How would you manage if you lost your driving licence tomorrow?

I'd be pretty OK - I'm in London, don't need to drive all that much and managed without it for the first 11 years of adulthood and with my first child. Kids are old enough not to need lifts anywhere.

It'd be a bit of a pain but I wouldn't find it that hard.

Less than 25% of people live rurally, many jobs can be worked from home or a mixture so that helps.

retirment will bring its own issues with driving and being isolated

It would be interesting to see where everyone on this thread lives. I'm amazed that so many people can cope without a car. It's doable round here, I suppose, but only if you are happy to work in a low paying job. For anything decent, you generally have to travel across the border, which, unless it's in Chester, isn't that easy without a car.

It would be great to have a life where I didn't need a car (I'd be better off without having to pay petrol), but until I retire and don't need to travel to work, it can't happen.

I did ponder on this last week - not losing licence but not having car. Our London borough has been on such an anti car crusade and has been chopping up the area into small residents’ parking zones, which makes it impossible to drive from one place and park in another on the roads. We’ve also had one of the utilities digging up our road bit by bit , verrry slowly, making half of the road unusable at any one time. If I moved my car atm I don’t know where I’d park it afterwards.

It would be doable, we’ve got frequent buses, though mostly on the same through route, a train station that has infrequent trains but links into the network, shopping within walking ( with trolley ? ) distance. I could get heavier, bigger stuff delivered. I cycle, though so does every one else and proper bike racks are like gold dust and we have a plague of bicycle thieves.

It would make a lot of my activities tricky - just about to go somewhere via a complicated backwards to go forwards multi bus routing, and the same would apply to visiting friends out of town.

I could rent a car for longer journeys - just realised that Zipcar is no longer in the area, which is interesting.

It would be a great annoyance, yes, but we'd manage. My DH doesn't drive. We live quite rurally but there is a train station. We're in one of those tiny towns where most people think "why is there a train station there?". I think my greatest upset would be that we couldn't get to Lidl to do the weekly shop.

We also have a bus to the next town over where we like to go and have lunch, go for a walk, or go shopping. It's expensive on the bus but we could make it work if it was once a week.

Going to visit family would be a great PITA as they live on the opposite side of London with lots of changes on public transport, and we have two (almost three!) children under 5.

at the moment I use my car once, maybe twice a week at most. I take the bus or walk to work, have 3 major supermarkets within walking distance, or could do home delivery for larger shops. Even the things I use my car for I could do by public transport or car shares. The main thing it would impact would be travel for holidays and outside the city.

So you’d be driving without a license, insurance & be a criminal, as the previous is criminal behaviour. As soon as you pass an ANPR camera you’d be flagged up as not legal. Or if you broke the law for speeding, running red lights it would flag up.

if you’re driving round with insurance, licences rtc you don’t become a red flag to be pulled over

I've developed a fear of driving recently so haven't driven for several months. It's fine. DC walk to school, I walk to work. I get a weekly food shop delivery and if I need to top up there's a corner shop or I can cycle to two supermarkets. We can also walk into town for children's activities.

I wouldn't be able to do one of my jobs because it depends on being able to drive to various different places not easy to get to on public transport. Otherwise I would be ok. Could walk to my second job, plenty of shops within walking or bus distance. Could get the train for day trips etc.

I’m used to not having a car.

We are a one car family, dh needs it for work but often leaves it a couple of days a week (and gets the train) so I can go out for the day with the dcs.

It’s definitely handy having the car, I feel like I can do more with the kids, but I manage just fine without it.
I have easy access to buses and trains so we can take short journeys, I just have to be more organised.

I had Labyrinthitis a few years ago which causes vertigo. Is that different because it's just an infection and will go away?

I was taken away in an ambulance from my house it was that bad! I cld not stop being sick or trying to be sick, whole body shaking and I cldnt stand etc.

I was never told I cldnt drive by any of the medical professionals I dealt with either at hospital or my gp thereafter. I mean obviously I cldnt drive while I felt like that but after a few days it was getting better. Within a week I was fine to drive and back to normal within 2 weeks. Never had any issues since.

I wfh so would have been ok. I don't live nearby family though 20-25min drive from both sides. Maybe dh wld have got permission to drop eldest at school in his work van. Otherwise I would have had to walk 1 mile to nursery with youngest then more than a mile in another direction to school and then walk another mile home. Then do it all again for pick ups. It wld have been a nightmare for me! Not to mention pretty much stuck without DH as we are over 2 miles from train station but maybe I'd have had to rely on lifts or buses on my days off.

The key to BPPV is the B it is Benign, harmless. It just feels annoying but is not dangerous percy, so I wouldn’t be handing in my license over it

Same here - woke up with BPPV ( didn’t know that was what it was at that point) was concerned as was about to start a course, managed to get a GP appointment - DH drove me there. GP tested, diagnosed, said it might go off during the day, if not to come back and they would perform a manoeuvre.

Googled, found very helpful YouTubes of Epley manoeuvre , performed it on myself the next day ( felt too rubbish the first) and - voila, all fine. Didn’t need to drive that week anyway - great buses.

GP didn’t mention reporting and didn’t occur to me as it was obviously a short term condition that got fixed when the crystals got back in position.

What exactly to you mean by ‘ assessed’, OP ? I assume a GP correctly diagnosing a condition and saying it wouid be short term is an assessment?

I'd be ok. I wfh 3 days a week and there's a bus from the end of my street that stops 5 minutes walk from the office, we also have good bus and train links. Kids are independent, oldest drives, youngest learning. I am over-reliant on my car for multiple supermarket trips in the main, so I'd need to plan better and be more mindful of the journeys I make.

I don’t go to the doctor for every little thing not least because I can’t be bothered sitting on the phone at 8am!!!! for about an hour. I’ve had vertigo before but it’s hardly urgent enough to go to a doctor to be told oh you’re a bit dizzy so if no doctor then no one to tell me not to drive.

Is ownership recorded or only registered keeper? I could easily transfer that.

I'm not sure you can do that. Your son can't be insured on a car without you being as well, unless you transfer ownership. Might be wrong.

I had this with a medical condition a few years ago. I was off the road for about 10 months (DVLA mega delays). I'm retired and live in a village with a dreadful bus service, which was much better when I moved here 10 years ago.

I familiarised myself with buses, subsidised taxis, village minibuses, trains and got on fine during the day. Predictable and plannable travel was fine. The difficulty I found was travelling in the dark and locally. I'm disabled so can't walk hugely far so my mate a mile up the road was too far to walk and I didn't want to use my electric trike in the dark on narrow, windy roads.
So in short, if you could plan and it was daylight, fine. Short journeys to friends in the dark became impossible.

I had my first vertigo attack last year (as others have said, it's not a dizzy spell - feels like really bad sea sickness and can last a couple of days). I was amazed when I told people about it how many said they'd had the same or knew others who had.

I could get a lift to work. My teen will be shortly taking his test and I would consider insuring him on my car for other necessary car trips. That may be expensive though if I'm not also on the insurance?

I couldn’t drive (or cycle) for much of the last year due to an injury, and it was a nightmare. I live rurally, with no public transport, and few local amenities. My family and nearly all of my friends and social activities are varying distances away. I’d already been planning to move to somewhere better connected, and am now speeding up that process.

I would be fine, have only had a car for a month. We purposefully decided to live somewhere where we can cycle and close to a station (and no, we don't live in a shitty bedsit like a previous poster mentioned). DH rides a moped to work, honestly the amount of money that has saved is great.

I’d be pretty stuffed without my car as I have a round 50 mile trip, 5 days a week to get to work and back.

At a push I could bike to our nearest train station, we’re quite rural so buses only run every hour, so biking would be more favourable, catch the train to the town I work in and then catch a bus to work, although I’d have to fathom out times etc. Have just checked and the train departs every hour from our station to work destination, taking 40 minutes. It’s doable but would be a complete pita.