Your car is your pride and joy. Or at least that is true for many of us. We take pleasure in driving – and in owning and maintaining a car. Owning a car and being able to drive wherever you want makes you feel free when you are young like almost nothing else. We have an attachment to our cars that is beyond just their practical use.

It would probably take a lot, therefore, for most of us to willingly give up our cars. One major transportation service provider in America is attempting to encourage exactly that. Lyft is attempting to get Americans to stop using their car in exchange for a monetary contribution towards using Lyft’s schemes instead.

Go Without a Car

People who agree to take part in Lyft’s ‘Ditch Your Car Challenge’ for a month will receive a large amount of money and credit to help them get about without using a car. Participants receive $300 of Lyft Shared credit, a one month membership of a car share provider (Zipcar) with $100 of driving credit, $105 to spend on public transport, and $45 to spend on bike-share schemes.

People who take part in the Ditch Your Car Challenge are required to actually have a car to give up. This is estimated to have a long term success rate of about 2 to 5%. The car share company Car2Go commissioned a study in 2016 that found that between 2 and 5% of members had sold their cars because of ride-sharing becoming an option.

Alternative Ideas

This is positive, if not perhaps as significant a number as Lyft might have liked. A more important statistic is not being gathered by Lyft’s research – how many people will not buy a car in the first place as a result of better alternatives existing. In the same Car2Go study, 7 to 10% of responders said that they had not bought a car because they did not need to (with car-sharing providing them a worthwhile alternative).

It seems, therefore, that those of us who already have a car are less likely to go without it than those who do not have a car. The emotional attachments that many people have with their cars are much stronger than you might think. Until alternative travel providers become a more attractive option, it is unlikely that many people will be happy to give up their car entirely.

While you do have your car, GAP Insurance protects it in case you have a write off. GAP covers the difference between what your insurers pay out after a write off, and what you paid for your car in the first place. Get a quote to protect your vehicle’s value today.