Would you be put off by a man who doesn't drive?

[ItDoesMyHeadIn]

I was. Cancelled the date. I'm being too fussy apparently. To be fair my friend is married to a man who doesn't drive and he's amazing. Neither of my parents drive. The guy I was going to date could afford it, he just can't be arsed. He is happy to walk everywhere or use public transport. Up to him. But I would want to be with someone who can literally take the wheel sometimes. Like fuck do I want to be the one driving 8 hours up to Scotland for a holiday, or being the one to always collect the takeaway etc. I'm pretty traditional and sometimes I admit I would want my man to pick me up and take me out for dinner etc (fuck off crazy feminists, yes I can take myself out for dinner). I didn't actually realise how much of a deal breaker this was until it was put in front of me! Interested in opinions...

How do they think single people get to hospitals? It doesn't matter if your partner drives or not, if you don't actually have a partner.

Not everybody lives 2 miles away from a hospital. It would cost us £25 to get to our nearest hospital in a taxi, and around £6 on a bus (with an hour and a half journey..) Whereas by car, it's approx £3 for petrol, and 15 minutes drive. No brainer really!

I've been without a car before, and it sucks. So much of your life wasted on buses and trains, over-inflated bus and train fares, and loads of annoying people along the way. So much quicker, more convenient, and cheaper by car.

@pixie5121

The majority of people in London don't have a car.

Bullshit. 54% of London households have at LEAST one car. I know it fits your agenda to say that most people in London don't have a car, but it's a crock of shit that 'the majority of people in London don't have a car.'

Get your facts straight!

@DdraigGoch

So driving is a requirement for some car jobs. So what? Given the poor wages and conditions involved, I don't think that many job seekers are missing out on much there.

What a horrible comment! Shame on you.

I've been without a car before, and it sucks. So much of your life wasted on buses and trains, over-inflated bus and train fares, and loads of annoying people along the way. So much quicker, more convenient, and cheaper by car.

Again it depends where you are (and it doesn’t have to be London). I get to work more quickly and cheaply by metro than I would driving, and by driving I’d have to deal with loads of fucking annoying angry drivers (see some posters on this thread for a demonstration), parking etc.

I fully appreciate that isn’t the case for everyone, but it’s such a nonsense to say that it’s more expensive and time consuming for everyone.

You definitely need to be able to afford an electric car. I mean as I posted upthread, our junior transport minister says private car ownership is an outdated concept. Her words, not mine. This does not mean car ownership will be extinct but you can be sure if you can't afford the taxes/increased fuel costs, you would be priced out of car ownership and there will be more taxes for motorists.

We have a net zero target and it's easier to reach if more people give up their cars or switch to electric.

I fully appreciate that isn’t the case for everyone, but it’s such a nonsense to say that it’s more expensive and time consuming for everyone.

It’s also a bit odd to say that it’s more time consuming and expensive for everyone and then be furiously angry at them for it. Why would you care? I think golf’s a boring waste of time and money, I don’t go around seething at golfers who disagree.

DH had an accident recently. Middle of night, in his work accommodation. Had a car available. Still needed a taxi to get to A&E... (Although one of his work colleagues got him in the morning to save him a second taxi fare, but didn't feel he could ask at 3am!)

(No alcohol involved incidentally. It was 10 days before he could drive again!)

Cars aren't some magical device following an accident. You still need to be capable...

The cost of a car isn't just the cost of fuel, there is also insurance, cost of depreciation etc. My DJ's ex boss is a MD of an investment bank..she lives in zone 3 north London and she did an experiment where she took Ubers everywhere instead of driving and also public transport. The result was she spent less than when she had a car. She gave up the car.

We are not on £250k like her so we figured if she didn't need a car neither did we.

Takes 20 minutes to get to my nearest hospital by taxi. Or 15 if it’s 2am and you’re in labour! Works fine and I never have to to faff about looking for parking spaces.

It’s perfectly possible to live without a car. Especially in urban areas. But that’s not the OP’s question. Her question was about the attractiveness of a potential mate.

Competence is sexy. Incompetence is not. Not being able to do something the majority of adults can do is not a good look. No one wants some one who can’t pull their own weight.

Sure, he might have had many other compensating qualities. Apparently none stood out enough to grab the OP’s attention.

Competence is sexy. Incompetence is not. Not being able to do something the majority of adults can do is not a good look. No one wants some one who can’t pull their own weight.

Maybe he just lives the kind of life where he doesn’t need a car? Still not a great partner for the OP who wants a manly man to drive her places, but not quite the same as being incompetent and incapable of pulling his own weight, either?

I mean I wouldn’t have got involved with a a man who wanted to live somewhere really rural and drive everywhere - but I wouldn’t have sneered there was something wrong with him, I’d have just shrugged it off as us wanting different kinds of lives.

That poster is angry cos in her world, non drivers are unemployed people who work 3 hours at B & M. She is angry that in affluent/better resourced parts of the UK, non drivers are able to function well and hold down jobs, have kids, access medical facilities easily so any advantages a driver might have over a non driver are negligible. This makes her less special.

Indeed a big reason why a lot of younger people are less likely to have driving licenses is because they now go where they can find jobs which tend to be in places with good public transport/amenities. The towns/areas with bad public transport are not interesting to them because they also don't have good jobs. They go hand in hand- infrastructure and good jobs. Its why Boris won the northern wall;the people in those parts are not necessarily poor but they live in areas where there are few opportunities esp for those who are younger and less established. They are seething and angry, hence thats why they voted for the conservatives. This phenomenon is most apparent in the northern wall but there are lots of towns and areas like that in the UK. It wasn't like that in the 1990s, people didn't need to go to the cities with the bright lights to find a decent job hence why more people settled in suburban and rural areas with lower population density where there was more of a need for a car.

You definitely need to be able to afford an electric car. I mean as I posted upthread, our junior transport minister says private car ownership is an outdated concept. Her words, not mine. This does not mean car ownership will be extinct but you can be sure if you can't afford the taxes/increased fuel costs, you would be priced out of car ownership and there will be more taxes for motorists.

We have a net zero target and it's easier to reach if more people give up their cars or switch to electric.

Fuck that. They can prise the keys to my pick up truck out of my dead fingers. 😂

Hardly, I'm recognising that it is largely a thankless task, underpaid, and you get treated like crap by exploitative management. So all in all, most people wouldn't regard themselves as having "limited their career options" if they weren't considered suitable.

There was a typo there, it should have been "care jobs".

Yes, there are well paid jobs that require a driving licence. There are also plenty that don't.

But in order to have a car for that hospital visit (which could be several times a week, but equally could be once every few years, the last time I set foot inside one was nearly a decade ago) you first need to purchase/lease one; tax, insure, and maintain it. After first having invested in driving lessons.

So you can see why many people consider the odd £25 taxi a relative saving.

Litmus test;
Flip the genders and re-address.

Would it be unreasonable for a man to dismiss you as lazy if you don't drive*?

Can replace "drive" with anything.

My boyfriend can't drive due to a disability. He is able to get where he needs to go and doesn't rely on me to take him places, though I don't mind as he always pays the petrol etc. Hasn't bothered me.

If my husband had to drive me and the kids everywhere and I made no effort to share the driving load then yes, absolutely I would find it lazy of myself and I'd feel guilty- regardless of gender. Same as I'd find it lazy if I did all the cleaning/cooking/housework/childcare and he never contributed at all because he "never learnt how to do it". Relationships should have an equal division of labour, otherwise it breeds resentment.

MysteryCallWTF
It is not too late to learn to drive, though it will take longer than if you were younger. It sounds as though you need to be able to drive. My mother was a driving instructor and she had lots of pupils who were older, including elderly widows sometimes - typically lived in the countryside, had always depended on a DH to get around, and then were stuck. If you could find the right instructor (erssential that they are patient and don't speak down to women, as some of my DM's pupils had found before they came to her), this would change your life for the better. Cars can be adapted for disabilities too. Good luck.

I’ve insisted that my daughters learn to drive the same way I insisted they learn to swim.

Unfortunately I can't drive due to health issues other than my RA (although the RA doesn't help - currently I can't move my left arm because my elbow is so swollen!).

I agree that being able to drive - or DH being able to - would change my life so much for the better. What really brought it home recently was during the pandemic, when I was told not to use public transport (I'm immunosuppressed by the medication for my RA, plus the disease puts me at higher risk). Of course I had no choice but to do so, although I kept it to the absolute minimum. It was that way for almost two years, meaning that for almost two years I didn't go further than a mile from my house. We have no garden or outside space so I honestly felt like I was climbing the walls.

If we'd been able to drive, as things opened up we could have had days out, driven to the coast and so on, while keeping interactions with others to a minimum.

While I can see that driving isn't for everyone I would honestly advise anyone who can learn to do so. You never know what the future holds.

Oh dear, do you not understand the difference between 'house' and 'household'? How unfortunate for you. I hear colleges still do basic adult education courses.

Most households have more than one adult in them. Lots of London households have unrelated adults as well. So how does that make what I said untrue?

Even using your silly point, that still means almost half of all households have no car at all.

@PurpleButterflyWings ADULT vs household.

0.3 cars per adult and 0.54 cars per household can both be true.