Personal Negotiation

Whilst on my learner license, I got a car to practice my driving. During the times I wasn’t using it, my family would drive it, in particular my mother would use it for work. After getting my provisional license, I begun driving more often, ranging from university to weekend outings. While I walked to work, and most weekdays weren’t a problem, conflict arose when both my mum and I needed the car. When this would happen, we would first discuss why we needed the car, where we were going and for how long would we need it. On some occasions we were able to give each other a lift, however when we couldn’t agree on who would take it, we had to look at other options. On days that I had to attend university, my mother realized she could take my sisters car, as she wasn’t working those days. While we still continue to have disputes over the car, we try to find alternative means allowing for us both to share the car.

In deciding how the car was split between the two of us, we had to consider the interests of each other. To begin with, my mother job requires her to travel to multiple offices during the day. While her position is to have the car to help her get around, her interests are primarily focused on the family. As the head for the family, she also regularly does the shopping for the family, drives us around to family gatherings and picks up my brother from work on some days. That being said, she also likes the car to go to the local shopping centre, uses it to transport things for the house while we are renovating and going out with the weekend with my dad. As for myself, I also want the car as a means of transport. Rather than continuing to rely on family and friends, and feeling a sense of debt to them, I needed the car to get to university, on some occasions to travel to work, and visiting friends. Since I got my provisional license several years after I was entitled to do, the car gave me that freedom to go where I wanted, whenever I wanted. In the hope of...