Asklemmy

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

I don't like driving..

I don't need to drive

Owning a car is stupidly expensive. And its an expense I don't need to pay.

Cars make people lazy and entitled and create divisions between them. When you're driving you're not around other people like you would be on public transit. They're bothered.

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

Apologies in advance, I'm not exactly your target audience:

I can drive just about anything short of a semi-truck (when I have to drive a car, it's usually an old manual Subaru), but I still refuse to drive whenever possible: Partly for environmental reasons, partly for financial reasons, and partly because I would much rather ride my ebike or my bicycle instead.

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.

I got my license in my mid 20s

Don't need to and its cheaper

Not my priority

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

because they gave me a license anyways

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.

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.

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.

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.