shirt is a mark of the same colour pink. She has been in a car accident and her neck was bent so far forward that her lips touched her T-shirt! This wasn't a high speed impact. So we need head rests. We have looked and looked this doesn't seem an option so no Morris Traveller back to the drawing board:(.
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