I drive only because I have to. Grew up in a small suburban town where I walked or rode my bike until high school friends got cars. I was not interested in driving myself. The idea scared me.
I went to college locally and my father was a faculty member so I rode with him in the mornings and caught a bus to my afternoon job. After work, my boss would drop me off at home.
I finally got my license when I was about 21. More than thirty years later I’m not happy when I have to drive a long distance. When we vacation in the summer, my wife does the long drive to our out-of-state destination, then I do the local driving to the nearby attractions.
Since WWII we’re created a way of life in which most people living outside of larger cities are more or less required to drive. I don’t like it and it’s extremely wasteful in many ways, but I live with it.
I didn’t get my liscense until some time after starting college (in the mid-2000’s). I lived in a suburb of a major metropolitan city with very easy access to public transportation and just didn’t have any interest in driving. My college also had a pretty good bus system, so I never really needed a car there either, making do with the a mix of the buses and biking for three of my four years.
I walk all over the place, all the time these days, too, but I’m still glad I know how to drive. People who don’t know how to drive are limiting themselves, no doubt - I guess the question is, are the limitations a problem? The answer for a lot of people seems to be, “No,” which surprises me. I get groceries with my little cart most days, but some days I need a heavy load of groceries, and I take the car.
I think it’s a phenomena of this generation being more of an inside group. I have a sixteen year old son. I had to force him to go to the DMV and get his learner’s permit after he turned 15. He just didn’t have that desire to drive.
Like a few other posters above, I counted the days till I could get my learner’s permit at the earliest age, and got my full license on the morning of my 16th birthday.
My son, now that he has the freedom and independence that driving himself around affords him says that he wouldn’t trade it and doesn’t understand why he didn’t want to get his license earlier.
I’m 41, have lived in Southern CA all my life, and have never learned to drive.
Why? Well, when I was a teenager I lived in a city (Long Beach) that had a really good public transportation system. My parents were sharing one car between them as it was, so there was no way that I could borrow it, and no money for a second car (or for the jump in their insurance rates that would come from another driver). When I moved out, I was too broke for one, and I was still living in Long Beach so I still didn’t really need one.
After that - well, I either had boyfriends who drove, so I didn’t need to learn, or if I was single I didn’t have access to a car to practice.
Add to that - driving has kind of swelled up in my mind to be this Big Thing. My folks have always joked about my clumsiness and lack of spacial awareness (I still bump into things/people a lot with my own body), and so I’m convinced I would be a horrible driver. I’m afraid of getting in an accident and dying, or worse killing someone else. It’s a scary scary thing, a huge responsibility, and I don’t want to screw it up.
My feet have heavy mileage. I put in six miles every day, and I will walk in the pouring rain, the heat, and the cold. I am able to do 99% errands by feet. But I’m still grateful that I have a car. I can make doctor’s appointments that I wouldn’t normally be able to make if I had to rely on public transit, and I can go places on the weekends (like Trader Joes!) that I wouldn’t be able to get to otherwise.
That said, my car is getting up their in age and I rather enjoy not having a monthly car note. So I’m debating whether or not to buy a replacement when it finally goes home to Jesus. Perhaps the Zip Car trend will finally make its way to my neck of the woods. That would be wonderful.
If I had a kid, I wouldn’t force them to get a car but I would encourage them to learn how to drive. Most jobs are not conveniently located on a bus or train line. And living within walking distance to work is also not an easy thing to swing. I’d hate for my imaginary spawn to forgo opportunities just because they can’t drive.
I think driving is best learned when you’re young and ignorant to all the dangers. The cautiousness that comes with maturity may make learning harder if you wait too long.
These kids that don’t care about driving: Are the big into computer gaming?
Just wondering if operating a car might seem a little mundane, and/or terrifying that when bad stuff happens you actually bleed and die as a result…rather than just having to restart at the beginning of the level.
I’m the biggest klutz in the world (yeah, even bigger than YOU!) and while I’m no Danica Patrick, I am an okay driver. The key is to drive in a way that is comfortable for YOU. When I’m on the expressway, I don’t try to keep up with traffic. I just stay in my lane and keep to the speed limit. If people wish I’d hurry up, they know how to pass. I just make sure I’m in the right lane so that they can.
Passengers complain that I drive like “Miss Daisy”, but you know what? I’d rather be Miss Daisy than Miss Vehicular Homicide.
Just an anecdotal sidenote that I should’ve added to my earlier post:
A friend of mine, who recently turned 21, has had a brand new car sitting in his garage for years now, and he still hasn’t driven it. Seriously, his relatives gave him a new car as a gift when he graduated from high school, yet the vehicle is just sitting there unused. He has never shown any ambition to learn to drive, and even at his age with a new car waiting for him, he has made no headway whatsoever into getting his driver’s license. Considering that, at least as it was in my case, getting your own car to drive post-license is the largest barrier to, y’know, actually driving, the fact that my friend had a solution to that problem literally given to him yet he STILL doesn’t want to drive is incredibly perplexing to me.
FTR, my friend is a JC student. No job, no disposable income really, his parents chauffer him everywhere; I think he’s planning on transferring to a four-year uni at some point, but I don’t know how the Hell he’s going to manage things without driving.
I never felt any particular urge to drive just for the sake of driving, either, despite growing up out in the boonies. There just wasn’t any real point to it, near as I could see.
All my friends had licenses and cars, so if we wanted to go somewhere together, they could drive.
We all had our own rooms, so we had plenty of privacy when hanging out together by the simple virtue of closing the damn door.
There wasn’t much of anything worth driving to that was within the distance our parents were okay with us driving unsupervised. And what little there was was mostly within walking distance of someone’s house.
4)We had call waiting, so we could pretty much yak on the phone as much as we wanted without our parents yelling at us to quit tying up the line.
If I just wanted to get the hell away from the family for a while, I could go up to my room and shut the door, or else wander around the woods back of the house alone or with the dog.
Besides, driving is, for me at least, a purely utilitarian activity. If I could be teleported where I need to go, or if weather and distance and road layout were conducive to walking, I’d be perfectly happy to do that instead. So what would be the point of driving when I didn’t need to?
(It’s not like I could get my license before my older brother finally got his own car insurance policy–at the rate he kept having wrecks, our parents couldn’t afford insurance for both of us.)
I’m another very clumsy person who bumps into things all the time, and I have excellent spatial awareness with my car - I don’t know why, but I do. You almost have the right attitude towards driving - it is a big deal, and it is a scary big responsibility, but taking some in-depth driver’s training with a good instructor would probably go a long way towards increasing your confidence in your own abilities.
He asks, on an international message board, peopled with strangers who chat with each other about everything.
I still find it hard to credit. I got my license when I was 17 because my family didn’t own a car (this was 1953 and car ownership was not yet universal). I used public transit everywhere. The public transit was much much better than virtually any place in North America has today (maybe except for NYC). When I went to the bus stop one block away going to HS, there was always a bus within a minute. I once counted 8 buses visible at the same time.
But getting a license was a rite of passage to adulthood. Every teen wanted one. I took driver ed in HS and took the test on a borrowed car. But I wanted that sign of adulthood. It was about 10 years till I owned a car (living in NYC, no less, but my wife-to-be was in Connecticut). I still drive little (about 2500 miles/year) and use public transit a lot. I mainly use my car to go food marketing once a week, to go downtown to concerts, and visit my kids in Boston and NY.
I’d like a cite on that.
A nice gaming PC could cost $3000 a decade ago.
Now you can spend $1000 to get a reasonably nice gaming PC.
Most gaming now, for some reason, is done on $300 consoles anyway.
Social mores change with time. It happens. Getting a driver’s license as a rite of passage hasn’t been around all that long, in the grand scheme of things. It didn’t really stick. Big deal.
I just wish this society gave everyone the option of wanting or not wanting a drivers license. I would absolutely love it if I didn’t have to own a car and drive practically everywhere. For those that don’t want it, I say good for them, don’t get one if you can get by without it.
Not only that, at his high school–where a little over ten years ago his brothers went, and they had to have a lottery for parking passes in the HS lot–the lot is almost deserted. There are some kids who drive, but mostly they come in on the bus, on bicycles, on skateboards–not in cars.
None of my kid’s friends have licenses, either. (Which I am actually kind of happy to hear, because he means he won’t be driving around with inexperienced drivers.)
I’ve observed this phenomenon as well and it blows my mind. Hell, I’m not even that old - 30! - and in my day, you were itching to take the driver’s test the day you turned 16. That’s what I did.
I have two colleagues with sons at driving age. Both have told me that their sons are just not that interested in getting their licenses.
Crazy. CRAZY!
These kids live in suburban, not urban neighborhoods.
I really can’t wrap my head around it. I’ve been tempted to ask them both - are your boys…OK? Because I can’t fathom how a suburban teenager wouldn’t want to drive.
Times change, I guess, but this is really, really weird. Do they expect to be driven around by their parents through their 20s? I mean, I have a few friends that didn’t get their licenses until their late 20s, but these guys all grew up in urban areas where you took public transportation and having a car would be a burden, not a boon. Suburban teenagers not wanting to drive? That’s really, really strange.
I did not feel ready to drive at 17 even though I had taken Driver’s ed. My busy parents did not drive with me much and when Mom did she screamed at me which did nothing for me. Some of it I probably deserved but it is no way to learn, and I still don’t enjoy it much when she’s in the car with me.
Since I had not practiced much and could not take the test, I would take the car occasionally, but not enough to get real comfortable. I was very afraid of other people and of hitting someone else.
I lived by myself for a while and didn’t have a car so I walked and took a bicycle. I went and lived with my sister but she didn’t choose to go drive with me, and I didn’t have any glasses so that was another obstacle.
Only this last year, now that I have a car to myself and no backseat drivers, it is getting better and I hope to take the test this month.
