Maintaining perspective

ESSENTIAL FOR THE DAY TO DAY

While those who are car-free doubt their utility, those who do own a vehicle feel the very opposite. Nearly 8 out of 10 young people say their car is indispensable on a daily basis, significantly higher than the score for seniors. One has to go to Norway or the UK to find more nuanced opinions, while utilitarianism is the order of the day in Asia.

While there is little to separate the views of urbanites and rural dwellers on this question, couples with children are more likely to state that cars are an essential part of their daily lives. When it comes to taking children to school or to their extra-curricular activities, not to mention food shopping, cars are a long way from being superseded by cargo bikes (Fig. 16).

RATIONAL PURCHASING CRITERIA

People’s purchasing criteria are also rooted in rationality. As successive editions of L’Observatoire Cetelem have reminded us, price is the number one consideration when buying any type of good. And when young people acquire a vehicle, this is invariably what they think about first. However, it is less important in their eyes than in those of seniors, who score this criterion almost 10 points higher. Once again, the Chinese and Turks are by far the least sensitive to this factor, while for residents of towns with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants it is a crucial one.

Again, both generations are in agreement on safety, which they put forward as their second most important purchasing criterion, with seniors placing slightly more emphasis on the issue. However, while mileage comes third for young people (given their tendency to opt for second-hand vehicles), running costs occupy this position for seniors (Fig. 17).

SAFETY, CONVENIENCE AND FREEDOM: A COMMON MANTRA

If we must get caught up in metaphor and compare cars to people, then it makes sense to talk about their qualities and shortcomings.

When it comes to the former, three in particular stand apart from the rest: safety, convenience and freedom. These qualities are highlighted by young people and seniors alike, but to varying degrees.

For instance, 30% of young people believe that safety is a car’s most important attribute, compared with 43% of seniors. The gap begins to narrow when the topic is convenience, which comes in second place. This quality is mentioned by 27% of young people and 38% of seniors. In third place is freedom, a topic on which the views of young people and seniors are more similar, with scores of 27% and 32% respectively (Fig. 18).

It is worth noting that, outside of this top three, speed and pleasure are the qualities most commonly mentioned by young people, while seniors rarely mention the former.

SHARED CRITICISMS

As for the “shortcomings” of cars, young people and seniors agree once again when it comes to their top three, but with even greater convergence of opinion.

The stress caused by cars is the number one issue and is cited by 3 in 10 people in both age categories. A similar proportion see them as a constraint (23% of young people and 22% of seniors). The third “flaw” is somewhat less obvious, in that it relates to a form of pollution that receives less publicity than CO2 emissions, but which is particularly noticeable in urban environments. The issue here is noise, which is decried primarily by young people, with a quarter of them citing this problem (Fig. 19).