52, no kids, never driven, never plan to.
I walk the 1/2 mile to the grocery and back twice a week. Or I take the bus from the end of my street to the A&P at the George Washington Bridge.
I take the bus to NYC and back a lot, and usually walk in the City.
I walk to work, and can usually find someone to drive me home. If not, I walk back.
I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was almost 30. I took public transit everywhere…well, I still do, because I don’t own a car anyway. My husband and I rent one on occasion, such as when we want to take a weekend trip. The main reason I got my license was because he complained about being the only driver on long vacation trips (James Bay, anyone?). I still hate driving, and like others have said in this thread, dislike participating in an activity in which my slightest error can cause others great harm. I drive carefully, but I’m still nervous merging lanes, driving on narrow streets, or doing anything else that involves split-second decision-making. Add to that the financial and environmental costs of car ownership, and driving just ain’t my bag.
(Oh, and as for groceries: We own one of those rickety pull-carts, and live within walking distance of a few grocery stores. Life’s peachy that way.)
[QUOTE=ryobserver]
Can I mention my mother? Never got a license, never learned to drive. She turns 78 later this month. Her passport expired sometime in the 60s I think, and she hasn’t had photo ID since.
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My mom is 63 and has never had one either. She has a passport and they do a lot of travelling; she’s just always a passenger.
I got my license at 29 since I moved up here and a car is relatively necessary. I went to the driving school and passed (I tried to take the test in DC in my 20s and failed badly).
Before that I lived in cities and used a non-driver’s state ID.
I’m 30 and don’t have a licence for driving a car although I do drive trains. Should I happen to require a licence I’ll get one - I do actually know how to drive but I didn’t have enough money as a teenager to continue with lessons and I then frittered it all away on education. 
Like other UKdopers I’ve found it perfectly feasible to live without one and I have no particular desire to get a car.
[QUOTE=Phase42]
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.
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My AZ ID doesn’t expire, ever. It confuses the ever-loving snot out of a lot of cashiers, who are trained to record DL number and expiration date on checks that don’t have a physical address (I’m at a college, so mine have a university PO Box address on them). ID numbers are the same as DL numbers – unless you request otherwise, they’re your SSN – so it throws them when they look over the entire card and can’t find an expiration date.
I suspect this is also the reason a lot, if not most, stores and bars will take an expired AZ license as ID. The part that expires is the ‘permission to drive’ part and not the ‘this person is who they say they are’ part. I don’t know if another state would accept an expired DL for identification, but I’ve used my card as official ID in California, Colorado, Illinois and New York and had no problems in any state.
My school ID also doesn’t have an expiration date, but AZ university IDs don’t have birthdates or physical descriptions printed on them along with the picture, so I can only use that to prove I’m me at the university, or a few local places (like the town’s public library) who will accept it as proof of residency.
52 years old and I let my driver’s license expire years ago. I hate cars for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it feels unnatural moving faster than I can walk (or run). I make exceptions for public transportation out of necessity. Owing to my color blindness, I hate driving, as it demands too much stressful concentration. I can usually distinguish a red light from a green light, but not always. I can tell when the vehicle in front of me puts on its brake lights, but it takes me a moment or two to realize that. Red doesn’t shout out to my eyes. To me, red is one of the palest colors. I use my photo ID from work for identification purposes, but it is not always sufficient, as it does not provide my address.
I just never got around to it-parents had one car, both of them worked, so it wasn’t always feasible to practice when I was a teen, then later on I couldn’t afford the insurance, and then I needed new glasses and was unemployed for so long.
Now, though, that I finally might have the means-BAM! Started having seizures, diagnosed with epilepsy, and now I’m prohibited from driving for at least six months. sigh
Thank god for the buses. Although it looks like Port Authority may be cutting my bus route come June, the pricks.
Just goes to show you how different this world is in different places.
And how different we all are. That’s a good thing IMHO.
One of the very best things my parents did for me and my brother was teaching us how to drive at a very early age. And we had the mini-bikes, and dirt bikes and such. Tractors and trucks when we where capable. By the time I was 16, I had a lot of time behind the ‘wheel’.
Sure, driving in town was a different experience, but I already knew how the vehicle would react. That I had down.
Also, I don’t want to live across from a grocery store. I’ve lived in the city. I’ve lived in the suburbs. I prefer the ‘sticks’. Someone will live here, even if I don’t. :shrug:
Not a situation of no license, but when I first moved to Sacramento, I couldn’t afford a car. I grew up in Oregon, so while my town had no public transit, I was fully indoctrinated about it and took to it instantly. Eventually, I started working a late swing shift, and could no longer ride my bike home 7 miles at midnight in November, so I bought an old car. Now, my husband and I own two cars. We may move soon to a place that would let him take the light rail to work, so we can get rid of a car, and I am sooooo jealous. When I went carless, for 10 months, I lost 30 pounds and two sizes. I just wish my workplace was closer to the bus lines.
I’ve always liked -having- my license, its come in handy to be able to teach friends to drive - remembering how I had to teach myself manual gives me great patience with them.
Waves to everyone. I am 36 and I have no license. I grew up in Brooklyn and went to school in Manhattan. My parents never emphasized it since there were very few places to park and I’ve always had no problem taking public transportation.
Five years ago we moved to the NJ suburbs and I’ve been trying to get one ever since. The problem is that I hate to drive and I’m really bad at it. My mother was a very bad driver and I am not very confident behind the wheel either. Plus I work at home and make good money so there’s not much incentive there. I took the test last year and flunked it miserably because I had labrynthitis (an inner ear dysfunction) and didn’t know it at the time. I went the doctor the next day and he told me to stay in bed.
My husband drives and likes to drive. He drives to the grocery store. In between I walk to the local markets if we need anything. For his sake I’m going to give it a go again by this summer. I just can’t seem to quite get the hang of parallel parking. Any suggestions? Advice?
No DL. 29. Hate it. Seizure disorder - controlled, but still having breakthrough seizures despite medication.
Still want me on the road? 
[QUOTE=Helen’s Eidolon]
I got my license at age 23. Living in Montreal, I never wanted it at all and would have been perfectly happy to continue my non-driving existence. Then I moved to PA and things changed - I drive everywhere, all the time now. Even when I go back to Montreal, I want to drive places when I never wanted to drive before - I got spoiled!
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I didn’t get my driver’s license till I was 23, either.
I have sort of the opposite experience of yours, though- I always find myself thinking, “How can I do whatever it is I need to do with the minimum amount of driving and looking for parking spaces?” I’ll walk between places if it’s at all reasonable to do so, rather than drive and look for another parking space. I drive a lot (commute about 45 minutes each way every workday), but I hate driving, and I will only do it if there really isn’t an alternative.
I’m not a bad driver (had one accident in the nine years I’ve been driving, and it wasn’t my fault). I am a very cautious driver, though, and won’t try to do something while driving if I’m not fairly certain I can do it. For example, I know my spatial skills aren’t very good, so I don’t try to parallel park in a tight space. I also tend to try to avoid parking lots with small spaces and not much space between rows of cars, for the same reason. I will probably never drive anything too much bigger than my current Honda Civic (with the exception of renting a van for moving, or that sort of thing), because I know there’s less margin for error in a larger vehicle.
Grocery shopping falls into two separate categories. There’s shopping for stuff for tonight’s or (if I’m really thinking ahead) tomorrow’s dinner, which I do at one of the grocery stores I can walk to, and pretty much buy only what I need for that meal, plus maybe some other small things that look good. Then, there are car trips to a more distant grocery store to buy heavy or bulky things (2-liter bottles of soda, large packs of toilet paper, etc). I put off doing the latter, because that kind of grocery shopping somehow sucks a lot worse than running down to the grocery store to get something for tonight. A nice side effect of that division of grocery store shopping is that I’m more often eating meat or fish that I just bought, not something that’s been sitting in the fridge for a week.
Mr. Neville doesn’t drive, though he does have a license, and is capable of driving (he does it very rarely, when we go to the wine country and I need a designated driver). We walk to most places we go, or take transit. We don’t go on long car trips (which is just as well- I get carsick a lot easier than I get airsick). We’ve never driven from the Bay Area to LA, though we do go to LA fairly often to see his grandparents. We always fly instead. I can feel the relief washing over me when I put my car keys in my purse, knowing that I’m not going to have to drive for a couple of days.
Mr. Neville and I will be moving, probably sometime this summer once we figure out where he’ll be getting a job. Walkability is a huge criterion for any neighborhood we’d be willing to live in. I hate driving and looking for parking, so I want to live somewhere where I don’t have to do those things every time I want to go to the grocery store, go to a restaurant, or get takeout food.