Remember carless days? Forty years ago today the Government made a rule that one day a week you weren't allowed to use your car. In an effort to reduce petrol consumption, every car owner had to pick one day a week when they would not drive that vehicle. The day
was indicated by a coloured sticker on the windscreen.
"I recall the panic of my parents on a couple of occasions when we had gone out somewhere in the car and they realised it was in fact the day they shouldn't be driving it," explains Sarah.
"I was required to commandeer my 8-year-old son Danny's bicycle," said Mike from Papakura who was in the Army and on call. The first person fined was some poor bloke in Christchurch, who forgot that at 3.45am after a post-party nap in his car his "car-less day" had started at 2 am. He was fined $50 rather than the $400 maximum. The move was a nice idea, but it had its problems. It discriminated — the wealthy who had two cars and were much less inconvenienced than the less well off with just one. And it seemed everyone had an exemption sticker for either work or living rurally where there was no public transport. The reduction in petrol consumption was minimal — 4 per cent less than the year before. So it failed miserably and the scheme was scrapped the next year.
Confessions of a space invader
"I asked my partner to drive me to the supermarket to pick something up for dinner (I don't drive)," explains a Mumsnet.com user. "We popped our little girl in the car seat without her trousers or shoes because I was planning on just running in quickly. When we got there he pulled into the parent and child parking space and I reminded him I was gong in by myself and would prefer to park somewhere else. He thought that since our child was in the car we could park there, but I disagreed, explaining the reason for these spaces was for extra room to get prams and what-not out. He refused to park anywhere else and said it's here or home. I told him I couldn't take her with me as she had no trousers or shoes, so we would have to go home. The bastard actually drove home instead of just parking in any of the other free spaces. So, was I unreasonable? Should I have just broken the law and gone in?"
