Who Else Doesn't Drive (and why?)

[OSJ]

Okay, I know that I'm in a tiny minority of Americans who do not drive. I do know how to well enough that if I needed to drive my wife to the hospital I could probably do so without hitting anything. (Keep in mind we're in a small town). So how does a guy make it to my age without driving? Here we go...

 

In high-school when everyone else was getting their learner permits and licenses I was a year to year and a half younger than the rest of the class due to having skipped a couple of grades. So, I was too young to sign up for Drivers' Ed with my peers. As it was, my best buddy had a car (1965 Mustang) and as the order of the day was to cruise around and look for girls/parties, I had no need to have my own vehicle, having the permanent position of shotgun. Fast forward a couple of years, I'm working in fast food and have access to the best public transport in the US. No need or affordability. Then hooked up with a serious gf, she taught me how to drive and I have retained that knowledge. Over the next decade I lived in the most densely populated areas of Seattle, there would have been nowhere to park a vehicle even if I wanted one. Also, remember that bit about the best public transportation anywhere in the country, you literally can get from any point in Seattle to any other point without waiting more than half an hour for a bus; for a real convoluted trip you may have to transfer, but the wait at transfer points is usually fifteen minutes. Met my wife when I was 27, we lived on the streets for a couple of years until we stopped drinking and got our shit together... No car until we had been married about a year. Bought a beat to shit 1985 Toyota Corolla and she did the driving... Sold the car to our friend Wino Marty, and used the money as a down payment on something better. Poor Wino Marty, he got t-boned in front of the local about a week later and the car was totaled; oddly enough, Marty was sober at the moment and the other guy was drunk... But I digress... Anyway, a lifetime spent in the city with the best public transport in the world, a basic dislike of driving in the first place, and a wife who likes to drive has got me to this point where I doubt that I'll ever bother to get a license. Granted, it would actually be handy to drive here in New Mexico, but what the hell, I abide.

[Neil Koch]

Kinda similar to you, I was too young to take drivers ed in school and I was working so it was hard to schedule any sort of classes.  Plus my family was pretty poor when I was growing up and we didn't have a car until I was 17 so I learned to use the bus system pretty early on.  I usually lived in urban areas so the bus system, while not ideal especially in Minnesota winter, was still doable.

 

But now that I live in the suburbs with my wife, not driving sucks.  There are buses but they're not very convienent, especially at night.  If I want to get anywhere on the weekend, I have to walk a couple of miles to a transit center.  So now I am learning to drive - I failed the road test so I am trying to keep at it.

[DangerMark]

Failed my test once, then bought a 125cc motorbike. Funnily enough, I feel way more in control of the bike, and I never find myself having to tell myself not to drive across the middle of the road. I think the pressure of having someone else in the car got to me a bit.

 

The bike is hella fun.

[OSJ]

Thus a tip of the hat to Seattle's transit system... The farthest I had to walk was as a little kid growing up in a more or less suburban area, (well, way back when Ballard was a separate town and was annexed in the early 1900s), anyway, four blocks one way, seven another way and across the street for a third bus. The first two both went downtown and eventually to West Seattle (not that there has ever been any reason for someone to want to go to West Seattle unless they are buying speed), and the other went to the University District via Green Lake and on the other end went all the way to the stairs that would lead you down to the waterfront park known as Golden Gardens. The last place we lived in Seattle was a four-block to a main street where the bus stopped right across the street from my favorite watering hole. Three buses all going the same way stopped there so the wait was usually around five minutes.

[Matt D]

When I first moved to DC in 2006, I had no car for the first year and a half or so and after that I was pretty tightly constrained in a family unit out in the suburbs. I kind of curse that time though, because it meant I couldn't partake in DVDVR PLAYA watching parties down in Richmond or wherever. After I got a car, it was too late as the real life responsibilities had overtaken me.

[Phantom Lord]

I don't drive because I live in New York City and public transit despite growing more expensive anytime the MTA decides hey we need more money cause we can't seem to find where we put the money we had...its pretty reliable. I can get almost anywhere within reason. So I've never had a reason to learn to drive. Plus parking is getting worse and worse in this city.

 

But when you're running for the Staten Island ferry at 1:55am because if you miss the 2am ferry the next one won't leave till 3, its times like that you think maybe you should learn to drive. So I'm on the fence about possibly wanting to drive because I don't like pacing back and forth at 4am because a bus won't be coming for another half hour.

[Burgundy LaRue]

I tried to get out of not learning how to drive, but living in a rural area with no public transportation left me no choice but to do so.  I had to get to work. I was well into my 20s when I got my license.  Even after all these years, I don't care for driving.

[Brian Fowler]

I read somewhere that not driving is a growing trend amongst the youngsters these days, at least in the major cities with good public transportation.

 

Living in middle of fucking nowhere mid-Michigan, I drive.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I get not driving if you don't need to, with the exception of a lot of the bicycle assholes we have here in Boulder, but I don't get not fucking learning how. That baffles me. And I say that as someone who didn't get his liscence until he was 19 because of the high school " a friend is gonna be driving to the same place anyway" and the college "Living in a city with buses". When I was 19, I had to learn and then I was like, "what was wrong with me?"

[S.K.o.S.]

Got my license when I was in high school, but hated driving.  Didn't buy a car, or really drive at all after getting my license, until I was 30.  Probably ended up saving myself a lot of money, so there's that.  I actually took a second set of driving lessons before I bought the car, because I needed to, honestly.

[Dewar]

Never liked driving anything faster than a golf cart to begin with, and then my license got taken away after fainting at work a couple of times. Until they can figure out why I fainted, I can't drive even if I wanted to.

[Death From Above]

I have a license but I haven't driven regularly in like a decade. I also live extremely rural and so when I do it tends to be on very quiet back roads or highways, which are easy.

 

City driving is a completely different animal and if I do have to do it now, it's completely white knuckle in the bad way. That whole stereotype about DUM COUNTRY FOKE that can't drive becomes accurate if you're out here long enough because it's just something totally different and so much simpler.

[Cliff Hanger]

My visual impairment is pretty well-documented around these parts. When I was in high school we made an attempt to get me on the road using a bioptic (imagine a pair of solid steel Buddy Holly glasses with a huge telescoping lens mounted in one section of the dominant eye's lens, and you'll realize how much it sucks to wear one). I was able to pass the eye chart, but my peripheral vision is bad enough on top of my distance vision that it couldn't really work. And one winter relying on Indianapolis's bus system convinced me that I would totally put a stranger in a wheelchair for my license--a sentiment that has only diminished a little in the intervening years.

[Tabe]

I read somewhere that not driving is a growing trend amongst the youngsters these days, at least in the major cities with good public transportation.

Living in middle of fucking nowhere mid-Michigan, I drive.

In Spokane, which has eh public transportation, a LOT of teens don't get their licenses. I don't really get it. It's their choosing, too, not their parents.

[AxB]

I never got a licence, never learned. It never appealed to me... I had one lesson when I was 17, and it started to give me the fear. So I stopped.

 

Besides which, I work in a Petrol Station, and have for years. You see all these athletic looking teenagers turning up on foot to buy stuff every week, and then they get older and start turning up in cars, and a couple of months later, they don't look athletic any more. And that's when you realise... driving makes you fat.

 

I always wondered why I was the guy who din't get ill, when everyone else does, why I'm the guy who feels warm in a room everyone says is cold. Like as not, it's because I walk to work, work standing up, and walk home again.

[steve]

I have cerebral palsy, so driving's always been an issue for me. I took driver's ed when I was 16, and I was told I needed hand controls because my reaction time with me feet wasn't quick enough in case I ever needed to suddenly slam on the brakes. But between cost issues, and family issues (I think they just don't want me driving, but they'll never come out and say it because they don't wanna seem unsupportive, I guess), I just never got around to it. I'm 30 now, and it's not that big of a deal. I live next to a major highway, so pretty much any kind of store or restaurant I could want is within a three-mile radius, and I don't mind walking a lot. From time to time I find myself wishing I had a license and car when it's crappy weather out or whatever, but I also don't mind not having to pay for gas or car insurance.

[Yo-Yo's Roomie]

I was vehemently opposed to ever learning how to drive until I moved to MI, and my wife kinda forced me into it. I am a terrible driver, and pretty much just stick to the routes I know (work, in-laws', etc). Didn't need to drive before because I lived in England where people took the bus or walked.

[Execproducer]

About a year and a half ago, for financial reasons, I sold my car and, for health reasons, I started riding a bike to work. Because I live in close proximity to my gym, two grocery stores and an international market, a movie theater and my favorite sushi place, I have been good with it. Riding the 6 miles to work and back on the mean streets of Las Vegas can be quite the adventure. But a recent trip to Portland, in which I missed my flight, had to catch another to Seattle and rent a car for the 179 mile trip to Portland, stirred those old feelings of love for driving. Plus, in Vegas, no car = no love life and I'm ready to get back to one of those as well. 

[Dolfan in NYC]

I don't drive because I live in New York City and public transit despite growing more expensive anytime the MTA decides hey we need more money cause we can't seem to find where we put the money we had...its pretty reliable. I can get almost anywhere within reason. So I've never had a reason to learn to drive. Plus parking is getting worse and worse in this city.

 

But when you're running for the Staten Island ferry at 1:55am because if you miss the 2am ferry the next one won't leave till 3, its times like that you think maybe you should learn to drive. So I'm on the fence about possibly wanting to drive because I don't like pacing back and forth at 4am because a bus won't be coming for another half hour.

Your fault for living in Staten Island.

 

Everything else is pretty much the same thing myself and 90% of New Yorkers will co-sign to.  Though I know how to drive and have my license, it's just extremely rare that I get the chance to do so. 

[Vincey Greene]

I used to drive but now I live in Brooklyn and I use public transit and the wonders of Uber so now I don't.

 

 

I live in south Brooklyn though, and should a little Veeg happen I'm probably leaving for Jersey or whatever, so I think a car is gonna happen in the next year or two.

[driver]

I got my license when I was 16 and haven't looked back. At first to me driving was just to get me from A to B. I got my CDL at 31 and as I started driving for a living driving took on a whole new significance to me. Not just because it was my livelihood but it has become very enjoyable and therapeutic.

[Shane]

Didn't get my license until I was 29 because I'd not been seizure free for a long enough period for the state of PA to give me one. Finally got that under control and have been driving since. I don't have much of a choice, though. No transit system here and I live an hour from my job.

I'm still really hesitant about city driving, even in someplace like Harrisburg, which is nothing compared to most cities. That said, when my gf and I went to Maine this spring, I drove the first leg of the trip. My GPS thought it would be amusing to route me through NYC.

The George Washington bridge and, I believe, the Bronx were white knuckle experiences for me, but it's actually made me a bit more confident. If I got through that, shitty central PA roads are nothing...

[Brian Fowler]

I was vehemently opposed to ever learning how to drive until I moved to MI, and my wife kinda forced me into it. I am a terrible driver, and pretty much just stick to the routes I know (work, in-laws', etc). Didn't need to drive before because I lived in England where people took the bus or walked.

Where in Michigan do you live so I can avoid those roads?

[Yo-Yo's Roomie]

Sterling Heights. My problem really is lack of confidence. I'm probably just an over-cautious driver more than anything. Never had an accident or got a ticket or anything, so there's that at least.

[Brian Fowler]

Well shit, my best friend just moved out of Sterling Heights last month.