because they gave me a license anyways

I got my license at 18 before I moved out, but my parents made the entire ordeal a nightmare. It was more anxiety than it was worth to get my required miles in with them as the instructor. People living in large cities often never get the opportunity, it’s high stress and taxis are readily available. Car ownership is expensive and public transportation is available, as well as biking. In uni I taught several Asian students how to drive because countries like Japan often have expensive training programs, and insurance is painful for testers. European cities are often designed for micro mobility and bikes and smart cars are preferred just because of size.

Don’t need to and its cheaper

I drive but I hate it and try to do it as little as possible. I have never liked them. The exhaust and danger. Walking and riding a bike is enjoyable. Public transit allows you to do enjoyable things (suduko, play a video or video game). Its not till the last few decades that the environment came into thought around it for me and I realized how incredibly bad the direction of society went around it. I had biked and walked through high school but was traveling by car a lot after that but mostly as a passenger until I started working. Then in the 2000’s I started biking and I had no idea why I had not been doing it before. Then I realized the infrastructure to make it safer and easier to do had not really been there before then for my city and its gotten way better since. Its like biking in the winter. I do more transit then and I thought I was the weather but I eventually realized I actually more just don’t like biking in the dark which got me to do it more in terms of weekend day activities. That being said everyone should learn if they have the opportunity because there are still to many jobs where you might need it and its not hard to get. Should pick up a cdl if someone like work will cover the cost. Driving actually would not bother me as much if for a job as presumably there would be benefit (both my pay and whatever is getting accomplished for society) but just to get myself around when there are so many better options. Yuck.

I don’t think people are “refusing”, it’s not like it’s mandatory or anything. Nobody’s trying to force you to drive a car.

I know I’ll never be able to afford a car, they’re incredibly expensive to buy and operate, and most of my travel is already covered by our excellent Trams, Buses and Trains, which can get me basically anywhere comfortably and quickly.

For the times I need something special I can ask someone for a lift, but that happens only a handful of times a year. A car would be a big, expensive, risky piece of equipment to just leave sat around for someone to steal…

Other than making sure to be wearing your glasses if you are near sighted enough that your local licence requires it, glasses are an irrelevant factor. It’s not like you are going into active combat duty…

I’m personally baffled at how many are killed in automobile accidents. 44,000 Americans every year. American KIA numbers for the entirety of the global war on terror is around 5,000. That is roughly only one month’s worth of automobile deaths.

Americans dead in Vietnam is around 58,000 over ten years. That’s only a year and a half worth of automobile deaths.

Even in WW2, over 4 years, 416,000 americans lost their lives, around 104,000 per year. Even during the deadliest war in history, automobiles today still kill 44% as many year to year. Granted the war did not touch America as much relatively but are still mind boggling statistics.

It feels as though learning to drive is merely fueling the cycle. More cars cause politicians to invest further in road infrastructure instead. More people giving up on public transportation further starves it of the funding it deserves and desperately needs.

Subway that arrives almost to my office. Yes it’s a bit slower overall, but I can doomscroll my phone for a hour per day instead of rotating the wheel for the same amount of time.

A few reasons come to mind following the first one.

1. The first and foremost reason would be trust. Driving as an act always has seemed fragile if one scratch or bump caused by a minor thump by you can get you sued, one even slightly delayed response can cause you to hit a reckless pedestrian, and one even slightly miscalculated turn can turn into a destructive crash. A friend of mine once joked that driving is society’s new way to apply Darwinism so that those with concentration/patience/coordination/streetsmarts survive, and there are complaint groups whose complaints make that joke uncanny. Especially considering I am not up to par in terms of body and mind, leave me out of that please.

2. It’s unnecessary. It has often caught my attention how people who do drive will drive the distances they can easily walk. The grocery store is a few minutes worth of driving away from me but twenty minutes of walking, which is still not bad. Except for maybe going to the doctor, which I go with people in groups to do anyways, I can live on my feet.

3. I get to say hi to Mrs. Robinson while lightening my gorgeous red hair keeping my body loosed and stretched.

4. I don’t contribute to pollution. Climate change might be over-politicized like Covid but they’re both still very real things. One could say one benefit many years from now is I can tell my peers I wasn’t one of them.

Cars are expensive to buy and maintain. Also I don’t think finding a parking spot and then parking is a fun activity. Also the metro can in many cases be faster, and I can use my phone while I’m in it.

I have a license, but never use it. I’m Dutch. My work and the train station are less than 10 min by bike, the supermarket is a 5 min walk. I can do almost anything by bike and sometimes public transport and it saves me hundreds of euro’s a month.

I actually had my first driving lesson just a few weeks ago (I’m 18). I ended up quitting after four lessons because 1) I/my parents don’t own a car, 2) it would cost me all of my savings, and 3) I really don’t need a car nor a driver’s license. I live in a walkable European city and the public transit is pretty good. Honestly, good riddance; the theory seemed very heavy and I couldn’t wrap my head around it, and even if I managed to get a license I would still need to get a car. So, sure, I might miss out on fun independent road trips; on the other hand I’ll be able to appreciate trains and ferries even more for what they are.

Basically, confidence. I don’t have enough confidence to drive a car. Heck even riding a bike gives me anxiety that I’m going to collide with somebody or get hit by someone.

According to medical checkups, I am fine, but I know for a fact I am not a safe driver. I have bad attention span, sight, reaction, field of view, and tiredness issues. I am ideologically repelled by cars. And it looks feels dull to me to drive and also to study for an exam.

I just don’t need one, so never bothered with it.