I have a theory that folks who hold and build upon such beliefs haven’t had much experience to the challenges associated with certain disabilities.
My wife has mobility issues due to a car accident 20 years ago. The last time we shopped for a car, picking one was fairly “easy” because the need to transport a rollator (large, metal walker) and her ingress/egress concerns made many models impractical for us…unless we wanted to pay the premium prices for full-sized SUVs or minivans. For travel, our threshold for “drive vs fly” is extended somewhat because our success with rental cars has been hit-or-miss.
Buying our current house was similarly “easy”. My wife’s car accident made our prior home (we were on the second story of a triplex) uninhabitable for her. Our current home was the only place for sale or for rent in our area that was affordable on a new-ACAS’s salary and which was habitable for her with minimal modifications.
Obviously, if there were greater demand for such considerations, cars and housing would be easier to find. (Actually, housing might be easier to find in other places where rentals/condos in buildings with elevators and where homes that don’t default to having bedrooms on the second floor are more common.) But fortunately, only a relatively small portion of the population have such needs…although that will probably change as the average age of the population increases.
(My room in our house is on the second floor, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to like that less.)
Disabilities are always gonna be tough, but we do our best, especially given the wide array of disabilities out there.
My dad has muscular dystrophy and can’t go anywhere with stairs or steep slopes (can’t use wheelchairs or canes either because he has no grip in his hands and can’t push himself up as he has no strength in his arms either). He manages around my city okay, but yeah, he avoids going out.
Making up fictions doesn’t make an argument. Here is Hertz on renting cars if you are under 25.
How do I qualify to rent a car if I’m under 25 years old?
Here are some of the things you’ll need to know about renting a car with Hertz for the first time.
It’s simple, all you need is:
Renters must be at least 20 years old to rent a vehicle at most locations in the U.S. and Canada. In Michigan, New York and the province of Quebec, the minimum age to rent a vehicle is 18. In Alabama and Nebraska, the minimum age to rent a vehicle is 19
A valid driver’s license (in good standing for over a year).
According to the latest research from AAA, the average yearly cost to own and operate a new vehicle in 2022 is $10,728, or $894 per month. A considerable increase from 2021, when the average yearly cost was $9,666 or $805.50 per month.Aug 11, 2022
So you expensive rental is actually less than one months cost, and you get to pay that every month, trip or no trip!
Uh, my expensive rental is going to be a crappy subcompact car that’s probably in the bottom 5% of purchase price… nowhere near average. That’s not remotely apples to apples.
Also your cost to operate includes insurance and gas, which you still have to pay with the rental. My estimate was $1,000 or more for 15 days all in, for the crappiest car the rental agency can scrape up for me.
And. Now we are down to it… “a crappy little car”..
I readily concede that some Americans put a lot of import to their car. It seems to be wrapped up in self image and prestige. The car marketers are very effective.
And if peeps want to make the choice to spend money on cool cars, fancy handbags, and pristine front lans, I am fine with it. It’s just opinion. Do what makes you feel good. But. Those opinions are simply opinion. Not facts.
As far as renting while under 25, that’s interesting. When I was 19 my car was rear-ended and the insurance company did find a rental car company that would rent to me, but it was quite the hassle as the two companies they normally used wouldn’t do it. And the company that did ONLY agreed because I was 0% at fault in the accident and they were trying to get in with the insurance company and were using me as an opening. They flat-out said that if I wanted to rent for personal reasons or if I’d been even 1% at fault in the accident they wouldn’t have let me rent the car.
Certainly when my ex & I rented cars the first few years we were married (after the accident) I could never drive them because I was under 25, and Bill Gates has talked about taking taxis everywhere in Microsoft’s early days because as an under-25er he couldn’t rent a car.
Maybe more companies are changing their tune on that, which is an interesting development I wasn’t aware of.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Zipcar(?) model of rental, with cars in small lots all over town that can be rented by the hour without human intervention. In a tech-savvy future where most Americans don’t own cars, that would seem more likely than the Hertz counter at the airport.
Is that even legal? I thought non-motorized vehicles and vehicles under a certain horsepower were not permitted on interstates, due in part to the high minimum speed requirements.
Yeah, that’s how people will fill the gaps, for sure.
I looked into Zipcar once when I lived downtown. My Dad was flying in and visiting with me for a few days then driving elsewhere for a week then driving back.
Since I wasn’t driving much AND my company offered a discount for Zipcar we thought it probably made more sense for my Dad to take my car on his road trip and I could take the Zipcar the 2-3 times I’d need it while he was gone.
But the price was nearly the same so he decided to rent the subcompact with its excellent gas mileage and leave me with my medium-sized car that had much lower MPGs (though still good for its size).
I was surprised at how expensive the Zipcar was. That was like 10 years ago… no clue what the price has done since.
I tried Googling “horse drawn carriage legal interstate” and didn’t get any hits (in the top 10 or so) that suggested there were restrictions on interstates.
I’m surprised that anybody didn’t already understand that this is exactly the model we’re talking about when discussing rental cars. Thanks for bringng it up. It’s the same deal as those electric scooters. Great idea, needs a bit more planning to make it really workable. We have those zipcars here and I think the college students use them a bunch to do shopping and whatnot. Way too dense in the student zone for everyone to have a car, and they manage just fine.
