I was just looking at this article/slideshow about celebrities who (I’ll save my grammar rant about the word “that” in the title) don’t drive, and that prompted me to wonder, “How common is “I don’t know how to drive” amongst people who grow up in big cities?”
I the USA I presume this is more of an East Coast thing, because here in the Western part of the USA, not knowing how to drive is almost unimaginable. But for the US East Coast and Europe…
So what’s the story amongst Dopers? If you grew up and continue to live in a big city, do you know how to drive?
I grew up in the Albany, NY area and now live in Charlotte, NC. I don’t have a license and don’t know if I remember how to drive - haven’t checked in a few years.
I lived in NYC for 25 years. Those of us who grew up elsewhere knew how to drive, but I knew lots of people born and raised in the City who never had to know how to drive . . . or who got a license just to have it as ID.
3.4m drivers licenses, 8m residents, and people over 18 are 80% of the population of NYC 80% being the state % and fairly consistent across all states of the USA. Confirmed as close to 80%, no different, by http://newyork.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm
So that means that about half of the adults do not have NYC issues drivers licenses.
I grew up in a big city; the 4th biggest in the US as a matter of fact, and virtually everyone drives, unless they’re some kind of wacko hippie, or some kind of Sheldon Cooper-esque weirdo.
Of course Houston isn’t the same as say, NYC, Chicago or San Francisco, but I’d bet it’s very similar to Los Angeles in the percentage of drivers.
Lifelong New Yorker here. I have a license, and I do drive once in a while, but I don’t own a car. I did, once, for maybe a year, back in 1979 or 1980, can’t remember exactly.
My father, another lifelong New Yorker, has never had a driver’s license. Ever. Does not know how to drive.
I’m betting a significant number of adults living in New York got their licenses before they moved to NY, and simply kept renewing them. I know you’re not supposed to do this, but people do, just to avoid the hassle of getting a new license.
So if it’s true that half the adults in NY don’t have NY licenses, that doesn’t necessarily mean that half the adults in NY don’t have licenses at all.
Do you consider Milwaukee a big city? It’s not big like LA or New York or even Chicago, but it’s hardly a small city either. Most everyone learns to drive here (and has a car). I know of two people that don’t drive. One (to the best of my knowledge) by choice, the other started to learn but his Autisim took over and he was far too panicked to do it. The only other person I know that didn’t drive, eventually did get his license when he was about 25 or so. Milwaukee is pretty bus friendly.
I don’t know the bus system at all around here, but I can’t imagine not driving in Milwaukee. My understanding is that it can take an hour or two to get across town (from one suburb to another) and we’ve got a lot of urban sprawl going on here. I can imagine trying to bus it from your apartment downtown to a Target to a grocery store and back home would take a good chunk of the day rather then being two hours with your own car.
Question seems to have been more or less answered (~30 - ~99% driving participation). Allow me to throw my anecdata on the pile and say that in Arkansas and Tulsa, Oklahoma I know a handful of people who don’t drive and don’t really miss out on it.
These are all normal people that I’ve met, obviously, who are out in public with jobs and lives. What I’m saying is, for any answer like mine (maybe 5 out of 50 of my closest acquaintances don’t drive), you should add to the non-participating guesstimate a number of shut-ins, disabled, people who don’t drive and don’t go out in public.
Certainly not supposed to, but if you aren’t using residency claims to use state money (like in-state college tuition), and if you’re not using this scheme to shirk taxes and fees on your nonexistent car, I doubt any state would bother investigating or prosecuting you for it. The largest hurdle would be keeping a plausible address in your old state for the purposes of the DL and returning there as needed to renew things.
I live in London, and it’s fairly common to come across people who don’t know how to drive and don’t have a licence. Or people like my ex, who took the test and then never drove again, as she never got round to buying a car.
However, London is unusual in that regard, mainly because it’s usually way more convenient to take public transport than to drive in the congestion. I come originally from the UK’s second largest city – Birmingham – and it’s very unusual for an adult over the age of, say, 25 to not know how to drive.
In the Netherlands not knowing how to drive is pretty common. I have loads of friends who don’t drive. My SO doesn’t drive, neither does his mother. We cycle, and take the train to different cities. There often isn’t really a good reason to drive. I haven’t driven a car in almost a year, and I don’t own one.
I read a similar article as the OP, celebrities who don’t drive or didn’t start driving until later than usual. I noticed that several were the UK. A couple were from London (Amy Winehouse, Daniel Radcliffe) a couple weren’t (Russell Brand, Ricky Gervais). The only one on the list who wasn’t from England, actually, was Vincent Kartheiser, who for a while didn’t drive for environmentalist reasons.
Well, driving lessons aren’t cheap and there isn’t a huge fashion for parents buying their kids cars, primarily as insurance for youngsters can be extreme, so it’s quite easy to not get around to learning by the time you go to college, and then if you end up in London after college (or during, like Brand and Gervais), the need is even less urgent.
I had driving lessons for my 17th birthday, but my partner, who moved to London directly from college, didn’t learn til her late 20s, doing a week long crash course.
Counterpoint: my nieces and nephews, all seven of them aged between 19 and 25 and of varying mediocre salary levels, all have their own cars. But they don’t live in London.
IME, it’s fairly common in New York City to not get a license growing up, and often not even learn how to drive; it’s pretty much unheard-of anywhere else in the U.S.
I have a Virginia license and renewed online using my mom’s address. I was still in college then so I guess it wasn’t technically cheating. I’ve been meaning to get a New York one and register to vote here at the same time, I’m just lazy.
I know how to drive from growing up outside the DC area, but most of my co-workers that are from here don’t. It seems to vary by borough though. Those who grew up in Manhattan don’t, but driving and having a car appears to be more common in the outer boroughs.
As for myself, I haven’t driven in about three years and worry about things like mixing up the gas and the brakes if I ever get behind the wheel again. The last time I drove I tested the pedals before I went anywhere to make sure I hadn’t forgotten.
This is the real crux of the issue. In cities/countries with a high population density and well developed public transportation, it frequently doesn’t make sense to own a car or really learn to drive. Having been to quite a few big cities that meet that category (NYC, SF, London, Boston, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris), I totally get it.
If the city has underdeveloped public transportation and/or a low population density, then driving is the way to go. It’s possible for me to take the bus to work, but it takes me somewhere between 15 and 25 minutes to travel the 9 miles to work by car, and the bus timetable has that same distance as taking about an hour, not accounting for traffic, weather, etc… It’s much the same or even more of a discrepancy for running errands on the weekends- it’s relatively easy and quick to drive, but taking the bus would easily double the time, and require a fairly serious amount of planning to make sure I caught the weekend buses and didn’t sit at the bus stop for 45 minutes waiting on the next bus.
Do you have the percentage for people outside Stockholm? I grew up in the boondocks with a good public transport system, though, and I never felt compelled to take a driver’s license, which I have a feeling was quite uncommon.