Now we’re getting into serious hijack moments, here - but my own mentality (and one I’ve seen in some other people who’ve been being treated with me) is that it’s less devastating to be able to say, and know it for the truth, that this was my fault, than to look at failure and say either it’s no one’s fault, or that there was nothing that I, or anyone else, could have done to prevent it.
Control is so important to some people that it’s less of a problem to admit to failure than it is to admit that some things can’t be controlled nor prevented.
Growing up during the Great Depression, not many of us had cars, or even acces to them, except the farm boys who could drive the family truck (and most of them never bothered to get a license).
I was 23 before I ever bought my first (used) car in L.A. I drove for quite a while, teaching myself, before going to get my license.
That did give me an opportunity to see much of the U.S. via train and bus.
I think a lot of this still depends on where you live. The town I grew up in didn’t have a bus system until after I got my liscense, and walking everywhere wasn’t really an option for me. (There were safety concerns and other things.) My mother basically forced me to get my liscense because she didn’t want to take me places anymore.
In a way, it ended up probably being a good thing. (But don’t tell her I said so.) I’ve been in the car with quite a few people who started driving when they were older for various reasons. And to be honest, they scare me. It seems like they haven’t developed the same instincts that I have. The people I’ve ridden with who got their liscenses later, IMHO, are much more prone to braking suddenly (even on the interstate), misjudging time/distance, and other things that those who got our liscenses at a younger age don’t seem to do as much. (BTW, my sample size isn’t just people who just got their liscenses. Some are in their fifties and have had liscenses for more than twenty years…)
I went for drivers’ ed at 16 or so like everyone else. I remember watching lame old safety films in the high school’s lecture theatre and snickering like everyone else… but when three of us got in a car with the instructor and he directed the first driver through the streets of Whitby and said, “Turn right here” and OMG!!! all of a sudden we were on the Evil Death Highway of Doom known as King’s Highway No. 401 and he was saying, “Why is it so dark out–oh yeah, turn on your lights!”, it was pretty nerve-wracking.
And when you’re already rattled, and then it’s your turn to drive, adn you’ve got two jerks heckling you from the back seat… well, let’s say I didn’t pass the course, and I abandoned the idea until I was 24. When I paid for my own lessons at Young Drivers of Canada.
I prefer the bus. It’s a long-distance one that goes to my work. It goes along the freeway with no stops for about 35 minutes (up to 1.5 hours if something unusual, like a leaf blowing across the road, causes the drivers on the 401 to panic). I can sleep or do homework or read or talk or whatever.
The regional transport system is getting double-decker buses for the long-distance routes across the north of Toronto. These routes have a hub at York University. I can just imagine that the top deck of those buses will be a party room…
You may have the causality backwards. One of the reasons I didn’t get my license at 16 is that I’m not very good at judging time or distance, so a lot of the things you have to do in the driving test were quite hard for me. Now, I mainly stay out of situations that require good judgment of time or space when I’m driving- I will park further away from where I’m going and walk rather than park in a tight parallel space, or combine the errand with one where I park in a parking lot and walk between them, for example. It works- I’ve been in one accident in ten years, and that wasn’t my fault.
But, people who don’t do those things, in my experience, don’t learn them. That’s why kids’ parents take them to an empty mall parking lot at night or a country road. Those things need to be learned, that’s how someone develops good instincts.
You specifically avoid doing things because you’re not comfortable, if that works for you, fine. But, if you had learned them when you were younger, you would probably be more confident in doing them and doing them well, which would have avoided your anxiety about doing them at all.
Except not everyone has parents who will do that, which is one reason why I am getting mine at 25. Don’t get me started though, since my brother has had his license (and a car) since the day he turned 16.
Dad was on my case to get a driver’s license from the word go. My attitude was, "Why do I need a car? I have a bicycle, which I ride in all weather including blizzards, and I can keep going pretty much indefinitely. Cars are effingexpensive." Finally got a license in time for graduation, at 17.
I have no respect for cars. Mine looks like a rolling apocalypse, and I just don’t care.