h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today I looked at all the 'must-have' cars on display at the Paris Motor Show. There is an assumption that we have an absolute right to drive a car.
I haven't driven a car this century – by choice, not because I have been banned.
I have a dubious driving record. I have held valid driving licenses in nine counties, have driven in 27, have never had a moving traffic accident and have had but two speeding tickets – one in Dubai (1 kph over the limit) and one in Doha (when I was stupid). I have never had form of FPN and have never had any endorsement on any of the driving licenses that I have held.
But – for thirty or more years I drove outrageously, regarding speed limits as 'advisory notices' (to be ignored) at speeds that would now put me in prison and seldom – if ever – without a healthy intake of beer or wine inside me, that would also now put me in prison.
Yes – I agree – I should have been shot.
Yet – I have have had but two 'accidents' – both (probably the only two times) when I was stone-cold sober.
The first – on (or just after) my sixteenth birthday when – for the first time that I drove a motorbike on the road (I had been driving one since I was eight), I discovered that 'going round corners' at 60 mph on a road was slightly 'different' – and met a tree head on.
The other – I went to sleep, driving along a dead strait Roman road after a long and exceedingly boring 'meeting'.
My grandmother drove until she was nearly 80. She also never had an 'accident', but probably killed hundreds by driving her Morris Minor along winding Devon roads at 29mph with a constant diatribe as to the impatience of all the drivers behind her.
I don't think I ever killed anyone even though the noise of a Laverda Jota overtaking at 120 mph+ on a Devon road, may have caused a few to have to change their trousers.
I have no wish to drive again – especially in Casablanca (unless someone were good enough to give me a Ducati Multistrada), so I walk. It keeps me alive, I still break the (pedestrian) speed limits and get furious at fat ladies walking four abreast at a snail's pace.
In the past decade there have been but few occasions when I have wished for a car – it would have been 'convenient' a couple of times but paying Ahmed-the-Honda downstairs 200 dh to cart the excess baggage to Benshasha is infinitely cheaper than 'owning' a car.
But - even with the four abreast fat ladies – I can walk the 2 km, to an appointment across town, faster than I can get there in a taxi (at 6:00pm). I am on time but everyone else is up to half-an-hour late – not just because of the traffic – but because they can't park.
And – coming home I pass an (unusual) gymnasium – unusual in that it is on the first floor and you can see in.
What do you see? Ten overpaid, overwight ladies 'walking' – paying to walk on 'walking-machines'. They pay to walk the equivalent of 2 or 3 km and have spent a fortune on 'designer' clothes for walking on walking-machines. They have just driven (and got their stress levels up to boiling point), 2 or 3 km to pay to walk what they have just driven.
I'm confused but confess that, on arriving home I curse the 126 steps up to the flat.

You know, the best thing we did was to buy the Nissan Note last year. I hate it, which means I only ever use it to go shopping (all shops are miles away, and I see to it that I only go once a week) - if I don't send the boys in the first place. Thus it is possible that I don't use the car for weeks.