No Desire to Drive

[Chickenhawk]

I personally have been driving since I was 15 years old (now 28). I have never been in any accidents, and I love driving. I don't know what the public transportation is like where you live, but over here in Albuquerque it sucks pretty bad. I honestly couldn't imagine living here and going about my daily tasks without owning a car. Going from one side of town to the other without a car would nearly be impossible with buses. You would have to wait forever for connecting buses, and by bike you would have a very cold, or very hot and overwhelming ride. As far as having a fast car or a luxury car goes, it is no different than wanting a really well made guitar. You want quality and you want certain specs that speak to you, and don't mind paying more money for it. I drive a 72k Cadillac cts-v coupe, and I sure as hell don't need a 556HP car with a lush interior, but I love driving it. It isn't like I am a douchebag who races all of the time, it is just nice to have the extra power. I myself own two cars, and to me that makes that a lot of sense.

Echo.

My views on the subject are vastly different from the OPs simply because of my choice of locality (I immensely prefer rural locations).

I live in a town of 5000, which has no public transportation. The grocery store is just a couple blocks away, across a highway. If I need just a few items, I walk. The gas station/convenience store is a block away. Again, if I don't need more than a couple bags of stuff, I just walk. Really, if it's less than a mile away, and I'm not in a hurry...I walk.

But, the closest city is 15 miles away, and my last job was an hour away. Not possible to get around without my own vehicle. There was another guy that would ride with me to work most days, and split fuel costs, or sometimes he would drive, if the weather wasn't bad.

There is a public transit system in the nearest city (St Joseph, ~88,000 population), but it's garbage. Just not possible for a lot of the city to rely on it for everyday commutes, unless you're willing to wait 15-20 minutes for connections and arrive every day annoyingly early or late. The buses run on time, and are efficient in what they do...but they don't transport people to work every morning.

I own a $35,000 diesel truck, and a $3000 POS Jeep. One works it's ass off, the other (once it's fixed) is the fuel saver. Around here, you drive. Plain and simple. A lot of people get by with cheaper (sub-$3k, fwd gas saver) cars most of the year, and get by just fine. Some folks choose the more reliable route (like I did with my truck) so they CAN get to work during a blizzard (like I have).

I guess if I lived in a much bigger city, I'd use public trans more often, but I'll never live in a big city, so I'll always drive

 

[JeffFromMtl]

I owned a car for 7 years, and felt that it was more of a burden than anything. I finally sold my car in November, and I've been better off in every way because of it. Simply owning a car (license, registration, insurance) cost me about 2 months of rent every year. It didn't make sense to me to be spending that much money to own a car that I had bought outright to begin with. On top that, consider that gas is around $1.30/litre in Montreal and I'm spending about $70 per tank. If I'm running on 3 tanks of gas per month, that's $210/month, half of my monthly rent. All in all, it was costing me about $3,000/year to drive a car that I had paid off 7 years ago.

So I bought a bike for $200 instead back in July and I've been riding since, making my transition to not owning a car seamless. By the time I sold the car, I was getting in it to move it across the street during no-parking hours more often than to actually even go anywhere in it. My bike was cheaper than a month of gas, doesn't cost anything to insure or be licensed to ride, doesn't pollute and keeps me in great shape all while simply getting where I need to go, and I now have a whole new handful of bike maintenance skills. During the really shitty winter months, I take public transit, which is just over half the price of a tank of gas for the entire month. It just makes more sense for me to not own a car.

 

[ST3MOCON]

Do you like Lamborghini Diablos?

 

[WhiteWalls]

Here in northern italy it's simply impossible to do anything without a car. I live in a small city (25k pop.) where there's no urban bus system, and I would need to walk for more than a kilometer just to get groceries.

My daily commute to university (in a bigger city 25km away from mine) takes 20 minutes by car. If I choose to go by bus, it takes over an hour, I have to walk for more than a Km to get home from the bus stop, AND it's more expensive

I am a big bike enthusiast and I would love to use it all the time, but contrary to what most people associate italy with (sun, beaches etc), winters are very cold here so I can only use the bike for 7-8 months, not only because of the temperature but also due to the risk of getting seriously injuried by ice/snow on the road.

Edit for the guy above:
I see supercars on a daily basis, as I live near Lamborghini, Maserati and Ferrari headquarters. The problem is when they test their 6 metres wide cars on 2 metres wide country roads, and I have to put two wheels in a ditch just to avoid a lethal collision

 

[bhakan]

If you don't need a car to get where you need to go, then why drive?

As far as fast cars and luxury cars and stuff, I live in the suburbs, so I have to drive to get everywhere. public transportation is pretty much nonexistent and walking/biking is dangerous due to lack of bike lanes. I like (and own) muscle cars, because I have to drive everyday, so I would rather make my daily commute fun. Same would go for luxury cars or big trucks. If you have to drive a lot, why not enjoy it?

 

[Scar Symmetry]

 

[tacotiklah]

Local public bus is atrocious here so pretty much if you don't have a car, your life will suck. Would be nice if I could just bike everywhere, but this isn't exactly a tiny city either. Perhaps if I were in better shape I'd say fuck it and bike anyways, but I've become fond of driving for the most part. I agree that biking more often is a good thing however.

 

[Overtone]

I prefer living places where you can easily get through a week without needing to do much/any driving, and I don't care about having any kind of status/performance from my car other than it not being a piece of shit and not having any mechanical issues, but that's where the similarities stop. I kinda get you, though, it's just that things like driving on a nice day with the windows down and some music make me a very happy guy. But I do remember hitting this point a few years ago thinking "OK man, time to start looking at new cars..." and soon after being ashamed of myself for even thinking that was a good improvement to my life. So I kept the original car and worked on getting home studio things together since that actually means something to me

 

[Metal_Webb]

My owning of a car is a necessity. I live a 40 minute drive from Newcastle. If I want to get there it's an hour bus ride then if I want to get anywhere around the city it's potentially another 2 hours of dicking about with public transport. Heaven help me if I need to get down to Sydney; 3 hour drive from my place.

 

[ZeroS1gnol]

OP, I wish there'd be more people like you.

I don't hate cars. I drive every now and then, but I just can't stand how a large amount of people just don't give a shit and drive when it's unnecessary.

 

[Nightside]

I lived in Europe for a year with no car and it was great.

I've lived in America the other years of my life and it is near impossible to live without a car. Unfortunately there are no horse lanes or I would just get a horse. I don't need a horse license, horse insurance, horse registration. All you have to do is fill it up with feed and keep it healthy. Although it would help if you aren't scared shitless of giant animals like I am lol. When I was 5 I loved riding horses. The last time I rode a horse, all I could think about was being thrown off and trampled to death.

Are there any electric motorcycles? Everyone is all on about electric and hybrid cars but what about motorcycles?

 

[Tommy]

I'm the same way. I just turned 21 a couple of days ago and still have never owned a car. There have been a couple of times when I almost did buy one but i never did. I don't see the point when I can walk or bike to where ever i want to go. Also, I don't have to spend money on the expenses of owning a car.

 

[GuitaristOfHell]

I just bike everywhere.

 

[MFB]

For me, I seem to have an insufferable guilt complex so asking for things like a ride was simply out of the question. If I had had my way, I would've been driving at 14 instead of 16 but apparently someone* felt differently about that. I hated asking my mom to not only drive me but also my friends to the mall on Fridays and even being picked up from school felt like a chore the few times it actually happened/was necessary. Then when I had the option to drive, I took it and said, "OK, well now I can get to a job which allows me to have money, and with that money I can go other places and do things" so the car allowed me lots of freedom.

My hometown, Haverhill, is as the name implies - full of HILLS. And given the New England regions reputation for steady weather, it was tough to say "Yeah, I can walk to __________" or "I'll just take my bike to _________" because you weren't sure what you needed if the weather suddenly changed either from sun to rain, rain to sun, extremely humid to cool and overcast, etc... But with a car you didn't need to worry about the elements. Not to mention the mongoloids that take the public transportation are the very ones that I would see at my work and I came to pride myself on spending as little time seeing them or letting them acknowledge my existence; nor did they go anywhere I really needed them to.

* The someone is the state of Massachusetts

 

[pink freud]

Driving+not fun=does not compute.

 

[thraxil]

It's a big part of why I live in NYC. I find driving tedious and just never enjoyed it. Not having to deal with car payments, insurance, and maintenance goes quite a ways towards balancing out the high rent here. I live about a 20 minute walk from work so I only have to take the subway a couple times a week when I'm going out to Brooklyn where my girlfriend lives, so I only spend about $50/month at the most on transportation. And Spring through Fall, when the weather cooperates, I bike instead, which keeps me in good shape.

The only time I'm really inconvenienced and kind of miss having a car is when I fly back to Maine to visit my family. Plane tickets are cheap and it's a fast flight, but they live two hours from the airport. Which means I always need to either get someone to drive two hours to pick me up, then two hours back on each end of the trip (which is a lot to ask), or I need to rent a car, which gets expensive fast if I want to visit for more than a couple days (if you don't have car insurance of your own, you get stuck having to get it through the rental company which adds $50/day or so to the cost of the rental).

 

[Stealthdjentstic]

I like driving and spending lots of money on cars appeals to me strongly. The more they damage the environment, the more I like them!

 

[skeels]

If I didn't have kids.....

I'd probably still have a car to bring logs home....

I used to not have a car. It was a long time ago.. Walked everywhere. Groceries. Laundry. Work. Walked to get beer. Didn't even have a bike.

Still have friends who don't drive. My age even. That's really, really old, btw.

My car is my family wagon, my work truck and a camper all in one.

Couple years ago, threw a futon in the back and drove to the Pacific. Good times.

My point is that sometimes I just ramble on. Blah blah blah.

Thank you.

Carry on.

 

[thraxil]

IUnfortunately there are no horse lanes or I would just get a horse. I don't need a horse license, horse insurance, horse registration. All you have to do is fill it up with feed and keep it healthy.

Ha! Clearly you've never owned a horse. That's a money pit if ever there was one.

It works like this: first you spend a couple grand on a decent horse. Then you spend a few hundred to a few grand on saddle, tack, etc. Then, if you don't already have a good barn and pasture setup, you spend a few thousand (or way more) getting those built and set up. Or you pay to stable your horse with someone who does have that. A few bucks up to a few hundred a month depending on where you live and how pampered you want your horse to be. Your horse needs new shoes every year or so (they magically lose them, even though they're nailed to their feet) and needs to be re-shod every couple months, so plan on paying a farrier a few hundred a year. Feed will be relatively cheap, at least compared to the rest of the crap. Oh, did you want to ride the horse somewhere other than around and around in a boring circle in the pasture? Time to buy a horse trailer and a giant, gas-guzzling pickup truck with enough power to pull it. And, of course, if you're the kind of person willing to buy a horse in the first place, you'll probably want endless riding lessons, which aren't cheap (after all, the instructors need to pay the bills for their own horse addiction).

Don't think it's all just money. You'll also get to enjoy spending hours a day feeding it, exercising it, mucking out its stall, grooming it, and reading it bedtime stories. You'll be up early in the morning going out in the cold and you'll have to work your entire schedule around being home at the right times to feed it.

Then, of course, you will discover that your horse is stupid beyond belief. It will figure out a way to injure itself on some mind-bogglingly harmless object in its stall, get its head stuck in the fence, eat a horseshoe nail, or just develop some horrible disease out of nowhere. Then you're dealing with horse veterinarians and any money you may have had left will just vanish before you blink. All of it. You are now either bankrupt or in deep debt.

Gosh, I sound a little bitter there, don't I? Sorry. Grew up on a farm and had horses for a while (we actually were lucky enough to not own them and were getting paid to stable them, but I still spent too much of my childhood shoveling horseshit), my aunt raised horses for years and was big on the competitive trail riding circuit (yes, that's a thing), and my ex-girlfriend was an endurance racer and did dressage.

Beautiful animals, and I've had wonderful experiences with them like riding through the high Andes in Ecuador. But cheap they are not. The worst, GAS-suffering gearhead guitarists among us on this forum with studios full of high-end custom guitars, stacks of amps, and racks of effects have *nothing* on your average horse fanatic.

Now back to hating on cars.

 

[WarriorOfMetal]

My car's exhaust system basically fell apart about a year ago. I had it parked in the driveway for about 9 months, due to not having the cash to do anything else about it. Still had to pay for insurance and all that while it was parked, though.

Once it got warm-ish, I decided to fix up the bicycle I got in '09 (which had been out of commission for a year or more due to a smallish issue that I was too lazy and frustrated to fix), and started riding that everywhere. I had the bike as my primary means of transportation for a good 5 months or more before I was able to fix the car, and I'd ride in all kinds of weather. I found that I was able to get rides from friends for most things where I'd normally need my car, such as any time I needed to transport my gear to play a show or whatever.

I finally managed to get the car fixed in late September, but I've continued to use the bike as my primary transportation for a few reasons (money, health, fun), and actually just recently upgraded to a nicer bike. My car now sits out on the street for, often, a week or more at a time.

I live in Boston, though, and have less than a 5-mile commute to work, and I've found that I can get pretty much everywhere I need to go on any kind of regular basis by bike, and it doesn't take much longer than driving - and in some cases, it actually takes less time. Example: I can drive, and get from my house to where I work in about 10 minutes, but then I have to search around for parking (which often takes 15+ minutes), and I may have to move my car a couple hours later and search for a new spot at least once to avoid getting a ticket, so there's another 15 minutes right there. Alternatively, I could ride my bike to work (20-30 minutes depending on traffic, how I hit the signals at intersections, and my energy level), lock up in front of the store, and not worry about it until I go home. I could take public transportation, but that takes 45+ minutes .

Another interesting thing I've found, is that since I've gotten so used to riding my bike everywhere, I actually find driving scarier than riding my bike on exactly the same route.