To be constantly surprised that people 'don't drive'?

[MissEloiseBridgerton]

Every day on here, and on my own social media, I am shocked that soooo many people don't drive. My local FB group is constantly people asking for favours because they don't drive, they want a dump run, or someone to deliver second hand stuff to them. On here, the barriers to work, to childcare, to anything is so often that they don't drive!

For me growing up, learning to drive was just what you did. I don't have any friends who didn't learn to drive at 17. Most had cheap runarounds or borrowed parents car.

I totally understand it's expensive and costly to run a car but I don't think I realised how many people never learned!

Exactly, can you imagine? It's too much already.

These posters are thinking on an individual level, but the mass result will be carnage.

The problem is people don’t want to give up their cars. They are convenient, comfortable, warm and generally parked right outside your front door, no other people.

Same with air travel, it would be better for the environment if people stopped flying but they won’t, so need to find ways to make these things more environmentally friendly (low emissions zones, emissions legislation changing how cars are built etc).

But there needs to be some joined up thinking, how many people claim to be environmentally conscious but order from Amazon next day delivery, Shein directly from China, invest in crypto, have the wood burning stove etc.

The average man in the street has no power at all to force better public transport. Local politicians always promise things like that but never deliver.

The average man in the street never voted for the Beeching railway network closures. Our local city council has a Green party majority but despite promising better bus services, for the last few years, literally nothing has improved!

The only power an average person has is to move to a city with better public transport. That won't improve the public transport where they used to live and will just worsen the over-population of a handful of large cities.

I am one of a minority who actually "walked the walk", literally, by renting an office for my business in the village where I live, so I use my car maybe once every couple of weeks as I walk to/from work every day, about a mile each way. Very few people are in the position to be able to start their own business, let alone find/finance an office close enough to home to be able to walk. But whilst that's good for me, it's not good for my clients as any of them wanting to come to my office for a meeting or to drop of paperwork etc has to use a car, as there's no bus service in our village centre despite it having a population of 5,000 or so - the bus route is along the by pass a mile away - the council stopped funding the route through the village in 2005!

Can someone from Mumsnet tell me why my post was hidden please? Didn’t contain anything controversial as far as I am aware?

I learned to drive at 23 and am 29 now. I've not owned a car for any of that period. I've rented one a couple of times for road trip type holidays and for moving house, but I don't need one in my day to day life. I live in a city, it takes me maybe 40 minutes to walk to the centre for work, my son goes to nursery about 15 minutes away, there's three supermarkets I could walk to within half an hour. Parks, swimming pool, gym, cinema, shopping centre, museum, library, canal walks, couple of high streets, art gallery, bars, restaurants etc all easy enough to walk to. There are buses if I'm really tired or it's pissing it down. Occasionally I get an Uber. I don't think my life is especially limited by not having a car. Neither of my parents learned to drive until their late 40s, and they managed fine .

Nor me 🤮

@WhosAfraidOfVirginalWolves

I live in a city

Which is the crux of the matter. What about the majority of the population who don't live in the big cities with good public transport and lots of local amenities. Those who live in smaller cities, towns, villages, etc., where the nearest supermarket is a few miles away and not on a bus route? Or where the nearest cinema is in a town a few miles away, but there is no late bus back from that town after 7pm and no buses at all on a Sunday? I don't think big city dwellers understand what life is like outside their city!

No loads of us live in villages and we still manage.

Indeed. One of the reasons I chose not to learn to drive is that just about every driver I knew endlessly complained that there were now too many cars on the road, and driving had become an unpleasant chore. And that was 50 years ago. God knows what they'd make of it now if they were still alive.

So YOU need to drive but that doesn't mean that everyone does!

But is anyone arguing that no one should drive, regardless of where they live? Not as far as I can see.

If you want to drive - or need to, thanks to poor alternatives - no one is stopping you. But why all this “What about people who don’t live in a city?”? Once again - I plan for the life I have, not a life I don’t have and never will.

I didn't say everyone needs to. Its great if they don't. As I said even better if they can walk to work.

Every source I've seen for this puts the UK urban population at over 80%. I know this doesn't necessarily equate to being within walking distance of everything, you may be in a smaller town with nothing going on or on the very edge of a large conurbation area where you'd be further from amenities. If you're physically able to walk moderate distances and/or take public transport then this still isn't insurmountable.

If you actually do live in a little rural village then, yes, things will be more difficult, but I don't know where you've got the notion that this is the situation applicable to the majority, it's not been since industrialisation.
I'm perfectly capable of imagining what life is like in a little village, it's why I don't want to live in one.

Even "urban" areas including smaller cities can have crap public transport. I said in my earlier posts "those living in cities with good public transport and amenities" - that doesn't mean ALL cities have that. I was referring to the larger cities such as London, Manchester, Edinburgh, etc which are widely regarded as being excellent for public transport and centralised enough with lots of amenities close to where people live and work. Other "urban" areas such as smaller cities, towns, etc., often have crap public transport, "urban sprawl" with retail and entertainment outside the town centres where cars are pretty much essential to access them, etc.

My son lives in such a small city. No 24 hour bus services. The last bus home from the city is 10.30 pm, two hourly bus service on a Sunday. He's pretty close to a park n ride, but the last bus back from town to the PNR car park is 7pm! To get to his nearest big supermarket, just five miles away takes two hours on the bus as he has to get a bus into the centre, then wait, and then get a bus out of the centre to get back to just 5 miles North of where he lives (around the outer ring road). That's nearly a whole day gone just to go to a decent supermarket (retail park, so other shops and cinema/restaurants too). Other than that, he has a tiny Co-Op within walking distance or a post office. His morning bus to work runs every 30 minutes, but they're now using electric buses and the one he gets is getting cancelled 2/3 times a week in this very cold weather, so he ends up late for work. That's a small city! Definitely falls within the "urban" definition, even more so as he lives within the outer ring road on a huge housing estate. As I say, public transport can also be crap in smaller cities and towns, even if they're designated as "urban". It's not just tiny towns and villages that have crap public transport!

@I8toys I do get 3 buses. It's all good.

I grew up in a village, and DM still lives there so I go back often, and even there there are buses much later than 7pm (I think the latest is 11pm), and a segregated cycle path into the nearest town (not massive but does have a train station, small cinema, leisure centre, two supermarkets, dentist etc). Plus taxis exist. The village itself has a pub, a mini Sainsbury’s and a post office, plus a GP surgery and hair salon.

People could manage without a car if they needed to, even living in that village. Obviously a car would be more flexible, but I managed to get everywhere I needed to, including to sixth form college every day in the city 20 miles away, as a teenager with no car (DM was not driving me to and from college, she was at work).

Its your choice. I drive and that's my choice.

Even as we speak, there's a thread going on Bachelornet where a whole bunch of non-driving men are in a state of panic.

"Mate, we're going to have to pull our finger out here - apparently there's a woman on Mumsnet who could never find us attractive because we don't drive. But if we pass the test, suddenly we'll be in with a chance. So - y'know - we all need to get ourselves some lessons sharpish, otherwise there's a very real danger we'll stand absolutely no chance of a meaningful long-term relationship with @Mikiamo."

@I8toys I wasn't criticising your choice to drive, that's cool.
Just that it's also okay to get public transport if you live in villages and towns, not just cities like some posters are saying. Even if it means 3 buses.. it's just what we have to do. Just tired of some posters on here with such aghastness at non drivers.. it's totally doable to live a full life without a car.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.....😆

@PointsSouth Imagine if men rejected a woman based on her not being able to drive!

I have a car and always have since I was 17. I see the advantages and disadvantages. Truthfully if you live somewhere very urban with lots of facilities you can walk to and have decent public transport what cars primarily give you is a bit more convenience. So you don’t have to walk for a few mins to a bus stop and wait or walk to the station to get somewhere. On the flip side you have to find somewhere to park & you have to be actively concentrating on driving during your journey where if you go on a bus or train you can listen to a podcast or music, read a book, play a mobile game etc or if you cycle/walk you can build some exercise into your daily routine. Also it’s generally cheaper overall to use other forms of transport. Once you have them the day to day fuel costs are cheap but the fixed costs for a car are expensive.
I’m always quite conscious of the environmental impact of the convenience and that the less people who use public transport the less good it is. I would miss the car at times if we didn’t have it but am nonetheless considering switching away from it for a while. I feel like having to walk for short journeys, having it be more convenient to do more local shopping and buying things for a couple of days at a time, having time to read on the bus and favouring day trips/holidays we can manage by train/bike also have advantages.
I feel like maybe it’s worth trying in our circumstances and if we can be a car free household that we might be better off. We do of course have licences so the option to rent for a short period or join a car club are also available to us.
On the whole I think it’s just once you have a car it’s effort not to use it and that in general most people would be better off overall if the majority were not using cars to just nip to shops/take kids to school etc. It’s one of those things where on an individual level it’s better (at least in some ways) but for society overall it feels like a negative.

That's good for you. I live in a village of 5,000 people (so a large village) and we have none of that. The main road is a 60mph by pass without pavements that goes past the village to the nearby small city 5 miles away. No sane person would take that walk! Buses through the village centre stopped in 2005, you now have to walk to the by pass to get to the bus stop, which is along unlit roads with no pavement or a public footpath across a muddy farmers' field. No train station. But we do have a primary school, so that's something!

In fairness if you live somewhere more rural it’s a different thing entirely. Where I grew up not having access to a car would have been significantly more limiting.

Given the standard of driving I think we should be encouraging non-driving for people who really shouldn't be.

I get really annoyed when you hear stories of openly dreadful drivers being encouraged to take their 5th/6th test by friends and family.

It's not something that should be encouraged unless people are actually able to do it well.