Tom, That is a choice that you and your wife made, but it isn't one I am willing to make.
I live in a city where need of a car is limited. I walk to work, or take the bus, and it takes me a lot less time to get to work than many of the people I work with who drive taking long commutes fighting their way through traffic. My wife and I own a vehicle, but it is a small fuel efficient vehicle. For the handful of times a year I need a large vehicle, it would be extremely wasteful to drive a large van around the rest of the time. Also, I utterly refuse to live somewhere, where as a blind person, I am trapped in my home without the ability to get anywhere other than by having someone else drive me there. I can easily walk to the grocery store, three blocks away, walk to coffee shops, pharmacies, liquor store, restaurants, blah blah blah, and I can do it without having to require a sighted person to drive me there. There are always trade-offs though. I live in a very small home. I have very little property. It is a town house so I have to be that much more respectful and tolerant of my neighbors. We do not have off street parking. I pay higher taxes. But for me personally, and it is my choice, and others will have made different choices, but for me, the fact that I can live my life independently, have a very short commute to and from work, make a fraction of an environmental impact do to driving so little, and living in a small house is much more important to me than the alternative. We are getting way outside of the topic for this list though, so I will say no more on the topic. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: d...@andrew.cmu.edu Tel: (412) 268-9081
