To not understand the obsession with driving / red flag if partner doesn’t drive?

ZOMBIE

Well, if the original post isn't the most London-centric post that's been on MN for years, I don't know what is....😄

My friend has moved from a city to a suburb with her husband and kids and is now so resentful for being the only driver. Also for holidays and road trips - how annoying to not be able to swap.

Which unless the job actually needs you to drive (visiting multiple sites on a regular basis for example) is rather a silly rule.

I've a feeling that my application for my current job would have been sifted out at an early stage if I hadn't ticked the "driving licence" bit, even though driving company vehicles isn't part of my role and I don't even own a car any more.

I've heard of American employers (low wage ones so the sort of workers who struggle to afford to drive) insisting that an employee drives to work, even though they've found other reliable ways to commute and have never been late.

They are possibly restricting themselves in terms of employment as some companies require that you hold a driving licence and have a car.
I wouldn’t have been able to take my first job after graduation if I did not drive.

Right, so Sedbergh is a good example as it only gets a bus every couple of hours. 3-bed house £1150pcm. Kendal is slightly more at £1400, but Penrith is only £750. It's all about looking and making choices. In London someone might grow up in Westminster, but the faintest look at prices and they'll move to say Bermondsey instead. The point about jobs is bit silly, the entire point was moving to somewhere commutable so that opens up job options.

I don't understand your point.

There might be cheaper accommodation, but you also need to make sure you have a job, you need to be able to afford the moving costs, the accommodation needs to suit the needs of your family etc.

There's no point banging on about how you can find a cheap house share in Carlisle when it's a family of four who live and work in say, Sedbergh.

I don't drive. It's not remotely a red flag. How stupid.

I've just done searches in Somerset, Sussex, Yorkshire, Suffolk and Cumbria. In every case I could find house shares and even studio flats cheaper than housing further out in the villages, which I assume have poor transport (though not all, of course some do have a train). If your village is particularly undesirable while the nearby town is popular, then sadly you might have to move an extra town away, but that doesn't look to be the norm.

Exactly that. So for some people to make such judgements on those who don't drive, is a tad over the top. No?

Yeah, probably understandable. But again, can depend on the situation of those involved and that they find themselves in.
Everyone is capable of saying a simple "No, sorry" if they're tired of being the driver, taking people places, if someone is taking the piss with it.. not everyone is capable of driving.
Those that would be/are capable of driving have to deal with their decision to not drive, like myself. I chose not to drive for years, and even if I wanted to now it's not financially do-able. So I do what I have to do. It's nobody else's problem and I don't put that on to anyone else either.

We chose to live where we do because we are (or were in DH's case) drivers and car owners.

If I needed to stop driving we would move somewhere with better public transport options.

Getting to work on public transport would involve two (unreliable) trains and a bus and take up to 2 hours. Driving takes about 35 minutes.

Well, people can only go by their own experience.

Not driving could be a total non-issue in one location, but the same person in another situation could well be a massive "nope".

When you live somewhere where you can't even get to the pub for lunch without either driving or walking along an NSL road with no pavements, I think it's understandable why you wouldn't want to always be the one to be driving.

You don't have to live in the wilds to need a car. I live ten minutes walk from a station into London. But that's no help to me at all, given that there's no way to visit my kids half an hour away by public transport. Nor could I visit my friends living between 15 and 30 minutes away. And as a teacher I worked in several different schools, none of which I could have reached by public transport.

I suppose I could have worked at a school situated centrally in a town that the train passed through, but that would have cut my chances of employment down hugely. And as I worked in a niche area of education, it would have been even harder.

And again, it's not car ownership that's an issue, but actually knowing how to drive. Being able to rent a car when needed, or buy one when shit hits the fan (when both my mum and MIL, in different locations, needed care I was doing 7 hour return journeys up and down the motorway every fortnight) makes all the difference.

We encouraged our kids to learn to drive (and funded it) as soon as they were 17. It's a life skill, and much easier to learn when you're young.

Exactly. Nothing has guarentees, including those with a car/can drive to those without/can't drive. That was my point to the PP.

It's not doom and gloom for non drivers, we're not all bums, lazy red walking flags as some have suggested. It's the situation we're in, some of us don't have a choice to be in, and that's cool with us.
Just as many people out there like the above, who do drive. 😊

I don't particularly enjoy being a passenger either. I go out of my way not to ask for lifts and often decline them when offered. There's a social event I go to every so often. I tell the host I'm attending of course, but I don't always tell a couple of friends because I know that they will offer me a lift that I do not want. I'd sooner get the train, or cycle the 12 miles (in a hilly area) if there's engineering work on.

It depends where you live. If I was still living in London, no I wouldn’t need to drive. Where I live now? Well DH and I could get to one job but not home, and neither of us could get to our day jobs without a car (DH is looking for main work at the moment, but realistically he’s very unlikely to find something on a bus route).

For me it would be an absolute no if DH didn’t drive. I’m not ferrying someone around so he would be completely stuck where we live.

Well yes, nothing has guarantees.

But where I live, cars are much more reliable than public transport, so I drive. If I lived somewhere where the public transport system could be relied upon, it might be different.

Well, I didn't think it needed spelling out, but when house prices are higher, general rental prices are higher too

There are also very, very few flats here and I don't think I've ever seen a shared rental.

For you, maybe not. For some, maybe.

Fortunately for me public transport where I am don't have as many of those issues. Where there is a will there is always a way. We make do with what we have and can do regardless.
You can't guarentee anything with cars/drivers/routes/roads as much as you can't with public transport.

Interesting use of "house". Unfortunately people can't all buy a house as a young adult and might have to start out in flats, or even shared rental. That's how it works in cities too.

Interesting. I always had the impression there's a much higher percentage of teetotallers in the US and people treat you as very rakish if you have more than two drinks at dinner or have even one at lunch. Whereas in the UK non-drinkers are often viewed with slight suspicion.

My husband didn’t drive when we met. It didn’t bother me hugely because we met in London where he was born and raised. It was a pain when we visited my family or friends in other parts of the country as I had to do all the driving but manageable.
Then we moved out of London to a commuter town and I told him he needed to learn if we were going to live here which he agreed to. It took a while which was fine but I wouldn’t have got pregnant until he did learn. Having a baby with a non driver is a whole other kettle of fish.

Unless you're exceptionally unlucky, your car isn't going to break down once a month or leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere, though.

Whereas in many places, public transport is cancelled or delayed on a near daily basis. I can't think of the last time the trains around here all ran as they should for a full day, let alone a full week or month.

So far this year, we've had trains cancelled for several days in a row due to repairs, a landslide, flooding, trees on the line, snow and strikes. My car hasn't broken down or left me stranded since I got it (except for once when I got a flat tyre, but I was back on the road within the hour).

Similiar with cars and driving though.. what if your car breaks down miles away from home, you're unable to get help for a long while?
What if you're stuck in a stand still for hours on end because of something completely out of your control?

There's what if's on both sides. Not just those who don't drive.

Moving to the "nearby town" is often impossible when house prices there are double what they are where you're currently living

And people have campaigned for more buses. We ended up with one a day. Term time only. That lasted a year before it got cancelled because, surprisingly, nobody used it as it was absolutely no use to anyone, really.