6 ms·

Should people still to learn to drive today?

yorwba 9y ago
I have never learned to drive and I don't plan to learn it anytime soon, unless I move to somewhere with abysmal public transport for some reason. Of course it all depends on your personal mobility habits and where you live, but in many big cities, you can absolutely get by without ever sitting in a car.
- chrischen 9y ago
  If you're in the US, you're in luck! Most of the US has abysmal public transit sprawl.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    I have never been to the US, actually. Grew up in Berlin and living in Shanghai right now.
- monk_e_boy 9y ago
  Driving is fun. You should give it a go. The sense of freedom is amazing.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    I did try it, and it's just so much you have to think about, that's horrible for getting somewhere. If I wanna get somewhere, public transit is a lot nicer, because I can sleep on the way, or use my phone. And if I just wanna enjoy getting around in nature, I take my bike.
    - falcolas 9y ago
      > it's just so much you have to think about Like everything else (including riding a bike), this is true of the beginner, and relegated to your subconscious after a few dozen hours. It all just becomes automatic. I drove past half a dozen stop signs, hundreds of cars, several traffic lights, four different speed zones, and made a cross-traffic turn, and was thinking about testing code this morning. You can pay attention without having to actively think about what you're doing, just requires making it a habit.
      - orbitur 9y ago
        Once you get past that point, though, you're faced with your personality type. In my 20s I loved driving, I had my radio, complete privacy, my 1.5 commute was tolerable. Now I'm in my 30s, and I hate my hour spent in the car everyday. Not because I can't find a good song or a good podcast, it's just that it feels like such an enormous waste of time. At least if I used public transit I'd be getting exercise. In my car, I'm just forced to sit and pay attention to the road, I can't read HackerNews or watch a show or read a book that isn't available in audio.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    Yeah, my car doesn't charge me surge pricing. I never have to stand in the rain waiting for it to show up. I can set the HVAC controls the way I want. The mechanic doesn't take my money up front and bleed it away for boondoggle politically motivated projects then ask me to pay more to do the work I already paid him for. For day to day commuting public transit can be less stressful but for going where you want when you want it's hard to beat a car.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      This is a perspective from a very specific environment. If you live in a dense city, chances are you won't get to keep your car near you house or the other places you're going to, so you'll have to walk in the rain to and from it. Plus, European gas prices feel like surge pricing every day :|
      - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
        I live and work in a city in the Northeast US. The number of easily accessible parking spaces to me is less than the number of vehicles and people who need to use them in my household. It's no different than college where parking is a "long enough to be annoying in the winter" walk away. I generally walk anywhere under two miles and avoid driving between 7am and 7pm. Having a means of transportation under my personal control readily available to me is well worth it. Tonight I'm going to go meet someone selling something on Craigslist. It's about the size of a milk crate and weighs >50lb. I could carry it on the subway and do it for free (monthly pass). Next week I have to get a coffee table. Sure, I could buy one online but I think buying a used high quality one for cheap/free on CL or from a thrift store and having the ability to get precise measurements in advance I could take an Uber or taxi but it only takes a few Ubers a week to be more expensive than owning a car (if you own it outright). If your life involves doing anything more than being a worker bee who goes lives by a schedule and pays someone else for assistance with transportation outside that scope then having your own means of transportation is invaluable in terms of convenience and possibly cheaper.
        9y ago
  - c3833174 9y ago
    Which goes away once you're locked into traffic, and unfortunately driving a motorbike is not always practical.
kamaal 9y ago
People will have to drive for quite the foreseeable time in the future(Think of few decades). These are just better traction control systems, with some accident detection and avoidance thrown in. Nothing much. You will still do bulk of the work.
- JCzynski 9y ago
  Bet you $100 that, in 2035, >10% of the cars on the road are level-4 autonomous or higher, and >90% of new cars sold are level-4 autonomous or higher.
  - kamaal 9y ago
    In the country where I stay(India), this doesn't look possible. Might be possible in the US though. But you don't exactly have a self driving car, if you can only drive in specific conditions.
    - King-Aaron 9y ago
      I think this is something which is brushed off too often in these conversations. In the context of US-posters (in many forums I've seen), it seems very likely to them that within 20 or so years, autonomous cars will take over. There's already a big change there happening in consumer driving habits, and I guess that because it's where a lot of the technology is being developed the roll-out is a lot more obvious. Here in places like Australia, I don't forsee it happening on the same scale in the same timeframe. There are different factors here such as the immense distances, inconsistent road surfaces and those bloody Kangaroos which is going to pose real challenges for automakers, as they already have been. I don't think it's going to be that long before learning to drive is purely an optional thing in the same way learning to ride a horse is, but I think it'll be a fair bit longer than people are mentioning here. At least globally.
      - pfisch 9y ago
        Kangaroos are really no different then deer in this context.
Frogolocalypse 9y ago
My adult daughter still can't drive.

I have never learned to drive and I don't plan to learn it anytime soon, unless I move to somewhere with abysmal public transport for some reason. Of course it all depends on your personal mobility habits and where you live, but in many big cities, you can absolutely get by without ever sitting in a car.

chrischen 9y ago
If you're in the US, you're in luck! Most of the US has abysmal public transit sprawl.
- yorwba 9y ago
  I have never been to the US, actually. Grew up in Berlin and living in Shanghai right now.
monk_e_boy 9y ago
Driving is fun. You should give it a go. The sense of freedom is amazing.
- kuschku 9y ago
  I did try it, and it's just so much you have to think about, that's horrible for getting somewhere. If I wanna get somewhere, public transit is a lot nicer, because I can sleep on the way, or use my phone. And if I just wanna enjoy getting around in nature, I take my bike.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    > it's just so much you have to think about Like everything else (including riding a bike), this is true of the beginner, and relegated to your subconscious after a few dozen hours. It all just becomes automatic. I drove past half a dozen stop signs, hundreds of cars, several traffic lights, four different speed zones, and made a cross-traffic turn, and was thinking about testing code this morning. You can pay attention without having to actively think about what you're doing, just requires making it a habit.
    - orbitur 9y ago
      Once you get past that point, though, you're faced with your personality type. In my 20s I loved driving, I had my radio, complete privacy, my 1.5 commute was tolerable. Now I'm in my 30s, and I hate my hour spent in the car everyday. Not because I can't find a good song or a good podcast, it's just that it feels like such an enormous waste of time. At least if I used public transit I'd be getting exercise. In my car, I'm just forced to sit and pay attention to the road, I can't read HackerNews or watch a show or read a book that isn't available in audio.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Yeah, my car doesn't charge me surge pricing. I never have to stand in the rain waiting for it to show up. I can set the HVAC controls the way I want. The mechanic doesn't take my money up front and bleed it away for boondoggle politically motivated projects then ask me to pay more to do the work I already paid him for. For day to day commuting public transit can be less stressful but for going where you want when you want it's hard to beat a car.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    This is a perspective from a very specific environment. If you live in a dense city, chances are you won't get to keep your car near you house or the other places you're going to, so you'll have to walk in the rain to and from it. Plus, European gas prices feel like surge pricing every day :|
    - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      I live and work in a city in the Northeast US. The number of easily accessible parking spaces to me is less than the number of vehicles and people who need to use them in my household. It's no different than college where parking is a "long enough to be annoying in the winter" walk away. I generally walk anywhere under two miles and avoid driving between 7am and 7pm. Having a means of transportation under my personal control readily available to me is well worth it. Tonight I'm going to go meet someone selling something on Craigslist. It's about the size of a milk crate and weighs >50lb. I could carry it on the subway and do it for free (monthly pass). Next week I have to get a coffee table. Sure, I could buy one online but I think buying a used high quality one for cheap/free on CL or from a thrift store and having the ability to get precise measurements in advance I could take an Uber or taxi but it only takes a few Ubers a week to be more expensive than owning a car (if you own it outright). If your life involves doing anything more than being a worker bee who goes lives by a schedule and pays someone else for assistance with transportation outside that scope then having your own means of transportation is invaluable in terms of convenience and possibly cheaper.
      - 9y ago
- c3833174 9y ago
  Which goes away once you're locked into traffic, and unfortunately driving a motorbike is not always practical.

kamaal 9y ago

People will have to drive for quite the foreseeable time in the future(Think of few decades). These are just better traction control systems, with some accident detection and avoidance thrown in. Nothing much. You will still do bulk of the work.

JCzynski 9y ago
Bet you $100 that, in 2035, >10% of the cars on the road are level-4 autonomous or higher, and >90% of new cars sold are level-4 autonomous or higher.
- kamaal 9y ago
  In the country where I stay(India), this doesn't look possible. Might be possible in the US though. But you don't exactly have a self driving car, if you can only drive in specific conditions.
  - King-Aaron 9y ago
    I think this is something which is brushed off too often in these conversations. In the context of US-posters (in many forums I've seen), it seems very likely to them that within 20 or so years, autonomous cars will take over. There's already a big change there happening in consumer driving habits, and I guess that because it's where a lot of the technology is being developed the roll-out is a lot more obvious. Here in places like Australia, I don't forsee it happening on the same scale in the same timeframe. There are different factors here such as the immense distances, inconsistent road surfaces and those bloody Kangaroos which is going to pose real challenges for automakers, as they already have been. I don't think it's going to be that long before learning to drive is purely an optional thing in the same way learning to ride a horse is, but I think it'll be a fair bit longer than people are mentioning here. At least globally.
    - pfisch 9y ago
      Kangaroos are really no different then deer in this context.

Frogolocalypse 9y ago

My adult daughter still can't drive.