Like the life of a Soviet artist, according to a famous saying, the life of a Moscow driver is difficult and ugly.
From somewhere a hurricane named “Vanya” came towards us. It has become fashionable to call cyclones as in the West. There it is – “Katrina” and the other “Irma”. Do we have “Vanya” anymore? If they had called it “The deadly car-destroying tornado” people would immediately think it would be better not to drive into the city for now. And then they say “Vanya” on the radio, so you think: what evil can come from Vanya? Nevermind.
And so, despite “Vanya”, everyone went to the city. I call everything outside my Butyrsky district a city. And there is complete slush in the city, and something is falling from the sky, so the wipers only have time to rub these ice particles onto the glass.
But I had nowhere to go, I had to take my daughter to music school and then pick her up from there. It goes without saying that the music school is on a street where no two cars can pass each other even on a nice summer day, right? In winter, there is nothing to talk about with snowfall and horny Vanya. You are driving in conditions where the storm is invisible and you are dragging freshly fallen but already compacted snow in front of you with your bumper. If someone is coming towards you, consider them stuck. If he can turn her down, good. What if he doesn’t make it? My wheels stuck to this snow.
It turned out that I had to take my daughter to the dentist after music school. But they don’t have their own parking lot, they need a municipal parking lot. There are no complaints about the parking lots, but how do you get into this parking lot? An American-made four-wheel-drive SUV skidded in front of me for about six minutes.
And then I started counting. Let’s say a person buys a car. He buys it for five years, not forever, because the car is usually replaced after five years. This is 2.5 million rubles. At current prices this is a pretty average Chinese SUV. Car maintenance consists of fuel, insurance, maintenance, washing, parking (in some places it costs 480 rubles) and unexpected expenses. Even if you, like me, travel a little twice a month to the music school and to the dacha, the following comes out:
Fuel – 5 thousand rubles per month, multiplied by 12 = 60,000 per year;
Insurance – 14 thousand rubles per year;
Car washing and parking a little – 10 thousand rubles a year;
Something broke – 15 thousand rubles a year.
Let’s add here the cost of the car – 2.5 million rubles. And divide that cost by five. We bought a car for five years, remember?
I receive exactly 599 thousand rubles a year. Now let’s imagine that we like to take a taxi. In general, we do not really like it, but we make such an assumption for ourselves. If we assume that we travel by taxi at least 300 days a year and the average trip costs us 1,200 rubles (“Comfort” class), then it turns out that we spend 360 thousand rubles on transportation. Savings – 239 thousand rubles.
What happens if you take the subway? What if you try to get to the lodge by train? Do you have any idea at least approximately what level of financial well-being can be achieved?
But all this is empty. One day, probably soon, spring will come, we will get into our cheap cars, plant the seedlings in that place that doesn’t even have a name – this is the place between the rear window and the back seats – and go. It creates traffic jams on the Moscow Ring Road. Because such is the life of a Russian driver. And we don’t need anything better.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.