Bottom line. You’re completely fucked if you can’t drive in the suburbs especially as a mom. Am American suburban mom needs to be able to drive more than anyone else on this planet. I’ve got one good eye and I drive just fine. I’m careful with tight parking and there has never been an issue.
Everything you mentioned as a “why I can’t possibly drive” issue is completely correctable with practice. You need to get a learner’s permit and a buddy and run around the back roads of somewhere for a few weeks. Driving (safely) will soon become perfectly natural.
Neither of my kids were “natural” drivers. My daughter especially. I put hundreds of miles into practice and it all sorted itself out.
DEFCON 5 is pure peace BTW so that is good news. If you meant DEFCON 1 (worst case scenario), I don’t understand why you would say that about Texas over driving in the Northeast. Texas has some pretty polite drivers all things considered.
Let me let me tell you this straight. This board has an unusual number of American Dopers that don’t know how to drive and some that even seem to encourage that sort of behavior. That may be fine if you live in Manhattan but it definitely doesn’t cut it in 99.9%+ of the U.S. by area at all. It is true handicap and a voluntary one and something you should work to overcome especially if you are going to be a parent in a suburb. That is all about driving and it is practically required as part of the core job description. The only way out of it is to force your responsibility on others and people will not appreciate it. You may even need to know how to drive in case of an emergency so anything you can learn is better than nothing as long as you can judge your abilities.
Like others said, nobody is born knowing how to drive. Most people learn as teenagers in the U.S. but there is no problem starting later. All urban areas have driving schools that can teach you for a fee and you could also try the tried and true method using a friend with a car in a large empty parking. You move up to side streets from there with a max speed of 25mph. Nobody expects you navigate rush hour traffic on the interstate highway until you build up to that. Pretend you are just a scare 16 year old and learn the same way they do except you will have more common sense and more mature friends so you have an advantage.
I do driver training for a living, while I have some serious doubts about my ability to teach over a message board I can give you some of the most important basics up front.
(in no particular order although Horizons is the most important for control of the car)
Patience, do not get in a hurry, do not try to beat the light or that car or anything. patient drivers rarely cause big problems
Following distance, the average driver is simply incapable of understanding why we teach 4 seconds or more, the short answer is this. ask anyone and every one you can who has ever hit another car. “if you had more time and space could you have avoided that crash?”
Horizons, horizons, f***ing horizons. the simple version of this is “your horizon is the farthest point ahead that you can see, where the car is GOING, and everything in between.” so if you are turning right, your horizon is not the corner it is a point around the corner (and again everything in between including the corner)
the average driver looks far to close (usually at the car in front of them) and as a result spends most of the time in reaction mode, with a proper horizon you no longer need to react and every thing becomes action instead. this will smooth out your turns to the right and help with the ones on the left.
Left turns, another thing the average driver has serious issues with, most turn the second the light turns green and end up approaching the new street at the wrong angle.
Go straight through the crosswalk (at least your body, the whole car in big intersections)
Look for the center of the new lane,
Look for your HORIZON.
any time you look at curbs/cars/trees you will driver at them, so stop looking at them.
I should add that starting to learn how to drive is fun and a little thrilling. Hitting that gas for the first time and making that engine roar through that empty parking lot is a great feeling. You can practically the machine become an extension of yourself. You glance down at the speedometer and it reads 15mph. You back off because it is a little aggressive for a first run but you have already gotten bitten by the bug and will come back for more another day.
If it makes you feel better, a friend of mine was born cross-eyed and had surgery as a child that removed any depth perception. He drives all the time. You’ll be fine.
Just remember that there are millions of stupid - and I mean STUPID - people who drive every day. I’m not saying that to make you scared that stupid people are going to run into you on the road. I mean there are people who are dumb as bricks and completely vapid people and they drive every day with no problems whatsoever. And you are way smarter than them.
Driving is intimidating until you start doing it and then you realize there’s not much to be scared of.
Also remember that the traffic in the suburbs is completely different than what you experience in NYC. So are the roads. Roads out here are spacious and cars are moving with plenty of room between them. For the most part, nobody is parked on the street. You have big parking lots at superstores to roam around in.
Heck I’d be intimidated to drive in NYC too!
I live in the suburbs and I know plenty of people who don’t drive on freeways (or prefer not to) so don’t worry about pushing yourself in that direction. I also know plenty of people who are scared to drive in the city but have no problems in the suburbs. Just get used to driving the spacious, easy roads around your home that get you to the doctor’s offices and the store, and let others do the rest if you’re still intimidated.
As others have already said, and you seem to have resigned yourself to the fact of the matter, you’re going to have to learn how to drive.
I can’t recommend strongly enough that you enroll in driving courses from a professional driver instruction company. If you want to do some practice with your fiance in empty lots after getting your permit and before driver training, that’s fine. Large cemetaries with winding roads are another good place for informal instruction. Do not drive on public roads in traffic with your fiance until you are a confident, licensed driver.
Most kids in the US learn to drive from their parents, which is really not optimal. Being able to do something is not the same as being able to teach someone else to do it. It can be stressful at times, but at least the power dynamic between a parent and child is already ingrained. This is not the case in a romantic relationship. When you’re 16 and your dad starts getting stressed out and being an asshole, it’s okay, because every 16 year old already knows that their dad is an asshole.
I really can’t stress this enough. Do not ask for or agree to driving instruction from your fiance on public roads.
This really should be noted. I would not drive in NYC on a bet. Suburban driving, even interstate and beltway driving is NOT like core inner city metropolitan driving. If you are looking around at the feral NYC driving environment and quailing, that is not what driving is like in 99.99% of the rest of the US.
It’s really what you’re used to. I know someone who lives in Orange County, NY and usually drives into NYC to work. He says the people he knows upstate always ask him how he can drive in that terrible NYC traffic, while the NYC people always ask him how he can drive in the dark. (NYC streets always have streetlights- even tiny dead-end residential streets)
And don’t drive in Boston at all until you have NYC mastered. I drove in downtown Manhattan after I had 10 years of experience of Boston driving and found it very easy. That is the point though. The vast majority of the U.S. is not like that. Most of it is just simple roads with nice drivers. You don’t have to worry about making it to the major leagues before you work your way through pee-wee training. It is just like any other skill, you just start on small roads and work up to it. NYC proper is not normal for the U.S. Most of it is just suburban or backroads where driving is an an easy skill that just takes a few months of practice to be safe and competent.
No matter what your disadvantage might be, I can absolutely promise you that there millions of drivers on the road all over the U.S. that have driven their whole lives with worse. Florida is filled with geriatric people that cruise the roads and can barely remember where they live let alone see above the steering wheel. You are in are in much better position than them.
Austin has a light rail line–which connects downtown to one area of the city’s growing urban sprawl. There are bus lines, too. Perhaps consideration of transit options could affect the OP’s choice of which suburban area to choose.
Which might give the OP a bit of breathing room–until she learns to drive. And gets a car of her own. Both necessary accomplishments before becoming a suburban mom!
There is a REALLY good, fun way to learn to drive well.
Most indoor kart tracks, like OnTrack in Wallingford, CT, run a $99 Saturday morning/early afternoon unlimited-driving combo deal.
You’ll be able to drive until your ribs are sore and your arms feel like they are going to fall off. You’ll get black-flagged a few times in your first few races if you’re too slow but they’ll get you up to speed by the end of the day. Tell them you’re a complete novice at driving at registration.
Oh, my! This is a really, REALLY terrible way try to learn how to drive a car. Kart racing is almost the exact opposite of driving a car on public roads.
Sorry, but this is horrible advice. I’ve been driving cars and trucks for over 20 years, and I have to practically think out loud to not drive like a maniac after a couple hours in a kart. No. Just, no.
Here is a recent thread of a poster who recently got her license despite severe anxiety. Once you begin practice driving, your fears will diminish. I know two mildly mentally retarded men who have their drivers licenses - it’s not that hard to learn. My brother-in-law learned how to drive at age 50 after moving to California after having lived in NYC his entire life. You will do fine.
…This totally makes me laugh, because the one time I went kart racing, the guy who invited me said, “So, what did you think?” and I said, “Well… it was pretty much exactly like driving on Southern California freeways.” (However, if you are not driving in SoCal, I agree, not a good idea.)
Anyway. OP, I understand; I hated learning to drive as well, and driving is still not my favorite thing by far. But you’ll get the hang of it. I agree with everyone else that suburban moms basically have to know how to drive more than anyone else.
You will absolutely need two cars if you want to allow your kids to have any extracurricular activities at all. Unless your husband works from home, the car’s not going to be there after school. And how will you grocery shop during the day, after the kids are in school? Being a SAHM is a full-time job in itself, and you AND your husband will not want to waste precious afternoon hours driving around to accomplish errands. And once your kids are in school, you will want to get out of the house during the day (or else develop a serious case of cabin fever). You should be thinking about opportunities to volunteer or work part-time when your kids hit full-time school age, and that’s going to be impossible unless you can drive (or at least ride a moped).
With very few exceptions (blind people, or mentally-incompetent folks), anyone can drive around on local roads. Get a permit after you move, and have your husband or parents take you on driving lessons. It’s really not too bad. I didn’t learn to drive until I was 20 because my mother actively prevented me from getting a license while I lived at home, and it all turned out okay. I have an absolutely* terrible *memory when it comes to navigation, but my smartphone has a great GPS system and I always end up where I need to be, even if I can’t remember how I got there.