2. 外语
  3. I was desperately nervous about becoming car-free. But eight months ago our elderly people carrier was hit by a passing vehicle

I was desperately nervous about becoming car-free. But eight months ago our elderly people carrier was hit by a passing vehicle

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问题     I was desperately nervous about becoming car-free. But eight months ago our elderly people carrier was hit by a passing vehicle and the damage was so bad it had to be written off. No problem, I thought: we’ll buy another. But the insurance payout didn’t even begin to cover the costs of buying a new car—I worked out that, with the loan we’d need plus petrol, insurance, parking permits and tax, we could easily be looking at around ￡600 a month.
    And that’s when I had my fancy idea. Why not just give up having a car at all?
    The more I thought about it, the more sensible it seemed. I live in London. We have a railway station behind our house, a tube station 10 minutes’ walk away, and a bus stop at the end of the street. A new car club had just opened in our area, and one of its shiny little red Peugeots was parked nearby If any family in Britain could live without a car, I reasoned, then surely we were that family?
    But my new car-free passion, sadly, wasn’t shared by my family. My teenage daughters were horrified. What would their friends think about our family being "too poor to afford a car"?(I wasn’t that bothered what they thought, and I suggested the girls could take the same approach.)
    My friends, too, were astonished at our plan. What would happen if someone got seriously ill overnight and needed to go to hospital?(an ambulance?)How would the children get to and from their many events?(buses and trains?)People smiled indulgently, as though this was another of my mad ideas, before saying they were sure I’d soon realize that a car wasn’t a luxury, it was a necessity.
    Eight months on, I wonder whether we’ll ever own a car again. The idea that you "have" to own a car, especially if you live in a city, is all in the mind. I live— and many other city-dwellers do too—in a community that has never been better served by public transport, and yet car ownership has never been higher. We worry about rising car costs, but we’d be better off asking something much more basic. Do I really need a car? The answer turned out to be no, and I’m a lot richer because I dared to ask the question.
What did the author’s friends try to tell him?
选项 A、It is possible to live a car-free life.
B、A car is an important daily necessity.
C、There is no need for expensive cars.
D、They’ll follow him if he can make it.
答案B
解析 第四段讲到作者朋友们的态度。他们也对作者的选择感到吃惊，因为他们认为汽车不是一件奢侈品，而是必需品。
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