Chaos!

what's next? joint bank accounts?
- Women voting?
  
  Dogs and cats, living together!
- My partner and I have joint financial accounts, but it still would be weird to us to take whatever car.
  
  Why? Is it weird to use whatever plate or fork? What about couch cushions? Umbrellas?
  I see cars as tools, so there's not "my car" and "their car," but "the small car" (hybrid w/ great gas mileage) and "the big car" (minivan). Before we had kids, we only had one car, and if we needed to be in different places, I would ride my bike, walk, or take the bus. That almost never happened, and it wasn't a big deal when it did.
- Not in my country!
  (Seriously, though, Japan doesn't do joint bank accounts).
- You just like spend whatever dollars you find in there?!

Who wants.to adjust the seat and mirrors every time they drive?
- Maybe they just hit a button (1, 2)
  
  Don't even need to hit it sometimes - the profile often goes with the key fob too.
  
  As someone who used to work on other people's cars, I think I've had my knees jammed into the dash way too many times to ever want this on one of my cars. Fuck that.
  
  I wish those worked for all the mirrors too. At least mine won't do that anyway
- They must be similar sizes.
- My wife and I are about the same height so we don't have to adjust our seats.
  
  Same with my wife and I. Seat doesn't move, only adjust rear mirror. The side mirrors are set up for her since it's minimal adjustment for me, it's not worth it unless I'm doing a long drive like 3+ hours
  
  I'm quite a bit taller than my partner, but she has a big bum and I don't and it nets out to us having the same seat position, just different seat back angle to accommodate our different arms
- It's not a big deal. My SO and I are very different heights (like a foot/35cm), and it takes all of 10 seconds:
  slide seatbelt adjustor up/down
  move seat forward/backward
  adjust mirrors
  We do it like 2-3x/week, and as the taller person, I'm totally capable of doing the adjustments while driving out of the neighborhood. It's really a non-issue.
  
  My wife and I are just the right height difference that the little flicky switch on the internal mirror will swap between the angles each of us need.
  One day we got a car that has some auto light filtering for night driving and it doesn't have the switch. Can't wait to sell it.
  
  When I drive my girlfriend's SUV, I have to stand outside of it and work the controls until I've got enough room to get in. It's not awful, but does kind of suck on hot summer days when I just want to be in the air conditioning.
- I just angle the back and slide the seat and i am good to go. It's all analogue, quick and easy.
- My car does this automatically depending on the key fob used, or the smart phone that's closest to the driver seat depending on which you are carrying. Seat, and mirrors.
- My wife and I happen to use the same seat position and wheel position, so we just have to adjust the rear view mirror and during the time of year when it's really hot/cold maybe adjust the vents to how we each like. Takes like 5 seconds to adjust
- That's not a thing in modern cars.
  
  Power seats and mirrors with multiple memory is still a luxury car feature and not mainstream like power windows.

We've got 1 car. If I need to go somewhere and the wife has it, I get the bus. It's a lot cheaper than owning 2 cars.
- That's fantastic if your city offers busses! Or public transportation at all 😭
  
  Bikes are comparatively free
  
  My closest bus stop is 1.5 miles away and the bus runs every hour (or so they claim)
  The city added some sort of public "uber" that you can hail and ride for I think $2 but it only works within city limits and my wife has many friends in the neighboring cities so it was useless if she wanted to meet them, and also sometimes it'd take more than an hour for a pick up
- I was gonna say “wait until this guy hears my wife and I SHARE a car… oh, the humanity!”
  
  Do you share your car or her car tho?
- I'd love to live in a place with workable public transport, but where I live it would add an hour to my commute each way; effectively an extra 10 hours a week at work
- We’ve been trying to make this work with e-bikes. We still HAVE two cars, but don’t really use one of them unless we have to.
- We have one car and I often choose my ebike.
- Do you ever run into issues with the bus taking a lot longer, and you not accounting for the extra time if your wife take the car? Where I live, 15-20 minute car rides are often 35-45 minute bus rides, and the bus comes half an hour.
  
  Not really. I just leave at the time needed to get to work on time for whatever mode I'm using. It's about 8 miles, and before COVID it was usually quicker to cycle than sit in traffic. Now there's less traffic so cycling takes a bit longer than car, but not much. Bus is about the same as cycling.
  I'm 57 and not hugely fit, but I can cycle 8 miles each way without any problem. Takes 30-35 minutes depending on wind direction.
- Right now I work a hybrid job and landed this job not long after totaling one of our vehicles in an unavoidable wildlife encounter. We ended up not buying a second car and I've been biking to stuff in town when I can (I live in a small town and various stuff frequently calls for running to other nearby towns for this or that) and it's been really nice only having one car to worry about, but with the kids starting school and my wife looking at going back to work, the time to get a second car might come sooner than later
- Same but bike instead of bus. In rare cases a Lyft

Yup, that's how we do it. We have kids and two cars: minivan and hybrid sedan. The hybrid gets more than 2x the mileage vs the minivan, it's smaller, and both of us prefer it, so it's what we use 90% of the time. We take the minivan if we're all going somewhere, or we both need to be somewhere at the same time. I'll also take the minivan for cargo (hardware store, dump, furniture store, etc).
Before we had kids, we had one car. When we both needed to be somewhere at the same time, I'd take my bicycle or the bus, and my SO would take the car.
Each person having "their" car makes no sense to me, I see cars as tools in the toolbox, and we take the one that's best suited to the task at hand.
- That's pretty much how we do it, but with a phev and an SUV. On days we both work she takes the phev, I the SUV. When one of us is going somewhere we take the phev. But if it's snowing or we want to haul kayaks or load up heavy to go camping, the SUV.
  The phev is "hers"and the SUV "mine". But only vaguely 🤷‍♂️ we don't actually care that much. But also it's not a free for all. She would probably be a little miffed if I just randomly took the phev to work forcing her into the SUV. But if we talked about it first she'd probably be fine 🤷‍♂️
  
  For snow, snow tires should be more than sufficient. That's what we do and it works fine for us here in Utah. No AWD, just decent tires.
  We bought a second car when our first was born because our existing car (2-door coup w/ manual transmission) was a bit frustrating to load a car-seat into (we did it for a year though), and my SO couldn't drive stick. So we picked up a hybrid (the same one we drive today about 10 years later), and the stick became "mine" by default (commuter only), and the hybrid was "hers," at least for a couple of years until I was able to junk it because I was riding my bike to work every day. We stuck with a single car for another few years until 3 was born and I switched jobs (both in the same year, new job was more than twice as far), and the bike commute just wasn't happening.
  And that's where we are today. My SO still feels some ownership over the hybrid, but it has largely become my commuter now. We'll probably swap the hybrid for an EV soon-ish and later exchange the minivan for something my SO likes to drive more once car seats aren't an issue. And when the kids leave the house, we'll go back down to one car (ideally none, but I don't think my SO would go for that).

my partner likes to eat in her car.
I like to camp in bear country.
we share but there are definitely assigned vehicles. Also cutely I bought hers for her and she bought mine for me and we both love that.
- What do you each drive? Comparable trim packages?
  
  no she drives a small commuter vehicle and i'm in a van. So if she needs the van she'll take it but she has heard me warn her enough times that a bear will hike 30,000 miles to tear the door off my van for a taco bell wrapper that she doesn't eat in it. She mostly just uses her car.

Nothing spices up a marriage like Communism.
- Boutta seize the means of reproduction. Hammer that ass, and sickle those tiddies. Stand in a bread line to put a bun in the oven. It's OUR orgasm, comrade
  
  Poetry, absolute poetry

We have two electric cars, a big one and a small one. The small one is “mine” and the big one is “his.” However, we both work from home so the only commute anymore is taking the kids to school. So, whenever possible, we take the little one because it’s more efficient by far. He doesn’t mind and thankfully it saves seat profiles, even if we always have to adjust the mirror.
- We do the same, but opposite. We have a minivan and a smaller EV. The minivan is technically hers and the EV is mine, but it's really more what it's used for. If one of us is taking the kids somewhere (school, birthday parties, fun) we take the van. If we're running to the store, normal errands or just taking a single kid we'll use the EV.
  It doesn't make sense for her to take the minivan to run to the store to pick up something small and it doesn't make sense for me to take the smaller car to bring the kids somewhere.
- The day when they make that adjust to the profiles! In mine we found kind of a sweet spot for seating position with the mirror adjusted the same for both of us. Heights are close through.
  
  Wouldn’t that be great? I think some fancy cars do it, but not ours. To be fair, it’s a small price to pay for giving gas companies and PG&E less money.
  
  I'm seeing cars with the rear view mirror is just a screen. At that point you shouldn't have to adjust it
- Same, but with a hybrid and a minivan. We use the hybrid whenever possible (~2x the gas efficiency, cheaper repairs, etc). It's not a big deal, and our adjusting process is completely manual (adjust seatbelt, seat, and mirrors) since we're very different heights.
  I haven't done the math, but I imagine it saves hundreds every year on gas alone. We put something like 15k miles on the small car, and 5-10k miles on the big car.

I ride my bike and my partner theirs, we aren't savages.
- Commendable. But many of us live where cars are the only practical way to get around. My wife and I both drive 30 minutes to get to work.
  
  Oh boy. Fuck Cars is not going to be happy...
  
  30 mins by car is 35-40 mins by bike where I live, because bikes aren't affected by traffic.
- Do you each randomly choose a bike every morning? That is really the point here.
  
  No we don't because we are not savages :)

For years we didn't have our own sides of the bed, but then one day we got a bed side table and that all came to an end.

I love my wife, she can't drive for shit though, nor does she respect vehicle maintenence, much less asthetic care.
Nope.
Also, she's literally told me she'd be afraid to drive my car precisely because I keep it so nice and she doesn't want to be responsible for fucking it up.
- I fell into this trap. We have a nice, fancy, efficient EV that's my daily driver, and a larger, less efficient gas vehicle that doubles as the family car/road trip machine that she dailies. We work roughly the same distance from our offices, but on days when she has to go across town on an errand, she takes the EV. It makes sense to save gas and whatnot.
  Rims are fucked. I think she's rubbed them on every available curb in a 25 mile radius. She doesn't care. Fuck me for wanting a nice car I guess.
- Likewise mine. I bought an electric car to replace her Honda to save the poor Jazz from her gear changing technique
  We have two cars, but the electric gets used most by a long way as electrons are much less costly than diesel
  It's not that we grab whichever car, just we're not in America and don't need to travel by car all the time and whoever chooses a car second gets the Subaru
- This is one thing I love about having old but reliable cars. Our bigger family car that my wife drives is banged up in so many ways but I can just ignore it. As long as the mirrors work I don’t have to worry about how many scratches are on the housing, and as long as the tires hold air it’s easier to ignore the wheels that look like somebody was practicing their angle grinder technique.
  And then with my little commuter car, even though I like to park far away and I don’t drive into shit, I still don’t have to worry about other people or keeping it looking clean, etc.
  In general I find it liberating and good for the ol’ mental health to not obsess over superficial qualities of material possessions. So if I can make it easier to do that, it’s a win.

My wife and I each have our own cars, but they're both in her name so she can drive whatever the fuck she wants.
- So if they were both in your name she couldn't?
  I know that is not probably not what you are saying, but that is the implication of this argumentation
  
  Not hard to put both vehicles in both names. I don't think they are "arguing" anything, just stating a legal fact about marital property.

all my lives
Are you a cat?
- Are you not?
- I'd assumed they believe in reincarnation (or the boring typo explanation), but I like your reason better.

I can't even entertain this premise. There's no way neither of them has a preference...
- Maybe they just have 2 of the same cars lol
  
  Personally, I'd still have a favorite...

It's how we do it. Some factors in choosing the car:
Distance (gas milage)
Destination (smaller car for inner city driving/parking)
Safety of route (sometimes I drive over the mountains and one our cars is better suited)
Number and size of passengers (children vs adults)
Cargo (dump run, grocery shopping, etc)
If I have to take a conf call when driving

My car has a clutch. My wife can’t drive it. It’s exhausting when something goes wrong with her car.
- Sold my Miata for this reason and I regret it every day.
  
  I also regret your decision.
  
  That's a crime
  
  I want Miata so bad. I drive a Honda fit.
- It really doesn't take that much effort to learn
  
  For someone with extremely high anxiety, yes it does. She’s like a chihuahua.
  
  Depends on the person. I had an ex I spent about 4 hours in a parking lot trying to teach and she never got the take off down. I think some people are incapable of driving a standard.

My wife and I share the cars like this. Is it so weird? We usually select the best car for the job at hand.
- What if it was a daily commute for both you and your wife? Would you play eeny miny moe with the cars every morning?
  
  Good point. She commutes a few days per week, but I'm 100/% work from home. Can't say I miss commuting.
- Yea, why is this such a surprise. Especially with kids or groceries. Different trips require different transportation needs.
- Same. And the best car at hand is the EV one, 100pct of the time. Whoever goes out takes that car. In the off chance the second person need to go out at the same time, they take the older crappy car.
- Best for the job, sure, but not randomly.

You guys usually have two cars?
- How else are you supposed to get to work? The bus takes 2 and a half hours and you will get there late and have to leave early. God I wish the bus was viable.
  
  Where I live that's not even the problem any more, and not because it was fixed either. You have to leave early regardless to have time to get stuck in traffic, find the only parking spot is far away, then walk 10 min in the rain, then dry off for work.
- Unless you have older kids, then more cars. It's cars all the way down.
- I know right? imagine having even one car...

Wow what a couple of freaks. I bet they probably even sleep in the same bed. Who tf does stuff like that. This is the biggest scandal that has ever been posted on lemmy.
- Yeah, but they almost certainly have their own "side" of the bed. What kind of monsters wouldn't?
  
  This is an excellent follow up question to OP
- this should break the whole internet anytime now

I have a hard time accepting that everyone should have their own vehicle in the first place.
- This entire post will age poorly if we ever transition out of this incredibly self-indulgent and wasteful period of human civilization.
  We should have walkable neighborhoods, mass transit of gleaming efficiency, bike lanes as priority, we should be encouraging socializing and creating spaces for people to gather that aren't profit-driven, but with plans to create comfort and recreation to better the people and foster a sense of belonging to a community. It's absurd we all live in places with lots of people but have no sense of belonging to a community. This goes against literally millions of years of our own evolutionary history. We NEED community to function and have healthy minds.
  I mean, it's not likely to happen. But maybe when the next great apocalyptic event happens the survivors can try to remake things with a little more planning. After the whole period of darkness and cannibalism of course.
  
  We should have walkable neighborhoods, mass transit of gleaming efficiency, bike lanes as priority, we should be encouraging socializing and creating spaces for people to gather that aren't profit-driven, but with plans to create comfort and recreation to better the people and foster a sense of belonging to a community.
  Not everyone wants to be packed like sardines. That's the beauty of individualism. You might think this sounds like some sort of utopia, but to me this sounds like hell.

We have two cars and they are both kinda mine. He bike commutes and way prefers it. I work two hours away though and have always driven more. So generally I take the van if I’m going to be at work for a few days, I’ve got it camperized, or the bmw if it’s a there and back, or other trips like that. Since I’m gone for a few days at a time he still needs a car for some errands, otherwise we’d just have the van. I do all the organizing for service work and cleaning, and general car stuff as well.

There are wealthy families usually from over seas. 3 brothers will buy a mansion together they will all live there with their wives, they all help each other and they buy 2 regular cars and a luxury car that they all share. They look at us Americans like we are crazy and I gotta say they kinda have a point.
- Are the (unnumbered) wives allowed to drive in this 3 brothers owned mansion usually?
  
  I have witnessed this with indian american families and south american families here in the US. They live together and the thought of not living with their siblings and parents is foreign to them. One wife deal and in the US, yes they can drive the cars.

I don't get it, what's so special about this?
- It’s just a reckless way to live and is frankly plunging our entire society into unabated chaos
  
  The amount of cars: yes.

I could never do this, my car is one the few sacred places that can be truly my own. I'm not even sure I can let someone else sit in the driver's seat
- That's so foreign to me. For me, car is a tool to get from A to B, and I prefer to spend as little time in it as I can. I have a dedicated space at home (my home office, my desk, etc), and I protect that, but I don't care at all about my car.
  It's so interesting to me how differently people see the same thing.
  
  For me an office is so foreign, lol. Maybe it's partly because my car has functionally been my home multiple times in my life. But there is also something so comfortably isolating about being able to lock myself in the car with some music where nobody can talk to me and the chaos of the world can be left in the rear view mirror for a bit.
  I think everyone needs a space like that just for themselves, and needs to create it for sanity purposes. You've chosen your office and I the shitty little Civic Si sitting in the drive, and both are simultaneously boring tools and personal sanctuaries.

My dad worked nights and Mom was a SAHM who also did some freelance stuff from home. They basically had a first come/first served system, and honestly didn't have many conflicts so the second car (usually the one they've had longer) was rarely used. That was perfect when I started driving in high school, because I could usually use that car (even if it was a few years older than I was)
My brother talked them into buying a used Mitsubishi Eclipse back when it was still kinda cool (an '03 model purchased in 2007?). Mom ended up really liking that car and it's not really practical for the handyman stuff my dad does in his retirement, so now they have assigned cars.

My wife and I have only vaguely assigned vehicles. There's whatever she wants to drive and what I normally drive to work.

She definitely has her car and I have mine. Mine’s over a decade old with over 100k miles, and hers is a year old. I think her car is really neat, but there’s a lot I don’t like about it. Too much tech, too many weird quirks in the systems, and it’s a little compact for my height. I’m glad she likes her car, but we definitely have assigned cars.

- what the hell is a Ford Sudan
  
  Ford Iraq
  
  South Sudan got a corporate sponsor.
  
  Have you seen the new Dodge Darfur?

Would make the most sense really if you have a narrow driveway where one car is always blocked in, save on the valet parking moving games tbh
- We have a 2-car garage and both cars fit side-by-side. We both prefer driving the smaller car, so that gets the majority of the usage. We used to have a singe car, but since I took a job too far away to bike to, we had to get a second car.
  So for me, I think it's weird to have cars specific to an individual, I have always seen cars as a tool that you use when you need it, and you pick the best tool for the current job. I would love to drop back down to a single car, but I'm not ready to leave my job yet.

We share a single car between family members. And we do not live in the same household or even the same cities / towns.

ok one or both partners hate cars. Neither can survive without a car if the other one doesn't have a car. That is a colossal failure, but we'll move on.

sharing things with your spouse????
- Lol, my wife and I happily drive whichever car, unless there's a specific reason we need to take a specific car. Equally we definitely have cars we think of as "ours"

The kids are our deciding factor.
If one of us going somewhere with the little 'uns, then the "family car" with the nicer booster seats gets taken by whoever it is that has them. Whoever is getting the peace and quiet, drives the little runabout.
I usually take the little car, and it surprises me sometimes when I jump into the family car and I've got another 50bhp under my right foot.
- That's what we do too.

One of our cars is a manual, and I'm the only one who can drive stick.
- I have been with my wife since 2009 and I have still never been able to convince her to learn how to a drive manual transmission.
  
  My GF wants to learn stick, but I just replaced the clutch and don't want her to shred it. Plus my car tends to flood if I stall it more than three times much so the sessions will be... short.
  I'd love to find a manual transmission truck for her to practice on but those are getting fewer and fewer.

is that a thing?
- NOT sharing vehicles? In too much of the world? Absolutely.

My wife and I just have 3 very different vehicles and decide pragmatically who should take which that day if we're going out at all.

Insurance and ownership papers here generally require a primary owner here, at least on paper
- Husband and wife in America can go on a vehicle as far as I know. Hell two unrelated people who both sign on the vehicle own it as far as I know.

I keep half my life in my car, I can’t imagine switching it to another car everyday…unless I just keep an equal amount of stuff in the other car…
- A shared car accumulates less crap.
  
  Not with lots of miles per week and young kids. So many food wrappers and other random kid droppings... I just deep cleaned it 6 months ago and its basically back where it was 7 months ago

We have one (volvo xc90 with 3rd row seats) that is for going places with our kids, and another (a nicer/newer mercedes e350) that is the adults only car. I think the Volvo is technically in my name, the Benz in my wife's but I'd have to check to see if I didn't reverse those.

I do this....

My wife and I do this. We both have broncos. What you would call “mine” is a 2 door mostly used for off-roading and I leave the top off a lot. Hers is the 4 door luxury version with all the fancy things.
We take whichever depending on the situation. We will take mine if it’s nice and we want the top off or we have to park in a shitty parking lot, being 2 door it’s much easier to navigate. We take hers for long trips since she has the radar cruise control and lane assist and much better gas mileage.

Two cars? Two fucking cars!?
- In this economy‽
  
  Localized entirely within your kitchen?
  
  No, not about the economy. But interesting seeing an interrobang in the wild.
- We had more vehicles than people for awhile at my place, more than we could drive at once
- I own two cars currently. My co worker has 8.

Why are there so many question marks??? That's not how questions work???
- Bad news for you, punctuation is descriptive not prescriptive
- multiple question marks give a different tone
- The additional question marks indicate perplexity. There are many question marks as they convey information.

Propertarians have small minds.

Clearly is not her brain doing the thinking for her. Maybe it's the beer.

Anyone else have to make sure she didn't sneak a dick in her mouth?
- ?