To wonder why people 'don't drive'

[ZX81user]

..medical conditions aside.It is such a useful life skill.
I think it is part of a parent's responsibility to get their teen througj their test.

You get a lot of taxis for the price of buying and keeping a car on the road.
Or people offer lifts, public transport may be good where they live.
They might not want to.
So yes YABU for being so short sighted, think outside the box a bit, some people are just different.

Strangely enough I used the fact I don't drive as a selling point in an interview for a transport planning job. I emphasised how my status as a public transport user made me passionate about steering improvements... I got the job and planned bus routes, bus stops and rail improvements very happily. So it doesn't have to make you unemployable

Why does it bother some drivers so much that others don't drive? I've had hundreds of hours of lessons and failed 5 tests. I have zero aptitude for driving, i don't feel safe in control of a car, it gives me stress-induced migraines, I have no spatial awareness and often miss things happening on the periphery. I'd be an accident waiting to happen on the road hence choosing not to throw any more money at learning because the stress and anxiety of it made me feel physically ill.

I live in a city with good public transport but even when I didn't, I wouldn't ask for lifts, I'd sort myself out by the public transport that was available. I have a decent job. I wouldn't live somewhere that didn't have good transport links or choose a job with an impossible commute. I can't remember ever having to rely on anyone for lifts, sometimes they are offered but otherwise as I said, I sort myself out because it's what I've always done. My mum doesn't drive either, we managed perfectly well walking or cycling or getting buses and trains when I was a kid, growing up in a small town.

Having a car can be quite limiting as you have to live in an area where you can park easily or have a drive to put it on. I drive because I live in a small town with poor transport links but DS lives in a city centre where a car would be more trouble than its worth.

It's fine for you to wonder, but rude to ask of course, and not really your business.
I don't really wonder, but equally I wouldn't feel particularly compelled to offer lifts to people who 'dont drive', unless there's a health reason, I'd expect them to want to sort out their own travel to be true to whatever reason they have for not driving.

Can think of more interesting stuff to wonder about though

When I had my first epileptic seizure I had to surrender my licence until I was seizure free for 6 months. After a subsequent seizure, when I was diagnosed with epilepsy, I had to surrender my licence until I was seizure free for a year. If I'd lived somewhere I was dependent on a car I would have been severely limited. Living somewhere with fantastic public transport meant there was no difference to my everyday life. I would never want to live anywhere that I was essentially held hostage without a car.

I do my shopping by bike. 4 bags on each handlebar, 2 on each side. We live a 2 minute ride from Adli, 7 minute ride from Tesco, 10 minute ride from Asda. If I had do a huge shop for a big family I'd use my bike trailer.

I passed first time at 17 (much to my instructors surprise). But then went to uni so couldn't afford a car. Got one for 6months after. But then travelled and returned to London.

I've lived in zone 2 for the last 14 years. The public transport around us is amazing. We also walk, run and cycle alot. Parking on the other hand is a nightmare. We bought a car 4yrs ago because DS1 was due but I rarely drive so lack confidence. I hate that driving is a bit of a thing for me but it just doesn't really fit into my life.

Come to think of it, Ted, some of my happiest memories from when the children were little are of waiting at bus stops and thinking up games and stories to keep them occupied. I don't have that much imagination so I would just retell old fairy tales, but dh made up his own, and later made some of them into a book specially for them. Waiting, spending extra time doesn't have to be a bad thing. I like the time spent on my commute (roughly an hour door to door, including walks to and from bus stop and waiting at bus stop when changing). It gives me the chance to prepare mentally for the day and unwind afterwards.

I think OP's question is a bit squewed. The real question is 'why do so many people feel they have an entitlement to drive and that society should be organised around their needs'. If a few more of them got off their bottoms every now and again and walked or cycled, and designed their lives in a rather less self centred way, perhaps we would have a few fewer obese people, fewer heart attacks and a slightly cleaner place for us all to share. Ridiculous OP.

I live in London. I have a car, which I last drove on 2nd April. I just haven’t needed to drive anywhere since then. I get the tube into central London for work, use online shopping for food, and walk to local shops/cafes because they are under 1km away and it is too much faff to put DS in the car seat and drive around looking for somewhere to park.

I am planning to drive to the tip next weekend. And maybe to the beach one weekend in June. I do about 1000 miles a year, if that.

I got the car when I was working shifts outside of London and couldn’t get home on public transport, and I only keep it because it is cheap to run. I certainly won’t replace it when it packs up. There would be absolutely no reason whatsoever for me to learn to drive and buy a car if I didn’t already.

Well said, Figment.

Anybody remember when in a street of 50 houses only a few had a car? How did people manage?

• lessons are costly

• I live somewhere with great public transport

• I'd be crap on the roads, I'm far too nervy and unobservant to boot, it's safer for you all if I stick to my trains and buses

Because I hate cars, and never wanted to drive one.

The people asking how you do x,y,z without a car as if it is inconceivable 😂

I have 3 children aged 5,3&2 and we only got a car in Feb. Until then I...walked...! And got the bus to school. There are other ways around these things 🤨

starzig

They worked locally and cycled, my Dad used to cycle 8 miles to work. He was an Engineer/ Draughtsman
Bus and trains were good too, before huge cuts.

This thread is baffling, does it not basically amount to "people with different lives will have different needs and therefore prioritise different skills and expenditures" what's so hard to grasp in that?

Terrible eyesight even with glasses (can't see text on the TV when sitting about 1.5 metres from it) and I can't afford to learn how to, let alone own and run a car. Someone I know at church keeps wittering on about me learning to drive. I'd love to know what planet she's on. Meanwhile, I live an hour from London via train, about 15 minutes from Peterborough by train the other way, and a bus to Cambridge takes an hour. Within the town I live in everything is in walking distance or I can catch a bus. I don't need to drive!

For us a car is a tool. Without it we couldn’t survive.

I sort of agree with you OP and wish that my parents could have afforded the car insurance and driving lessons when I was a teenager (or alternatively encouraged/instructed me to get part-time job to fund the above whilst studying for my A levels, but then at my school we were actively discouraged from part-time jobs). However I would have had little access to their cars, even if I had paid for lessons/insurance and couldn't have afforded my own car!

I have not had a single lesson and I'm 30. I feel like I've missed out on a major young adult/adult-developmental milestone (a culturally created milestone but a milestone nonetheless) and it just adds to my feelings that I'm an inadequate adult!

However I can imagine that some people who live in major cities do not feel the need to learn to drive.

I think that rosy71 has summed up the 'reasons why people don't drive' quite well!

Non drivers (who don't expect anyone else to drive them around) check public transport routes before they move somewhere. They don't holiday in remote cottages and don't tour the highlands by car. Their children don't do activities which require them to be in remote places. If they need to move something in a van, they hire a man with a van. If they want to go to the beach, they either choose one on a bus/train route or they don't go. If they want to visit distant relatives, they plan in advance and get the train.

Their anxieties/medical conditions are fuck all to do with you. Neither are their finances. Not everybody can afford to buy their teen driving lessons or a car parental responsibility? You live in a bubble If they've chosen to prioritise food and housing over a car or if they want to smoke 60 cigarettes each day and make paper aeroplanes out of twenty pound notes, then that is fuck all to do with you. Their environmental choices are fuck all to do with you.

You may not understand why people don't drive. Personally, I don't understand why anybody would be so dependent on having a car that they need to ask how people manage to do the most basic things. How will you cope if your car breaks down? Or your financial circumstances change and you can't afford to run a car anymore? I don't post about it though, because I understand that other people's inabilities to cope without a car are fuck all to do with me.

I have the utmost respect for people who choose not to drive and totally get that in an urban area it's probably not necessary. But there's one thing that really puzzles me.

How do non-drivers manage without ever going to the tip? We're always down at the bloody tip, with huge great bags of prunings, grass cuttings and general garden detritus, old household crap, packaging that's too big to go in the recycling bin and other stuff.

Do you all have a lot of bonfires or what?

LakieLady we wait until there’s a critical mass and then pay someone to take it away/get a skip. In my last house the wonderful council collected garden and bulky waste for free!

Lakie

I must say I often have wondered myself how people without cars manage with the tip, at ours you are not allowed in without a car. We do have a garden waste bin which we have to pay £50 a year for which we do fill so that helps a lot but the amount of car loads that DH takes is quite a lot, I imagine people must hire skips or people to take it away. DM didn’t drive and we used to take her waste to the tip for her