Motoring’s golden age
by Simon Handby in Your car on 10.07.08
Soaring petrol prices, exorbitant taxes, punitive duty – surely there’s never been a worse time to be a driver? Well, on at least two counts, it’s actually a golden age for motorists. No, don’t write in, allow me to explain.
While it’s easy to be miffed at putting £15 more into each full tank than at this time this year, there’s more to running a car than keeping it in petrol. And according to research by the RAC, the real cost of motoring is lower today than it was in 1988 – 18% lower.
The RAC’s report on motoring, which looks at changes that have taken place in the last 20 years, found that the real cost of petrol had more than doubled in 20 years. However, it also found that buying a car is 24% cheaper today than in 1988, and running one (not including fuel) is 57% cheaper.
Not convinced? Here’s another statistic – despite ever-growing levels of traffic, it’s rarely been safer to drive on UK roads. Government road death figures for 2007 show a welcome reduction in fatalities to 2,943 – a fall of 7%. It’s the first time in decades that the total has dropped below 3,000: road deaths peaked at 7,985 in 1966, and even as recently as 1991 they stood at around 5,000.
There’s still plenty of scope for improvement of course, and the year did see a worrying rise in serious injuries to cyclists (up by 6% to 2,428) and motorcyclists (up by 4% to 6,737), but all the other headline figures improved significantly.
Still not convinced? Well alright: there’s more traffic than ever and, as I recently lamented, some of today’s modern cars are on the dull side. But Tamsin’s recent hire car nightmare notwithstanding, they’re more reliable and better equipped, too.
And to paraphrase something a car salesman once asked me, when was the last time you saw a rusty one?
IMAGE by Flickr user Lamerie
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