Oh, and while I was in Philly, I tried to get a local license.
But in order to get one without taking 80 hours (!) of lessons which I need about as much as I need a second navel, I would have had to hop over to France before going to Philly and get me a French license*. Since I had no intention to buy a car, but only to rent, and rental places were happy with my Spanish license, I didn’t get a local license.
Holders of French or German licenses get a PA license by showing their “home” one. Doesn’t apply to the rest of the EU, although the license of any EU country is valid in the rest of the EU. And I couldn’t exchange my FL license for being a foreigner.
I’m 36, and I’ve never had a driver’s license. I’ve tried learning to drive, and I’m abysmally bad at it. And yes, I know it takes practice, but it’s the kind of thing where you can *kill people * while you practice, so I’ll pass.
I’ve always lived within 10 miles of the city. I have no interest in living further from the city. Granted, there are times when having a license would be handy, but on the whole, not driving hasn’t had a negative impact on my quality of life. On a related note, the buttload of money I save by not keeping a car, combined with the exercise I get by not driving to anything further than a block away like most people seem to :rolleyes: , has had a decidedly positive * impact on my quality of life.
Should I ever decide that not driving IS having a negative impact on my life, then I’ll learn how. Until then, I have no interest in doing it just because **Malienation ** thinks I should.
*Yes, I realize that one can know how to drive and not keep a car, which is great for all sorts of situations. However, it’s useless in the sort of “emergency situation” most people envision, since I could get a taxi or an ambulance in a tiny fraction of the time it would take me to rent a car.
Malienation, like, chill. Just because you think you need to drive a car doesn’t mean others can’t pick up a phone and order a taxi. Whatever wild fantasies you are conjuring up of NEEDING to drive a car don’t happen. Emergency? Well, I should be dialling for a cop or paramedic or fireman. Some strange sequence of events that just happen to cause me to stand there and scream for a car? Ummm…I’m sure I’ll be able to sell the rights to the movie for just such a situation and make money in the end. Everything else can be handled by taxi or public transportation.
Now, I’ll give you that not every place has great taxi and/or public transportation. I’ve been in Pittsburgh where there seems to be only one taxi service and they suck. Irritating as hell, but nothing horrible. Denver had/has horrible public transportation, but it seems to be getting better by my friends reports.
However, where I live now I don’t need to worry. The public transportation is better than driving a car. I can get to the other side of the city faster than with a car during morning/evening rush hour, and other times a taxi fills in the blanks. I pay $10 to $15 on average per taxi ride and $50 every 3 months for a public transportation pass ($200/year). I’m sure I could take 1 taxi a day and still not come close to what a car would cost with down-payment, monthly payments, insurance, wear-and-tear-and-repair and gas.
I haven’t owned a car for 10 years and am getting tempted, though. I’d like to do more quick outings with the kids, plus I started to play golf. I am thinking about finding a deal with a rental company for like 2 weekends a month and see how much it would cost…Might be an answer.
But the problem I have is that I only have a soon-to-be-expiring DL from the USA and getting a Czech one will cost $750!!! (Translated driving lessons, test and examination…ugh).
I lived for years in Calgary, Canada with no driver’s license. It’s really not too bad in a city with an excellent transit system. Or, I’d guess it would, anyway. Calgary did not have an excellent transit system. I could get from my home in the suburbs to the downtown or the University in an hour or an hour and a half, respectively, but I had to really want to go somewhere before you could get me out of the house. Going shopping or to the bank was a full afternoon, if I wasn’t already out for the day. It sucked.
I’m still fighting the attitude towards going out that I built up there. Having lived other places, it really seems to me like a car-centric world is kind of a false convenience. Sure, you can go farther and go more places in less time, but when that fact is taken for granted by everyone, it just increases the distance between everything to the point where you’re probably taking just as much time to do your daily thing as your great great grandparents did with little more than their own two feet. And you have to insure and maintain an expensive piece of equipment just to do it.
I can see where a car makes sense for travelling long distances, or emergencies when you really needed to be there five minutes ago, but as a necessary part of one’s daily routine? Nuh-uh, not for me if I can help it, thanks.
26 and no license yet. How many people have died thinking “I wish I had spent more time in my car?”
The average American spends $7,000+ a year dealing with their car. With that kind of money, you could take a trip around the world- each year! You could pay the higher rent and live in a funner place. You can eat hundreds of meals at the best restaurants in town. Screw working so I can pay for a vehicle so I can get to work!
Benefits- I’m not gonna get fat. I don’t cause massive pollution. I have a lot more free money. I get out more. I have more life experiences (a lot of the most interesting stuff that’s happened to me has happened on the bus). I meet a wider variety of people. I know my city better.
It’s not for everyone, but so far it’s been good to me.
When you don’t have a car, what is your typical grocery shopping experience like?
Is everyone that is reporting not having a license single and without kids? (except capybara and Marienee) I go grocery shopping once a week and have at least 4 bags. If there were two of me here, maybe 6 bags. If there were me and some kids - at least 8!
What’s it like? Or do people who live near good public transportation also live near corner stores where you shop a couple times a week?
I’ve always lived within walking distance of a decent grocery store. Since I live I live in cities, there are often also natural food stores, ethnic food stores, and farmer’s markets nearby. Since I walk past these things on the way to work, it’s no problem to pop in and pick something up for dinner.
Makes it really easy to cook with lots of fresh veggies since I don’t worry about them going bad and I don’t have to do a lot of complicated multi-meal planning. Good motivation not to pick up lots of nasty bulky hard-to-lug-around snack food and convience food.
Married with one infant. Two supermarkets, three drugstores and five convenience stores within three blocks of my place, so no car needed.
Grocery shopping on foot is “go downstairs, walk five minutes, buy what I need for today and maybe tomorrow, walk five minutes, go upstairs.”
With a car it would be “go downstairs, go to the parking area, turn on the parking rack, wait five minutes for my car to come down (if nobody’s waiting ahead of me), drive it out of its cradle, get out to turn off the parking rack, drive to the supermarket, wait for 30 minutes for a parking space if its the weekend, find an empty spot, buy what I need, pay for the parking space, drive home, stop in front of the parking rack, get out to turn on the parking rack, unload all the groceries in the driveway while I’m waiting for the empty cradle to come down, pull my car into the cradle being careful not to run over my groceries, turn off the parking rack, somehow get a week’s worth of groceries up to the 10th floor.”
At my last place, it was “walk downstairs, buy food, walk upstairs.”
I live walking distance of groceries as well-- it’s a small center but it has most of what we need, so I do a little shopping on the way home from work every couple of days with what the meals are going to be/what we need NOW in mind (I think most of Europe lives this way: “get asparagus and a loaf of bread on the way home”). When we lived further from the store we had a cool bike trailer that we could get 10 bags into, easy. I think if we had kids it would be a similar experience (and we live within 10 blocks of every kind of school. Your miles may vary, again).
The town I live in has free public transit, and there are several grocery stores (and associated malls) that I can get to easily. Every week I check the ads for all of them to see if there’s anything I need on sale. I have a large canvas bag I take with me because it’s easier to carry than multiple plastic bags (not to mention the environmental issues). I’m retired, so the time I spend shopping isn’t an issue; I bring a book along so my travel time isn’t “wasted”. Sometimes I go shopping two or three times a week, but at this point I’ve got a fully stocked freezer and cabinet, so outside of perishables and sales I really don’t need to go shopping that often.
As I’d said before, if I need to buy anything heavy or bulky, I make arrangements with a friend to give me a ride. I haven’t tried getting a cab since I moved here, but I know they’re available if I need one.
I live just across the street from a Safeway and Walmart (which are in a small mall), it’s quite easy for me to just run across the street when I need something. If I do a really big shop then I take a cart with me home (they have a system where we drop carts in a certain spot and they send someone to round it up but I often just walk it back across the street). The farmer’s market is a ~20 minute bus ride away, so I make it an afternoon and leave in time to catch the bus back. I have one of those rolling grocery bags that works just fine for what I buy there (though if I drove I’d buy some of the meat/fish and such. The only refrigerated products I buy now are some sauces that can fit in my insulated lunch kit.). It’s closer now that it was, since they were forced to move and now open year round.
Theatres are a not too long bus ride away, as are my preferred clubs and the shopping malls.
My son is now big enough that we don’t really need the stroller (the only time I take it with me is when I know we’ll be doing lots of walking… like the zoo… and then I just take the umbrella one), which makes the buses a lot easier to deal with since I’m not trying to wade through the crowd which was always fun.
Why I am really planning to get my license now is for a variety of reasons. The Children’s hospital is now further away from me (they opened the new one last September), as I said in my last post there is a lot of fun things to do around the city and the mountains are a short drive away, as he gets older I think of things my Dad did with my brother and I as a kid and want to do those things with my son… so I need to drive. Where I currently work is also an hour and a half commute on the bus. Driving on a bad day is about an hour, good day is about 45 minutes (I’ve gotten rides/taken cabs). The mornings I don’t mind so much, but that’s an extra half hour or so I can spend with my son at the end of the day.
When he was small, or it was just me it was easy to live with no car. I didn’t mind being stuck to the city (most of the time, but I like to get out and breath sometimes). But with the graduated drivers licence they have now, by the time I get my license he’ll be old enough that we can start doing those things I want to do.
No licence. And I’m 21. I get my provisional as a teenager, but I had my purse stolen. And as my parents decided they were no longer going to pay for my lessons, it seemed pointless to replace it.
Went to uni, so still couldn’t afford it. Now I’ve left, once my finances are stable I’ll start learning again.
Typical grocery run: Roommate gets some stuff from Costco, such as bulk paper towels, toilet paper, liquid soaps, frozen foods. I get the stuff we need spontaneously and not in 10lb packages.
We have two supermarkets, two liquor stores, and two convenience stores within a mile of my apartment. I hit the Ralph’s across the street from my workplace at least 2 times a week.
Single, one kid, and I live less than half a mile from the grocery store, which is also conveniently located between the train station and my house.
Usually I stop on the way home from work, but whether I do that or walk there from home, I either buy a bunch of stuff and spring for a $5 cab ride, or buy a few things and carry them the few blocks home. Hardly a traumatic experience.
I think you’ll find that the majority of people who don’t drive genuinely don’t need to. Otherwise, we would.
I live across the street from my local food store, post office, convenience store, drugstore, etc. It’s a five-minute walk: more convenient than using a car. The greatest obstacle is having to put everything down to open the apartment door.
There is a huge new 24-hour Sobeys food store a five-minute bus ride away. I thought the local food store would go out of business when it opened, but it didn’t. As it happens, I go to the local one 9 times out of ten, though. That’s the value of walkable convenience.
Hmm. I think I’ve hit on a walkable-community sales-tactic here…
I take the subway, then an express bus, to work.
For big/fancy/unusual stuff, I take the subway downtown. Sometimes I’ll take a cab.
I mostly frequently ride in a car when I go to visit friends, who live 60 km away, well north of the city, but I could take the bus there. It would be time-consuming and inconvenient, but I could do it, with enough planning. As it is, I take subway and bus to Newmarket and get picked up.
If I get a car (and I’ve been thinking about it), I’ll use it for out-of-town trips. Rentals actually worked better for me.
Don’t need to drive where I live, and had no real opportunity to learn. My parents declined to pay for driving lessons when I was a teenager, and if I had attempted to learn from either of them, it wouldn’t have lasted an hour before there was screaming and crying involved. I graduated high school at 17 and went straight to college in a small-ish town where most of the useful things are within a mile of campus, and never really left.
I don’t get one now because I can’t afford the driving lessons myself and don’t have a car to learn in. I don’t want to learn to drive from my friends mostly because I want them to stay my friends, and I know perfectly well I am going to be terrified and a royal pain in the neck when I’m first starting out. I’m also still a starving student, and if that $7000 figure is right, then trying to maintain a car would increase my annual expenses by about 50%, which is ridiculous.
The state of Arizona issues state IDs that look just like a driver’s license, except for the part where it doesn’t say I’m allowed to drive a car. Arizona also issues different ID styles to under- and over-21s nowadays, although I still have one of the old ones and never bothered to get my “adult” style card after I turned 21. IT has my birthdate on it, after all, and if the bartender can’t subtract my birth year from the current one and realize I’m 25, I’m not sure I want him mixing my drinks, either.
Holy cow! How long are Arizona ID cards valid for? I had a Washington ID card while I wasn’t driving, and I had to renew it every four years or so. On top of that, once it expires it’s no longer considered “valid identification” for the purpose of buying booze. (I think that’s mainly to prevent an over-21 person from giving his or her old ID to an underage sibling who looks very similar.)
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