I have decided to learn to drive

Otherwise, I'm totally happy being unable to drive and taking buses/trains/cabs/whatever. And yet somehow I still feel like a childish selfish stick-in-the-mud for voicing the above. Should I tell them all to fuck off?

-- dog latin (doglati...), September 6th, 2004 3:16 PM.

Hooray for Thameslink!

this is exactly my biggest concern of all. I'm already pretty convinced I'll be a nervous and/or aggressive driver as it is, and if I'm not practicing on a regular basis, I fear I'll just be a danger to myself and others, pure and simple. That, and if I pass my test, i'll then feel obliged to drive completely unnecessarily, just to try to prevent the above scenario, and that goes against my principles of using public transport/feet whenever possible.

So again, it comes down to sevenish days around Christmas and - as mentioned - moving house, the occasional holiday etc.

How I'll feel once I have children etc I'm not sure, but right now it just seems a little pointless and unproductive.

So, now I'm thinking about buying a car. While I passed with only 1 minor error (brushed the kerb as I pulled over), and was confident for the first few months after passing, I am now completely lacking in confidence behind the wheel, so I think I'm going to get a couple of lessons prior to making the purchase so I can relearn parking techniques and also do some motorway driving (the M8 is kind of essential to driving in Glasgow, running through the city centre as it does).

This is a long and convoluted way of saying: I don't think you should learn to drive unless you're going to do it regularly afterwards, in other words Archel and Sicky OTM.

My last test failure I thought I'd passed :o(

You can get those crazy proximity gadgets for the boot of the car

29 counters of speeding i bet ;)

x-post Ken, if you get more than a certain number in any one area, you fail so by getting that many errors and still passing, Mark must be fairly shit, but not totally shit, at everything. Acceptably shit?

There are some people who learn to drive, and don't lose their confidence when they don't get behind the wheel for a while. The majority of people do lose their confidence after a period of non-driving, so if you think that you'll fit in this category, then I'd seriously reconsider leaving it for now, at least until you're in a position when you'll be able to stomach the vast cost (don't forget you have to pass you're theory test before you can even book your practical, and some areas of london have a 4 month waiting list for that) and know you'll probably be behind the wheel a bit more often.

Having said that, being a friend with a driving licence makes you very popular in London, particularly when friends are moving and want to do it on the cheap by hiring a van. Parallel parking a van is a whole different kettle of fish, however.....

To parallel park, move your car three or so feet from, and half a car's distance in front of the car in front of your parking space. This is very important - if you are level with the car, you're losing several feet by the time you actually start turning - you need to use this extra space because your car isn't capable of turning at right angles.

Start reversing slowly, and when you are just clear of the back of the front car, turn your steering wheel quickly so you are pointing the back end of your car at where you envisage it ending up. Then reverse in a straight line until the front of your car is clear of the back end of the front car. Then turn the wheel quickly a corresponding amount in the other direction. Continue reversing slowly until you are perfectly parked.

What you shouldn't do is keep turning the wheel as you reverse - it makes judging the correct position almost impossible. It's also key to go as close to the protruding wing of the car in front, both when initially reversing (i.e. diagonally) and during the final reverse (straightening up).

Once you get it, it's like learning to ride a bike. But the technique has to be right.

If I ever end up married with kids I can see it as a necessity but until then I can't see myself learning.

Also I imagine it as being really hard, but then I think of all the fucking morons out there who can drive perfectly well.

Also I imagine it as being really hard, but then I think of all the fucking morons out there who can drive perfectly well.

haha yeah!

If there's no hurry to get it done, and you don't have a problem taking a week or so out of your schedule, then it's definitely the way to go. You don't need lessons before you do the theory, just cram the highway code and use the internet to find example tests.

As a result, I am now a very nervous occasional driver. It's the prospect of having to park that freaks me out most. I can't bear the thought of people watching me as I come horrendously close to other cars and hold up traffic.

If I ever started driving again regularly, I'd need a refresher course I think, at least for manoeuvres like parking and reversing around a corner (does anyone actually do the latter?)

People who can drive are much better in bed.

nobody ever reverses around a corner N. and as someone who drove for 2 years without ever being able to parallel park trust me there's always a space you can just drive into.

The NYS written exam is laughably easy.

Ronan has never lived in the West End of Glasgow then. It's not like in the movies, you know. Or else Ronan lives in a movie.

I had a ROUND OF APPLAUSE once when parallel parking my car into a space about six inches longer than the space of my car once, by a bunch of pissed blokes outside Parkhead. I love being able to drive. I passed my test when I was 17 after eight lessons and never went near a busy road for about two years after than. Then I bought a car and moved to Glasgow. That taught me a lot.

I would offer to take Madchen out to practise on the highways and byways of Glasgow, but she's been in my car and will decline on the grounds of, well, it being the worst car in the world.

As noted by Aaron, more than a little of an exaggeration. I am 33 and after two abortive driving tests in the late eighties -- one I just failed, the other one I wiped out on -- I have not been behind the wheel since then. Tough? LA is much easier to get around in via mass transit in many ways, shapes and forms than is expected. OC is nowhere near as complete but I have had no problem with it for the twelve years I've been here. Then there's walking if you're in a good enough spot -- I am and therefore can get more exercise very easily (just walked over to the big mall and back again for Hero, close to twenty-five minutes each way, and I enjoyed it very much).

It was exaggerated because as a native New Yorker, it is my duty to speak derisively about all things Californian.

Actually, wait a minute, whenever did you think it was the reverse?

Of course, I am very bad at sex.

And besides, now I'm in Melbourne, and you have to share the road with TRAMS - big fuckoff huge ones that would mashup your car. And right hand hook turns. And hideously choked roundabouts.

I'll stick to my trams and taxis thanks.

I miss driving. I hate the fact I can't afford to own a car in London. I hate that I can't just drive around London in the middle of the night and really get to know its dark corners (it's why I switched from the tube to the bus -- I was tired of living underground).

I love having a car. I love the freedom it represents. I love the idea of getting the fuck out of London whenever I want and not having to take a bus-train-train-cab-camel-bus-train to get anywhere I want to go. I love road trips. I miss 3am visits to petrol stations in the middle of god's nowhere en route to somewhere. I love driving to Oasis. For a bunch of twats who don't know how to drive they wrote excellent driving songs. Putting my foot to the floor on "Columbia" = aaaahhhhh.....

I think these are valuable reasons to learn how to do it. And the more you do it, the easier it becomes. And then you increase your usefulness level.

it is a useful skill; to be able to drive.

I laughed when Dylan Moran said that in Shawn Of The Dead.

It's cheap enough just to get cabs for your weekly shop, and hire a car for the odd weekend, though. Cheaper than owning a car.

it's this kind of thinking i cannot wrap my head around - such dependency. especially in these uncertain times where the public space is threatened even more than in the past...heh, it just seems like cutting your own legs off to me, and relying too much on large impersonal factors to make daily life possible/easy

x-posts

if I had a car, I would have far more factors to be worrying about, than I do, now.

public space is threatened.

The last time I hired a car I swore I'd buy one before I did that again. With Steilo's hidden extras, I could buy a junker for less.

You are learning, grasshopper.

When I lived in the states there were all kinds of carpool incentives offered by my company and neigboring businesses. I haven't seen anything like that here but I haven't really worked with anyone who was stupid enough to drive to W1.

I think smoking should be banned, in public.

wheels are much faster than legs. i understand due to cost / space issues getting an auto may not seem feasible for many in large metropolises. but it still seems silly that, if all other factors are equal, and if it was in one's powers to do so comfortably, why someone should choose on _not_ having/using a car, anti-atmospheric reasons excluded. i mean it's a great resource to own, empowering and fun, and just seems silly why you should bypass it until the moving sidewalk or next Jetsonian invention is invented.

I like wheels, though, but there are too many, going in too many directions.

This being a rather important exclusion.

This is what I meant about car clubs. They're a bit different to car sharing schemes.

London car clubs

Typical car clubs costs:

Fixed costs

Membership fee
£100 /year or £10 /month

Returnable deposit to cover any insurance excess incurred
£100

Cost per journey

Hourly rate
£2 - £3

Mileage rate, including fuel
15p – 20p

Booking fee
£1

also personal space is a GOOD THING

also lets not forget plastics, recycling, the very fact of living in concntrated urban centres that drain resources. to target owning an auto alone is exclusionary - and hey, there are alternatives coming into sight. the issue remains the #s game - everyone middle class in china/india does not yet own a car, but aspires to, and that desire is going to influence a lot of things in the next 20 years or so

the very fact of living in concntrated urban centres that drain resources

Can you explain more, please?

Having said that, my mum and dad went for many years in London without a car (three kids all of school age). We got the bus or walked to school. Dad went to work by bus and train and mum shopped in the the local high street.

Let's put it to a vote: all in favour, say "aye"...

Whereabouts in London Nick?

Getting on public transport and abdicating responsibility to someone else is freedom to me.

Obviously cars are not the only evil, environmentally speaking, but I can't help but shudder a bit when people talk about how much they love their cars, and driving. The idea of driving as fun and cars as essentials/status symbols is embedded in Western culture like few other dangerous and polluting activities are.

xpost: sorry Charlie. er, put me down as a 'nay' I guess :)

Dr. C - Peckham.

But (depending where you're going) you have to worry about timetables, getting the last train/bus, what if they're on strike.. etc etc

The only thing off your list that I worry about is theft. And only rarely at that.

and in order to experience firsthand how driving can = equal, perhaps u just have to drive along the Pacific Coast Highway alone, at twilight. just once.

I don't know the answer to any of these questions, but it's just an example of the ass-pain that relatively short journeys in London can be unless they happen to be on a straight line into or out of the centre.

I may very well change my tune when I have kids, but I'm under no illusion that it's IMPOSSIBLE to survive even then without a car. It's all just lifestyle decisions really.

I had to negotiate Tibbett's corner roundabout and the 3-lane, 70mph A3 on my second lesson. Everything seemed less scary after that.

I reckon... nay, as it's not really going to be harder if you learn in say 5 years, and the cost will probably be that much easier to take then

Spoken like someone who has never lived in Lincolnshire.

Or attempted to use Central Trains on a regular basis..

Coming back to Charlie's question, I'd like some information too, because I'm going to learn to drive so I don't go INSANE trying to commute next year. Can you recommend good (national, if you're in the UK) driving schools?

I have managed this long without a car, but I've relied a great deal on people who do have cars. You may not need one to live in Birmingham, but if you're going to ESCAPE from the bloody place every so often, it can be rather useful - unless you want to travel from one city to another. Trying, to get to somewhere less populated without one of these evil machines is rather a challenge.
Travelling back to Lincoln, spending hours shivvering on Nottingham station platform because the fuckers have cancelled the train halfway to its destination and you don't want to sit in the waiting room because it smells of piss and curry, and its full of drunks but not as full of drunks as the train, because they're sitting there swigging lager as it goes along and singing rugby songs and generally being obnoxious and you're just thankful that they haven't got rid of them altogether that day and put on a bloody replacement bus instead -

I think I lost my point in that rant.... I was trying to suggest why so many people drive cars. It isn't just laziness.

I'm not so much thinking about when you have kids, although there is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing that reqs a car. I just think that in most peoples lives there are lots of things you need/want to do that require a car to do them effeciently or do them at all. I'm just not prepared to be dependant on other people in these situations, because I don't want to be let down and/or it's not fair on them. Also I want to be able to be help out friends/rellys/neighbours with lifts if I can.

If I didn't drive it would take me 90 minutes to get to work vs 30 in the car, I wouldn't be able to play in a band etc etc. They're all choices, but why restrict yourself?

I don't think people should feel bad about driving, but I don't like people to claim that it's NOT a choice.

i guess i've lived in london for too long! i forget about lincolnshire (and buckinghamshire etc and all of them shires)

thinking about it more.. i guess vic has a point that it's a very useful skill to have, so why not learn it? it's like learning how to swim - you don't have to go swimming all the time but it's nice to know that you can when you need to? (the argument goes the same way i guess if you lived in some land-locked country).

I like driving a lot. Maybe if long distance travelling by public transport isn't so expensive/slow I would like taking trains more. I don't have a car anymore (and don't really need one in london) but sometimes i do miss having it. I support my local cornershop business a lot more than before, so I guess that's good. Except their frankfurters are manky.

It's a useful skill to have, so if you can afford it go for it!

learning to drive, as aopposed to actualyl driving, is i think useful. might as well give yourself the chance in case you really need to for some reason in later life. the older you gte the harder it is cliche drone swiz etc

ON 05/05/05!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's a description of my first test that I sent someone:

I failed my first driving test. After the routine of putting on turn-singles, beeping horn, etc. the examiner told me to pull up to the white line. I turned the key in the ignition. The examiner looked at me in amazement: “The car is already on.” The test did not go significantly better after that. The examiner told me to pull up to a cone. He says, “Don’t you see that cone?” I’m thinking to myself: “I see two cones. Could you maybe be more precise about which one you want me to pull up to than ‘that cone.’” In the rush to pull up to the cone, I wasn’t thinking about how close my car was to the cones that mark off the parking spot. Once I was up to the cone he wanted me to pull up to, I realized that I was much further than two feet away from the cones that mark off the front of the parking space. I tried nudging the car over, pulling up, and then backing up again, but I still wasn’t close enough. Then I tried to remember the approach J0hn, my teacher, had taught me if I were too far from the cones (not that we’d gone over that very much), but it was all a bit muddled, and eventually it became clear that I wasn’t going to get the car properly parked. I kind of think that if the examiner hadn’t rushed me to pull up to that other cone, I would have lined myself up okay. As J0hn had said, it’s not a timed test, but that doesn’t mean the examiners won’t crack the whip.

New Yorkers: GET OFF THE STREETS....

I need to move back where there's public transport, I really really hate driving.

Gimme my car back!

Does anyone know if "American Driving Academy" is reputable?

I don't know if you know anybody that well in Tucson, or is willing to come visit you in Tucson soon enough for you to learn. But that would be nice.

True, tt does help that you're not an "OMG I'm like about to totally drive!" teen, as you'll probably be far more cautious than less cautious.. something driving instructors appreciate. But you'll probably be nervous, which is something all people learning to drive need to get over and will get over... just scope out different schools, and make sure you have a kind, patient instructor just in case. A cranky, impatient instructor is what you do NOT need, and -- unfortunately -- they do exist.. usually at the lowest prices. It might be worth spending a little more for a decent instructor (though you don't need an extravagant school, if that makes sense.)

This is the difficult first 15% of learning to drive. The other 85% is pretty much on your own.. go at your own pace.. take side streets and leave freeways for last. Once you learn how to be brave enough to merge onto lanes on a freeway, you pretty much got it. You'll quickly get over your over-caution in about a month or so, at the most.

I would agree with Blount if this were in a more secluded area, but the Southwest has notoriously aggressive drivers, so I think having an instructor for at least a couple of lessons is pretty key here.

(My very first driving lesson was driving Sunset Blvd. from PCH to downtown and back, in L.A. Talk about diving in the deep end first.)

hello

so pretty much my driving instructor is Eddie Marsan from Happy Go Lucky. His success rate seems to be based on the fact he gives you a 20 minute lecture each and every time you make even a small error, ensuring you never ever make that mistake again.

I'm always baffled when people manage to get to their mid-20s or early-30s without learning to drive, and then I remember that places outside the South West have public transport infrastructures.

haha, yeah, i've never really needed to learn before, but i figured it was high time. learning to drive and then owning and maintaining a car is such a large financial outlay i've just avoided it in the past. but as i'm thinking of moving to the south west, i don't want to cut myself off from my pals in the east so driving is essential. i did get quite a few lessons way back in 2007 but die to redundancy ended up giving up and only just started again. pleased with how much i've managed to retain. hope to have passed by the end of the year.

Xp I often ride the subway when in LA and it is sad