Reply to What do you think of adults who never learned to drive?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If they have lived in a big urban center or city all their lives (like NYC) then I think nothing of it.

If they live in a place like Northern VA or the burbs, I think they must be incredibly emotionally stunted. [url]Driving isn't just about getting from Point A to Point B - it's about independence and freedom[b]. I get that learning to drive is nerve racking for a lot of people, but emotionally stable people have a stronger sense of independence to want to overcome that nervousness. [/quote]

It’s funny you say this because I feel entirely the opposite. I do have a license and drive, but it’s entirely a function of needing to get from point A to B. Car ownership is the opposite of freedom to me. It’s so much stupid maintenance and stress. My car is due for an inspection, but I just don’t really want to spend any of my free time dealing with that. I hate the annual property tax. I hate unexpected car repairs. I hate paying for insurance. I hate pumping gas. I hate the actual act of driving and dealing with traffic and idiots on the road like drunk drivers. The idea of the car as freedom is brainwashing by the auto industry when really it is capitalism making us entirely reliant on foreign oil drilling to just leave our homes.

I’m not saying personal vehicles shouldn’t have ever had a place in our transit system, but I think it’s a huge shame we abandoned centuries of city/town planning to create a society entirely around the presumption we’d all forever continue to use something that was invented a little over 100 years ago.[/quote]

You are equating "knowing how to drive" with "owning a car."  You can know how to drive so that you can rent a car if you need (or use one of those car-sharing services, if they still exist).  You can know how to drive so you can rent the uhaul to move your big piece of furniture.[/quote]

But you can also have freedom with the ability to order an Uber or pick up the phone to call movers to lug your furniture. [/quote]

Uber doesn’t exist everywhere.  I’ve been to plenty of vacation spots without Ubers.  If I relied on them I would have been very restricted in my ability to travel.[/quote]

I guess it depends on where you want to travel.  I’ve never owned a car and didn’t learn to drive until I was 24.  I now have a 4yo who gets violently carsick so there were only a few years where renting a car was even a viable option for travel for me and I pretty much never used it — much of the world has good options for public transit and/or walking.  I’m not sorry I learned to drive but I’ve had way more people try to press me into riding with them than I have ever asked for rides (I much prefer public transit or Uber to sharing a car with an acquaintance).

And I am sympathetic to adults who don’t learn to drive.  It was very hard, stressful, and expensive to learn to drive as an adult.  You either have to mooch on someone to trust you with their car while you learn a terrifying new skill and they look on and criticize, or you have to pay $50+ an hour to have a professional do the same.  I’m going to force my kids to get their licenses as teens just so they don’t have to experience that.[/quote]

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