Member-only story
Why I don’t drive
I grew up in New York City, and like a lot of city kids, I didn’t see any reason to learn to drive. My father was the only one in my family who drove. My mother never learned to drive in her entire life. For city kids like me, our rite of passage wasn’t getting a driver’s license, but riding the subway alone for the first time.
That changed when I moved to Los Angeles in my late 20s. For the first time I found it necessary to drive.
However, driving never felt natural for me and I was always a nervous driver. I was terrified when I had to drive on the freeway. My night vision and depth perception is pretty bad, so I couldn’t drive at night. I found even driving a short distance to be a major ordeal. In all, that made driving very limiting for me. Thankfully I lived in a neighborhood with lots of restaurants and shops, so most of my driving was to & from work. There was also a bus line that I could take to my office, so I was able to take a break from driving.
While I was living in LA, I frequently visited San Francisco and fell in love with the city. I never once rented a car on any of my trips since I could get around easily by walking.
I later moved to Florida after my mom got sick and I was even more car dependent since I had to drive everywhere for shopping and restaurants. I hated it intensely for that reason.
When I finally moved to San Francisco in 2012, I was happy to get rid of my car and I haven’t driven since then. I’m a lot happier and I feel a lot freer since I don’t have to constantly worry about parking like car owners do.
