I feel so trapped without a driving license… can’t go anywhere…
I think everyone has a driver’s license at 16 here in the US, but I’m already over 18 with no license… :(
20 - I could have gotten it sooner but driving is scary.
16 - parents
I taught a friend how to drive and he was in his mid 20’s when I taught him.
14, rural communities have different rules I guess. My grandpa at 6 put me behind the wheel of his F350 while pulling a 20’ trailer so he could stand in the trailer and buck hay for all the livestock.
So by the time I got my license I already knew how to control a car and just had to learn the rules of the road.
When I was less than 10, my grandpa would have me steer his boat, so he could troll off the back. Only problem was that he was constantly telling me to slow down so the fish could catch his bait, while I wanted to open it up and fly!
I’m 30 and have never learned. I live in a city with adequate public transit.
What a dream
I bought a car and learned to drive for the, errr, fun of it. Just like cycling, driving feels unlike any other common experience. However, working from home made it needed quite rarely.
A side effect is that I lost the feeling of fascinating go-with-the-flow orderly chaos when looking at traffic. Now it all has meaning.
I’ve tried getting my permit twice before, but the driving schools in my area are all in the middle of nowhere and difficult to schedule for adults.
Never. I’ve always been poor and it’s just not that necessary living in German cities. It would help a lot to be able to rent a car once in a while e.g. for moving apartments, but it seems like a bad idea to get a license and then only drive every couple of months, you’ll never build the skills to drive safely. It’s moot, though, I couldn’t afford the license itself anyway (pretty expensive in Germany).
How much?
Haven’t checked prices in a hot minute, but I think it’s about 3000€ right now, maybe more depending on the driving school and how many tries you need to pass the test.
Holy shit
13, special license in some US states for kids who live out in the middle of nowhere so they can get to school.
Learned from parents, grandparents, siblings, being around trucks and tractors and motorcycles since I was a toddler. I knew how to drive long before I got a license.
I never heard the school excuse, I thought they allowed rural kids to drive so they could handle farm vehicles.
My home state had a permit for that too, certain vehicles I could drive on certain roads under restrictive speed limits. So I could, like, drive a tractor or farm truck with the right license plates down county roads to another field.
That was separate from a school permit. The nearest school bus stop to me was miles away and didn’t go directly to my school so I would have spent 3+ hours per school day on multiple buses if I hadn’t been able to drive myself in. Not to mention sports on weekends and other stuff where the normal school day bus wasn’t running. My permit restricted the hours I could drive, it had to be to or from school or jobs, and I couldn’t give anyone rides other than siblings. I think I wasn’t supposed to drive on the interstate too.
18 from a school. Letting 16 year olds drive is insanity.
::: spoiler
:::
I had a girlfriend whose 95 year old immigrant grandmother used to walk to the grocery store every day, crossing a major road.
She died crossing that road, when she was hit by a 16 yo girl who had just gotten her license, and was on her first solo drive.
Late 30s ~ early 40s. From a school as it is mandatory here with twelve hours of theory and 16 hours of practice classes, followed by two years of probation with zero tolerance ABV and maximum of four demerit points.
I had probably close to 100,000km of experience on the road as a cyclist before that.
In my 30s and never learnt, didn’t have the money so just continued to walk or cycle around. Plus I could cycle anywhere I wanted to go anyway, why spend multiple £1000s to cut 5 minutes off the time it takes to get to Tesco?
I grew up in a small town (15k people) so everything was fairly close. Could probably walk across the whole town in 15-20 mins. Now live in a large town (80k) so cycling is more necessary as walking across town can take almost an hour.
Looking at all the stress cars cause other people I am actually happy as I am. Listening to people complain extensively about problems caused by cars and I just nod along. That car stole your space again, tight fitting in that space, your car is too big but apparently that is someone else’s fault, everyone else is driving too slow or too dangerously. Driving looks so fucking boring too, looking at the car in front of you as no one is moving and you are surrounded by a sea of concrete. Fuck that, walking or cycling down the old railway surrounded by trees and bushes is so much better.
Never. I live in a city with proper public transport, and I live close enough to the city center that I can easily walk there, or go by bike if I prefer.
I am considering getting my driving license, though. It’s useful for certain jobs, but it’s really expensive.
I didn’t get mine until 24. Lived in a city with public transport from 18-26.
I was late to riding a bike, too, though. I didn’t pick that up until 18.
I don’t have a license, because I live in a country with great public transport and never really saw the need to driving, especially in regards to outweighting the damage it does and the danger it poses.
18. Mom was busy with school when I was 16, so I had to wait. I’m really lucky I had her to teach me at all!
I got mine at 24.
My parents flat refused to allow me to get a driver’s license, I assume because it would have given me the freedom to leave their house under my own power. I didn’t end up getting one until after I went to and came back from college.
I learned from a driving school, since my parents seemed uninterested in teaching me.
The experience of trying to hold a job or get to and from class between the ages of 18-24 is one of the primary experiences driving me to the idea that American public transportation sucks absolute asshole and desperately needs improvement. It used to take me two and a half hours to get to work. My work was a 15 minute drive from my house, but since my wonderful father refused to drive me to and from work, I would have to take a bus all the way across town to the central station and then hop another bus to take me all the way back across town to damn near the same place I got picked up at.
I got my licence 2 years ago at 35! I initially tried at 16 but my mother was just horrible to drive with and scared me off learning for a long time. When I actually got it I did lessons with an instructor for a long time and that was much better for building my confidence.
