单选题
I was desperately nervous about becoming car-free. But
eight months ago our elderly people carrier was hit by a passing vehicle and the
damage was so bad it had to be written off. No problem, I thought: we'll buy
another. But the insurance payout didn't even begin to cover the costs of buying
a new car—I worked out that, with the loan we'd need plus petrol, insurance,
parking permits and tax, we could easily be looking at around ￡600 a
month. And that's when I had my fancy idea. Why not just give
up having a car at all? The more I thought about it, the more sensible it
seemed. I live in London. We have a railway station behind our house, a tube
station 10 minutes' walk away, and a bus stop at the end of the street. A new
car club had just opened in our area, and one of its shiny little red Peugeots
was parked nearby. If any family in Britain could live without a car, I
reasoned, then surely we were that family? But my new car-free
passion, sadly, wasn't shared by my family. My teenage daughters were horrified.
What would their friends think about our family being "too poor to afford a
car"? (I wasn't that bothered what they thought, and I suggested the girls could
take the same approach.) My friends, too, were astonished at
our plan. What would happen if someone got seriously ill overnight and needed to
go to hospital? (an ambulance?) How would the children get to and from their
many events? (buses and trains?) People smiled indulgently, as though this was
another of my mad ideas, before saying they were sure I'd soon realize that a
car wasn't a luxury, it was a necessity. Eight months on, I
wonder whether we'll ever own a car again. The idea that you "have" to own a
car, especially if you live in a city, is all in the mind. I live— and many
other city-dwellers do too—in a community that has never been better served by
public transport, and yet car ownership has never been higher. We worry about
rising car costs, but we'd be better off asking something much more basic. Do I
really need a car? The answer turned out to be no, and I'm a lot richer because
I dared to ask the question.
单选题
The author decided to live a car-free life ______.