We have been mostly car-free by choice since 2002
First off – for those who are new to my page (or new to my personal story), we moved to Portland, Oregon in June of 2002. At the time we realized that once we sold the house we were living in (in Northern California) we could basically choose to live anywhere in the world, and we did a lot of research in looking for “the perfect place” to call home and start our new little family (our first son together was born in July of 2002).
Portland was perfect…
Portland seemed like the best U.S. city candidate (at the time) in terms of both affordability AND realistic potential for adopting an intentionally car-free lifestyle. My husband and I are not just Lead-poisoning prevention activists – but each have (independently) been committed environmentalists since our childhoods — and (in 2002 – before we knew anything about childhood Lead poisoning) living car-free in our daily lives was a top priority.
Our children were poisoned in 2005 – and shortly after that we began looking for a Lead-safe home (something we had not previously considered). In 2007, we found and chose the home (& specific neighborhood) we live in now in large part because of the viability of living here easily and comfortably without owning a car. Everything we could ever want or need (for ourselves and our children) is either within very close walking distance or a short bike ride away. This includes schools, shops, restaurants, parks, library, museums, downtown, local colleges and universities, music venues, and more!
But – sometimes – I really need a car for work!
While it has been very easy to implement a car-free personal life here, I have needed a car for work travel periodically over the years. Mostly we have rented cars as we needed them [or used Car-2-Go – or Uber, Lyft, or similar services], but whenever there has been an uptick in my travel for work, some of the less-obvious “benefits” of car ownership make it much more cost-effective for my business to actually own a car (even though our personal life is still 99.9% car-free!)
Mostly I just needed car insurance!
The main cost consideration in my business that makes car ownership more practical than simply always renting – is insurance. Specifically – when I am renting a car when I travel out of state, there is a huge savings if you also own a car (“back home”) because with car ownership comes auto insurance that will carry over to any car rentals! Also, based on my own repeated inquiries, these days it seems it’s essentially impossible to get an auto insurance policy if you don’t own a car — and car insurance procured through car-rental agencies gets very expensive very quickly when renting cars 6 or 8 times a month (in different cities) while traveling.
So, in the first week of March 2020, with a busy year of travel planned (including rental cars reserved in dozens of cities across the country), I decided that it was finally time for Lead Safe Mama to own an inexpensive car (so I wouldn’t have to pay an arm and a leg for each rental car company’ s own sky-high a la carte insurance coverage during all the trips across the country in the coming year and beyond).
On March 5th Lead Safe Mama, LLC bought a car… and then, #BAM! CoViD-19 hit – HA! The joke’s on me — my entire cross-country work trip for March/April 2020 had to be cancelled!) So now we have a cute little micro-car that sits parked most of the time (with no work to drive to!), plus we’re paying for insurance each month during a year when we may not actually need it most of the year. #Gah. Anyhoo…
Continue reading below the image.
How I chose this car…
Since so many of you follow some of the relatively minor details of my work and life, I thought it would be fun to share with you how I ended up choosing this car – in case my process helps you in your car purchasing journey in some way. (Several people have already asked actually!) [& no I have not yet tested this car for Lead! I will let you all know as soon as I have done that! – but please note that I do not have a concern for Lead paint on the bodywork of fiberglass or plastic cars, especially if they were built after 2010.]
With the need to have a cheap car just so I could save on car insurance while traveling, I went about figuring out how much I would be able to spend and what I could get for the amount of money I would have available. It started with getting a loan for my business which dictated the cost of the car: $4,000.00.
Once I figured out the price, then I set priorities:
- Primary focus: this was going to be a business vehicle (primarily used for trips to the airport and back for work travel, as well as trips to the post office with some of the endless packages I send to families I work with on a regular basis!) This car might also be used for work trips to neighboring states (Washington and California primarily.)
- I also knew (with a good degree of certainty) that I would not need to haul my family of boys (actually of giant men, now!) – around in the car, so car-size was not a factor.**
- Based on bad past experiences, I also wanted to avoid the following brands: Dodge, Ford, Jeep, Kia, Hyundai, and Chevy. [We owned a brand new Chevy for a few months back in 2016 and it ended up being a lemon that almost killed us when it malfunctioned, so we’ve sworn off the Chevy brand for good!]
**If I were to get a reasonable personal car for my family it would have to be either an minivan or a large SUV given the size and quantity of my children. Even though my youngest is not yet 12 years old, each of my boys is 5 ft 10 or taller and a personal trip in a car with the whole family (with room for at least one friend or an upright bass) usually requires seating for at least 7 people, so that would have been a very different search, indeed!
I then set out searching on Craigslist with these considerations…
- What could I buy with $4,000?
- Any car or truck, no consideration for model, make (with the above exceptions) or style!
- What’s the “youngest” (most recently-manufactured) car I could buy with $4,000?
- ideally newer than 2010.
- What’s the car with the best fuel-economy that I could buy with $4,000?
- ideally better than 30 MPG.
- What’s the car with the lowest mileage that I could buy with $4,000?
- ideally less than 10,000 miles a year for each year in use.
And that’s how I ended up with a 2012 Fiat 500 — that has only four seat-belts*, with 67,500 miles on it when I bought it — as the first official Lead-Safe-Mama mobile! [*On the rare occasions that my tall boys have to go out and about with me in the Fiat it truly looks like a “clown car” when the giant man-children emerge from the back! lol] We recently used it (yesterday) for the socially-distanced “drive-through graduation” for my youngest son Charlie (who just finished 5th grade today!) [Video below – continue reading below the video.]
For some time in the future…
Dreams… I’m still dreaming of a Lead Safe Mama Mobile that is an electric or hybrid car! Ideally something I could use as a self-sufficient vehicle (for driving and camping) to do multiple cross-country Lead Safe Mama outreach tours.
Personally, I’m still fantasizing about the following vehicles:
- a Subaru Cross-Trek!…(they have a new hybrid model)
- VW’s new electric Vanagon!…(whenever it eventually arrives on the market)
- a bio-diesel-powered Mercedes Sprinter Van — fully decked out as a live-in vehicle for a cross-country journey!…
- or alternately, work trips traveling about in a small Airstream! (towed by… ? perhaps a Cross-Trek if that could work?)
If anyone on my list has any of the above vehicles that needs a new home… let me know! 😉 OR (even better) if you (or someone you know) is affiliated with any one of those companies and you know who I could talk to about that company sponsoring the work of Lead Safe Mama by donating a vehicle to the cause, please do let me know! As it is (CoViD-19 permitting) we are currently working on planning a Summer/Fall 2020 Lead Safe Mama cross country tour (tentatively scheduled to leave Portland on July 30th) and plan on renting an SUV for the months of August and September (and sleeping in a tent along the way) to make that trip possible (and socially distanced / avoiding air travel!)
As always, thanks for reading and thank you for sharing my posts. Drive safely!
Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama
Are there any concerns with lead exposure in used/new cars? Certain cut off date like 2010+ safer? Is leather or carpet seats better in a new vs a used? I prefer preowned because much cheaper and also thinking one before all the wifi, but then can’t decide if used carpet bc hard to get lead out of carpet or used leather because leather contains leather but less likely to have absorbed more lead from environment.
I think if you stick with newer (past 20 years?) fiberglass body cars you are less likely to have leaded components – or lead-painted components. I haven’t tested enough leather samples in cars to have a cut off or brand range – and I don’t often find lead in cars that are newer with fiberglass bodies. Metal bodied vehicles are more likely to be painted with lead paint even if they are newer (like tractors.)