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

No red flags for you- you guys don’t fall in that category. You have licences but live in a place where it makes no sense to have a car.
the red flags are for people that have to rely on someone else to lift them places. That’s a teenagery ick for me.

Are we doing Name the Place for a Sunday at 8am for example, or a Monday at midday? One is significantly easier than the other!

I live 5 miles from my best friend. You can't get a taxi after 9pmish between our villages.

I'm sorry this is your experience, it sounds really hard, but it's not mine as a non driver with a child. My husband does drive but I do plenty with her on my own. We purposely live somewhere with good transport links and I work within walking distance of home. I suppose you cut your cloth accordingly.

What legwork? It's driving, not working down a mine or on a shift in A&E. A two-hour drive should not need to be shared and you can both see the scenery as you drive. If you think a two-hour drive is some arduous ordeal, you probably shouldn't be driving.

As someone who likes to spend my free time in remote places, hillwalking, cycling and trail running, I'd have no use for a partner who can't drive. It just doesn't match with my lifestyle, interests or plans for the future. I need someone who can share these things, including the driving.

It's fine if you live in the city and never want to go anywhere off the beaten track.

Does not apply to me.

Name the place that poster can't get to outside London by public transport and a brief taxi ride.

It's not always that you can't get there, it's that getting there takes 4-5 times as long and costs 4-5 times as much.

I'm in a small Cumbrian town that, on paper, has a reasonably decent train service. Except the line only travels up and down the coast. If you want to get from my town to where my parents live (34 miles away) by public transport, it would take you almost five hours and cost you £40 each way per person.

So yes, it's technically "doable" but what a colossal waste of time it would be.

Pretty sure it's a joke.

What's the worry, exactly?

@PyongyangKipperbang life is nothing like it was 50 years ago for the vast majority of us, so I'm not sure why it matters that less people drove then 🤷‍♀️

Whether MN likes it or not, there are huge parts of the country that still don't have reliable and regular transport. A friend of mine who lives down the road has his car off the road at the moment and was meant to get the train to work yesterday - except all the trains were cancelled. Luckily his DW drives and didn't need her car so he borrowed hers, but that's not uncommon around here.

So yes, on paper he can get the train to work and doesn't need a car, but the reality is the trains are too unreliable and if you took a job that was dependent on them, you'd likely lose it again very quickly.

I also looked (out of curiosity) how long it would take to get to my old job by train once. It was about five hours each way - and involved three trains plus a bus journey and a mile walk at the end.

By car it took 40 minutes.

I'm not saying there are places you can happily function without a car, but I don't know why there's a small subsection of MN who refuses to believe that's not always the case, and that non-drivers in those areas genuinely have no choice but to rely on drivers to do even the most basic tasks.

Is this because you are unable to clean? Which is fair enough.

I have the innattentive type of ADHD. Severely. Although mechanically my driving is fine, I cannot maintain my focus for the length of a driving test. Which means I make stupid mistakes and/or misjudge situations because I haven’t been paying attention. I have gone through 6 driving instructors over the past 20 years and failed my test 7 times. I can’t afford to keep trying and tbh, I’m not sure I could ever be safe on the roads. I would be a danger to myself and others.

"Well served", not "served."

You can certainly take a train to anywhere that has a station, but that doesn't mean it's regular or convenient.

I am very happy to take good, reliable public transport.

But there are plenty of journeys around the country I have to take for work where I would be very happy to take public transport but that would literally take twice or three times as long. I regularly have to travel from a town in the Midlands to just outside a town in the north west. By car, it's a two hour drive. But in order to arrive by 9am, the one time I went on public transport, I had to travel up the day before and stay overnight.

And it’s way easier if you learn on an automatic. So many cars are automatic now - they’re no longer a relative rarity.

Can I ask why you can’t drive with ADHD?
Genuine question, I’m not being goady. I just wondered what specific aspects of your ADHD mean driving isn’t right for you?

Not driving is complete shit

Exactly. Yes, of course I could get to places on public transport if I had all the time in the world to waste but like you said, it would add an extra 3 hours on my day every single day spent just travelling.

When you have kids, that is utterly exhausting. Time is precious.

It's perfectly easy to live a good life without learning to clean. I use paper plates and cups, a laundry service and my cleaner comes every morning and afternoon to wipe down surfaces. I live in London where it is easy to do these things. I also avoid places where I might get too dirty (fields, streets, abroad etc). No red flags for me!

Not driving is an absolute nightmare, especially if you have children.

I can’t drive (Adhd, can’t take medication). It adds literal hours to my day. My office (8 miles away) takes between 1.5-2 hours to reach by public transport. It takes around 20-30 minutes, depending on traffic by car. So that’s 2 hrs min a day added to my workload. Which means either paying for an extra 2 hours a day childcare or relying on the driving partner to do pick ups/childcare each day.

This is just one thing. When it comes to after school activities, play dates, children’s (or own) medical appointments etc I have to schedule in several extra hours (due to relying on unreliable and unsuitable public transport) than if I drove. It actually seriously affects mine and my children’s social lives (limits what activities they can take part in) significantly.

Once, my partner had a ear infection and his eardrum burst in the middle of the night. He had to make his way to urgent care alone, by taxi because I couldn’t drive! Same of there is a child emergency.

Not driving is complete shit.

I wouldn't date a man who didn't drive.

Where I live, there are hardly any buses, and the ones there are stop early, no local train station (nearest is about 10 miles away), no village shop (nearest local shop is about 3 miles away, nearest supermarket about 8 miles). Hardly any taxis (and they are generally one man businesses often unavailable because they are contracted to do school runs) and definitely no ubers. My boyfriend lives about 15 miles away, shops and supermarkets within walking distance, but still terrible public transport. I love living rurally and would hate to live in a city or a town but where I live, the ability to drive is essential. I wouldn't date someone where I had to be the one who did all the driving.

Ah, we've done this before and it was lots of fun.

Name the place that poster can't get to outside London by public transport and a brief taxi ride.

DD used to live in Newcastle. I thought the public transport there was pretty good.

I wouldn't consider not driving a red flag. However, it would be more of a tick box depending on the reasons why someone doesn't drive.

A friend's ex DH didn't learn to drive because he just didn't want to. When she went into labour she had to ring her mum to take her to hospital.

A few years later her husband needed to go back to work late at night because someone had left the Christmas tree lights on (he was the caretaker). Being rural with no buses or taxis, my friend had to get her sleeping child out of bed to take him.

I do find some people are very accustomed to driving everywhere. We don't, so we just find other ways of getting around. Even so we'll be offered lifts for a walk of only 1 mile, or told it's impossible to get around X place without a car (trains and bus were fine), or get baffled comments about shopping (we buy online), or be told there are no buses to Y (there were); it's largely just that those who live in cars are unaware of the options. I have a sibling who once walked twice as far as us because of where they parked their car each end of the journey, while taking 45 minutes longer due to traffic, yet couldn't recognise it and kept saying they couldn't understand how we coped without driving.

There are gaps in transport in some parts of the country that might require a taxi from the nearest useful public transport, or sometimes we get a taxi if timing wouldn't work, but occasional taxis don't even add up to an equivalent of car insurance cost, never mind petrol and the cost of the actual car. I do think those living rurally should campaign for more effective public transport instead of polluting, but suspect net zero policies will catch up to them before they do.

So you could get to places outside London that are not well served by public transport.

Same. My ex didnt drive - just couldnt be bothered to learn.

Yet he still expected me to ferry him around everywhere and then had the audacity to criticise my driving despite knowing nothing about how to actually, you know, drive. Such an unattractive quality.

I don’t find it a red flag but I do find it deeply unattractive.
For me, being able to drive is about freedom and independence. I dated a non-driver once and it annoyed me so much. He’d sit in the passenger seat and I’d be silently seething that this big grown man lacked what I consider a basic skill.
I must add that I don’t live in an area with great public transport.

One of my ex's didn't drive and I grew to be extremely resentful of it. It drove me insane being the designated driver every time we went anywhere. Having a partner who drove was definitely a deal breaker when I started dating again. Ended up with a total petrol head 🤣

My mum doesnt drive and hasn't since before I was born. She'd be an absolute liability on the road, so it is a good thing 😂 but I know it annoys my dad sometimes. Again, he's always the driver.

Public transport where we live is decent, not amazing. Still would never have dated a non- driver again.