van Rhijn’s method is used to derive the luminosity function in the solar neighbourhood from large proper motion stars. The values obtained are smaller than the currently accepted ones; for M_B < 9, the factor is of the order of two. It is shown that these differences arise from the systematic errors of other methods, specially for non-inclusion of the correction for the errors of the parallaxes. The luminosity function has some irregularities, not previously found because of smoothing. A secondary maximum near M_B = 11 , particularly, seems to be a real feature.