My wife just went six months without driving her car. It just sat there collecting dust and whatever else fell from the sky. During this time her registration expired, her battery went dead, and my sister took to calling our beloved Subaru an abandoned car. It also went a half-year without spewing CO2 into the atmosphere and for that I am very, very proud of her. Yet there are the three negatives.

The expired registration seems not all that important. It costs money to support societal infrastructure and while I generally advocate for fiscal responsibility, I also understand my responsibility and the inevitability of death and taxes. And as I use roads, public transportation, and sewers as well as enjoy parks, museums, and wildlife, I am on the hook for the bill. Not a problem.

The second issue about the dead and needed-to-be-replaced battery is troublesome, but solvable. I could have trickle-charged the battery or purchased a mini-solar panel to keep the battery ready to go when and if we needed the car. Part of this was poor planning and laziness on my part—mea culpa. I’ll do better next time and already have a plan.

The third part of this is a little trickier. Depending upon age, we all grew up in a “See the USA in a Chevrolet” or “Zoom…Zoom (Mazda)” kind of world. From the time our hands were big enough to hold a Matchbox racer or Tonka Toy truck, we were inundated with marketing designed to make us desire and depend on automobiles. We never had a chance to opt out of the car culture. So my sister was simply expressing our collective unconsciousness—the car was not being driven and that was bad. We had abandoned our car and our responsibility to use it and the allied resources. We had auto-sinned.

So how do we change this situation? How do we un-zoom-zoom? How do we make surviving with fewer cars and approaches like carpooling, car sharing, and car-free sexy? How do we get folks to desire streetcars again (too Brando?)? How do we get folks on bikes and foot? And how do we redesign and retool urban and suburban areas—with the least disruption possible—so that public transportation and people-powered vehicles work?

In this case the first step might actually be a step: simply walk somewhere instead of driving and take someone with you. You might also start to advocate for walkable and bike-friendly communities as well as funding for public transportation and train systems. (Transportation for America is a good place to start.) You might take time to thank your loved ones or neighbors when they “abandon” their cars too. And we need to add a new term to our lexicon, something that describes a car that is loved and cared for but abandoned for periods of time. I am open to suggestions.