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 was 27. Had an instructor and a friend who let me drive him around a bunch for practice. My mum got hers at 30. Just get it when you can afford it or you want/need it. There’s no rush.
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
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.
I was 20 and learned from an instructor. To be fair, I’m from the Netherlands and cars don’t play such a big role here. I had a moped from when i was 17, so i was motorized. Although I bicycled for most of my trips under 10 kilometer (five miles).
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.
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 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.
License at 16, drove for the first time at 11 (on private property).
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.
I got my license in 2014 at the age of 19. Driving just didn’t interest me before cause only place I went was school and I had a bus to go there which didn’t charge me like the school did for people wanting to park there. Once I graduated and needed a job, that’s when I started learning to drive. My dad taught me everything by taking me to a local state park and occasionally letting me drive through town or on the interstate.
Edit: throwing this in that my gf is 33 and still never had a license. She tried in the past, but nobody took her driving and I couldn’t cause I live 600 miles away. She’s trying again since her family has more free time now to do it.
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.
