Asklemmy

Simple: I fucking hate driving. I hate the smell, I hate the noise, and I hate the stress. Thr environmental impact isnt exactly a plus point either. You could say that I'm lucky to live in a place with good public transport, but I actively sought out a place with public transport because I didn't want to rely on a car.

Final nail on the coffin: I developed Menieres disease, so I am prone to intense vertigo attacks at short notice - I couldn't get a license even if I wanted one.

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

We have good public transport and I believe reading something on the way to be a better use of that time.

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. I enjoy driving as a leisure activity.

But I hate driving to work. I just take the shuttle and enjoy listening to my podcasts. We have a decent public transport system as well, so it helps.

I had no access to or use of a car until I was around 23. Up to that point I lived in a country where you could cycle for most of your daily routine, take the bus a couple of times a month and the train sporadically.

I moved to a country where cycling was for the poor and foolhardy, me for several years, and public transport was atrocious.

Public transport has marginally improved, my bicycle hasn't been used for 20+ years and our household has one car.

Learning to drive is a process. It takes time. Just like learning to fly a plane takes time. If you have a need to drive, learning how is step one. In my country even when you pass your test, you are required to keep a logbook for at least two years and drive in a variety of conditions before you can actually upgrade your probationary licence.

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 don't want to get a license only to forget everything because I won't drive.

I see having a car as a necessity only. For me, it's only acceptable if public transport/bicycle is not an option. Unfortunately, the latter is almost never an option due to how everything is built car-centric, but the former very often is.

Also, I don't know anything about cars, I don't have to think where to park that huge piece of shit, I don't need to be my own driver, I don't need to do any maintenance, it's more ecological and even cheaper than just gas.

!fuckcars@lemmy.world

So, what’s your reason to not drive a car

I simply don't need to, nor do I want to. I live in a country with good public transport - in a city with comparably well working public transport. There simply is no need for me. There never was.

I can get around the city either by train ("normal" trains and subways) or by bus. On weekends there is a 24 service for all trains and subways every 8-20 minutes (depending on line). There are also night busses connecting party areas with the nearest train stations and the inner city with the outskirts.

In the mornings and afternoons on weekdays there are additional commuter busses and trains and subways on most lines so the service is scheduled on a minute basis on some lines for some time during rush hours. The "worst" it gets is every 30 minutes in the middle of the night.

And if I don't want to take public transport I can always use my bike or my electric scooter. The bike lanes are not Netherlands quality, but they're okay. It's also fun to drive by traffic jam having my inner monologue making fun of alle the people waiting hours over hours on the streets 😄

The great thing is: Some time ago the government and the individual public transport providers of the cities and areas made a country-wide ticket for all public transport. So I can just hop on a bus in my city, drive to the train station, enter a regional train that goes to another city in another federal state, come out the train station and take the nearest bus I want without having to pay anything except the monthly fee for the ticket or checking if the ticket is valid in that area.

When I want to take longer trips further away I'll likely take a train on our highspeed railway network covering basically the whole country (not covered by the ticket I mentioned). It's notorious for being delayed or having issues, but my individual experience is much better than in the memes that exist.

I do have a license but refuse to drive. I guess the main reasons would be:

• I get lost very easily and navigating while driving is much harder (no stopping, turning around etc)
• You can't entirely zone out or use that time to do something else like reading so if it's a daily commute this is just lost time
• Road infrastructure here is terrible. I actually find it much safer to drive at night because at least you can see the headlights of cars coming out of blind intersections
• Just like there are (many) places you can't go without a car, there are also places you can't go with a car because there is no parking, mainly the city center, which is the place I visit the most

You also can't drive drunk and I kinda like drinking.

Not wanting to learn or not wanting to drive?

Knowing how to drive is a useful skill that can come in handy (vacations, emergency) even if you don't do it regularly.

Refusing to drive daily - absolutely, for political, social and economic end ecological reasons. Everyone living in range of an acceptable public transport should refuse to drive. And those who are not should not stop pressuring and voting local politicians to implement one. It's 2024, there's no reason to depend on cars for everyday transportation.

I used to live somewhere where I needed a car, and I didn't think much of it.

But after moving somewhere where I hardly ever needed a car, I ended up selling mine within a few years because I simply stopped using it. I realized that alternative forms of transportation were far less stressful and way less expensive than driving, and I never turned back.

If you live somewhere that requires a car to get around, you're stuck. If you don't, I highly recommend switching to public transit and dumping your car. We underestimate how much stress driving adds to our lives because we never get a good chance to take a break from it.

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.

Instead of car, people of my country usually able to drive motorcycle.

But not me. I'd rather take my bicycle. I don't want to deal with cost of maintaining motorcycle.

Driving used to stress me out, but you honestly just get used to it. Your brain just autopilots 90% of it once you’ve been driving over a year or so.

The 90% autopilot frees up your brain to focus on the big picture of what’s happening. You’ve just gotta be careful you don’t slip to like 95% autopilot where you’re not paying attention anymore.

Originally, undiagnosed ADHD. The pathway to get licensed was somewhat annoying for me, and I couldn't be bothered engaging with it. I've also always had great access to efficient public transport, which I took to school so was accustomed to using it.

There's been lots of secondary reasons over the years - for a long time I had fines to clear before I could progress getting licensed. The fines were bullshit, and I wouldn't pay them out of principle. Now they've expired, that roadblock is no longer in my way, but I'm still not licensed.

Sometimes it's annoying, but only really in the sense that I'm proud of my independence / don't like the rare occasions that I'm dependent on others for travel. I'm in the US on holiday now, and there is comparatively almost zero public transport - that sucks. When I've travelled around Europe, Asia, New Zealand, or at home in Australia - the issues are pretty few. I don't feel held back enough to care, and it seems like a money pit.

I have learned to drive a car, though. I'm just not licensed to, and don't. M 33

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 have a licence but I grew up in a place where many people don't bother with getting a licence. Car ownership is expensive. Learning to drive take a lot of effort and public transport is available from 6 am to midnight and run very frequently. Also taxis and ridesharing is relatively cheap. This is Singapore.

It's simple: I don't want to, and I don't need to.

I can use my bicycle or E-bike. And on a family trip someone else will drive.

It also saves a lot of money.

I really don't need to but I frame it the other way round to your question, I've never needed to, so I don't need a reason to not drive a car, I'm lacking a reason to.

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.

Unless you experience physical pain from driving, it's a slippery slope because every facet of modern life gets easier in car culture if you have a car.

Just look at Road Ragers: people who experience extreme emotional duress from driving, possibly endangering everyone with their angry antics and maybe giving themselves health problems from the blood pressure fluctuations, and yet they keep doing it.

And some people even drive without a license, simply because getting between places in time is nigh impossible otherwise.

As for why I decided to give up renewing my license, here's my rant from elsewhere:

It's not just the pollution from the exhaust, it's not just the tons of trash/scrap that rots away in junkyards, it's not just the rubbers and plastics from tire wear and tear getting into ecosystems, it's not just the gigagallons of hazardous chemicals required to maintain, it's not just the steady trend toward "Cars as a Service" while locking your premium features behind a paywall, it's not just the carwashes draining their runoff into the local groundwater, it's not just the needlessly large cities to accomodate every individual having a car to themselves, it's not just the ever expanding highways in between cities that continue to have congestion but now take more space and more time to repair and do more damage to the environment, it's not just the asphalt island effect, it's not just the burden on local economies that is car culture, it's not just the hostility drivers have for pedestrians and bikers, it's not just the millions of accidents causing hundreds of millions dollars in medical damages and 40,000 deaths every year, it's not just the blatant disregard for millions of animal and insect lives left on the roadside and windshields as warnings, it's not just the arms race between assholes for bigger and louder and more dangerous death machines so they can feel like they're the only one on the road who matters.

It's all of it, and more.

I don't like it, haven't really needed it, prefer public transport and have terrible motor skills.

because they gave me a license anyways

I have an e-scooter that gets me everywhere I need in town, and can use a taxi or get a ride from friends/family if there's a situation where the scooter won't work. Cars are expensive to insure, run and keep fueled, and money is tight enough as is.

Friend of mine never got their driver's license. They live in NYC and don't need one. They also were concerned about safety- they have ADHD and are prone to inattentiveness, and they didn't want to be driving a car when that manifested.

I have a license but I also live in NYC. I don't need to drive. It's pretty great. It's expensive in time money space and externalized costs, and it's often less effective than just taking public transit.

Unfortunately most of the US is resistant to investing in mass transit and density, so it's going to be shitty car-first spaces for a while.

People with ADHD, Dyspraxia (a motor disability), and some type of insomnia disorder have significantly higher rates of car accidents – around 4x more likely for ADHD and 3x more likely for insomnia disorders (driving while sleepy is around as dangerous as driving while drunk). At minimum 25% of all car crashes involve people with ADHD or insomnia disorders (which is why your car insurance rates might skyrocket in some states if you get diagnosed)... I have all of those. Yet, somehow, they still allowed me to get my driver's license, and I got it with single-digit hours of driving experience at the time... very American to give licenses that allow you to drive 13-ton vehicles to people who shouldn't even qualify to drive on public roads.

I still have no reason to waste tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a few years on a car though.

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 don't need to, I have to much to learn with Uni already, and anyways taking public transit is more convenient in Santiago.

...my grandmother never drove in ninety-one years after suffering a siezure in her youth; now i work with a girl who does likewise...