I drive, my parents and peers pressured me a lot and I got my license as soon as I could at 16. Now I’m 30. In the past couple of years I’ve started living on my own and work remote. I hate driving and have started to realize I am really bad at it. Each drive feels like I’m rolling the dice.

I think if I had been less insecure when I was younger I would have never gotten my license. It’s a real shame to me that driving is necessary for so many. We need better public transport🫩

Best of luck stranger. Not driving is a shitty thing for your parents be disappointed over. Stay safe

What do you mean, you people?

I drive. I really enjoy it most of the time, but I don’t do a whole lot of city driving which does get annoying if there is a lot of it.

I don’t drive. I used to, but I’m not fucking rich, and I don’t want to kill anyone. I can walk, so I do that. Just moved to a place with busses. They even run sometimes, too!

If I told my mom, I’m sure she’d quietly nag me about it every time we interacted. She’s got a very right/wrong dichotomous viewpoint, and driving is good, while having to walk is for those with moral failings (like poverty!).

I do and I really don’t have a choice due to the awful design of where I live. iirc it’s the 11th worst city in all of the US for walkability and there’s literally hardly any public transportation at all 🙃

not even that it’s 14th in all of the US for worst drivers too 😭

part of the reason it sucks so much is because it’s literally 3 cities that were all arguing instead of designing a fucking place for people to live then they all merged into one mega city?? then just didn’t fix any issues anyways???

there’s not even a sidewalk to my work that’s an 8 minute drive away I hate it here

I drive. I was super excited to. When I was 14 I started mentally preparing. I would pay attention to street names and intersections and directions, which lanes did which. I spent time on an early version of Google Maps practicing navigation- how to get from my house to my friend’s house, the school, my grandparents, the mall, etc. I would walk or ride my bike and try to purposefully explore and learn the entire southern half of my city and suburbs. I got a copy of the state-issued driver’s manual and read it multiple times. I bought a cheap MadCatz Mini racing wheel + pedals for the PS1/2 and practiced using it in tons of games- Grand Theft Auto, Mercenaries, NASCAR Thunder, Gran Turismo, etc. I went and took the test to get my Learner’s Permit the very first day I could. I was a year younger than most of my friends, but still one of the first to get a license.

I drove a lot until I was almost 30, when the pandemic hit. Then I started working from home. I had recently got a relatively new xar in 2018, but my wife’s car waa old, so she started using mybcse mostly. One day I went to start her car and found an electrical issue. After a bunch of investigating… We went down to 1 car, and her old car is still sitting in our garage, waiting to be traded in whenever we do get around to buying our next car.

Furthermore, my retina in my dominant eye detached itself. I had surgery to re-attach it. It was successful, but my vision in that eye is only about half of what it once was, and my brain swapped to my other eye. I can drive, both legally and safely, but I do sometimes struggle to read street names or exit signs. So nowadays I mostly just drive the same familiar local streets that I know.

Also my wife gets carsick as a passenger, so even before all that she would often insist on driving.

I tend to drink less than most people so i’m occasionally DD.

I need to drive where I live.

It is kind of liberating for me. Plus I don’t get motion sickness/vertigo if I’m the driver, unlike being a passenger. I follow the rules so well (unlike everyone else on the road), one of my favourite ways to unwind is driving with music.

That said, going out costs money. I cant afford to go on a Sunday drive…

I drive. I would not be able to do most of the jobs I’ve done without a license. My last job was an hour drive to work, get in the work truck, drive anywhere from 30 mins to 2 hours to the job location, then drive to all the facilities in that location, then back to the shop, and another hour home.

I literally spent more time behind a steering wheel than I didn’t at that job.

I drive. I’m not sure if my kids will, either way I don’t mind. We’ll work it out together.

I wish I didn’t. I think I got my license before I graduated college. Some friends were sick of it and had me take the drivers test on one friends car (road trips and such). Then my original field was limited and had to drive to work. ugh. Once I was working in or near the city my driving went down to mostly shopping and some doctors. My wife drives when I can get her to. She knows I hate it. Cars just suck in every way shape and form. Inefficient, bad for the environment including global warming and clean air, dangerous. The most likely way anyone is likely to physically hurt or worse yet kill someone is behind the wheel of a car. public transit is great in places that it is, bikes are better, walking is the tops.

I drive because I like driving. My partner and I often bring our dog on beach adventures across the province (or even across provincial lines), and I have motion sickness, agoraphobia and sensory issues so I can’t take the bus.

I motorcycle to work though to be more nimble and park for free, and I even ride in winter with studded tires. If it’s not nice out, I work from home.

I also maintain both of my vehicles myself, I find it satisfying.

More on topic, two of my sisters don’t drive, but we live in a big enough city that it doesn’t matter. Our parents don’t care.

i don’t drive because of how my best friend and her parents died 22 years ago.

my own dad is too dead to care, but before that he was happy that i at least learned to use public transport. i’m too far away from my mother now to care what she thinks about that.

ETA: come to think of it, my mom was the one who perpetuated the fireball lie…

I love in a city with decent public transport and have planned to minimize the need for a car as much as possible. So basically i don’t even have license, basic services are within a walking distance, public transport is free and rather good and workplace has their own transportat as well.

Maybe my mother is disappointed, mostly because the remnant from society era and a car being a status symbol, but at the same time we’re not close enough for me to notice it or care.

I can drive, but I’m like a sponge for everyone’s road rage — I don’t often get angry myself but all that negative energy just drains the shit out of me, I have an autistic meltdown almost every time I drive.

I stopped driving regularly about 20 years ago (10 years before I was diagnosed with autism) and I saw a huge reduction in my day to day stress.

About 15 years ago, I moved to a city where I can walk or bike everywhere, and driving just isn’t an issue. Highly recommended.

I drive. I used to drive a school bus, too. Basically can drive anything on wheels so long as it’s not hauling toxic waste.