<p>Send your D to live in London, where half the population appears to be unable to drive. Buses run all night (remember Harry Potter’s nightbus?) and you can travel by train or tube alone late at night with no problems (and everyone takes their baby on the bus. It’s fine). Plus the major has provided hundreds of bicycles for instant hire at low cost all over the city.</p>
<p>I confess I own a car but have never ever driven into the centre of London. Even though I’ve had a licence for 10 years and drive all the time (through necessity I can parallel park no problem) the congestion zone is too terrifying, unless it was a life or death situation.</p>
<p>I am sure your D will get her licence eventually if she really wants to. I wish her the best of luck.</p>
<p>Detroit is a unique animal in many ways, but as a metro-Detroiter who works in the city, there are no viable mass transport options. Living in the city is dangerous and you wouldn’t want to walk to a bus stop, let alone wait at a bus stop, if you had a purse or laptop bag with you. Detroit is in rough, rough shape right now. The other posters aren’t lying about the lack of ability to get anywhere. I’d have a 3 mile walk to the grocery store if I didn’t have a car. My kids would have a 6 mile walk to high school. Not happening in weather like today (windchills below 0). </p>
<p>OP- My D was much like yours. I would work at it with her and then she’d almost kill me and I’d back off. I finally decided I had to get it done- before marching band season started up again- and we drove every single day. I took her on simple routes first, until she became comfortable. It took a couple months of driving every day. If we missed a day, she would get all uptight again and drive badly for the first ten minutes or so. Then she’d relax and do better. She got significantly better with that daily practice. I couldn’t skip a day at all. She’s had her license for over 3 years now and has had one accident- her first day home for spring break last year. I initially thought it was lack of practice in many months, but it turned out she had lost 45% of her peripheral vision due to a medical issue. Since she’s in NYC for college, she does take the subway a lot. She did call me in tears after a scary incident on the subway last month, but she rides it a lot and has only had one incident so far. She travels in a pack usually. When she babysits late at night, they are required to pay for her cab fare. </p>
<p>Even if you live somewhere like NYC where it is easy to never drive, if you can’t drive, you really limit where you can go on vacations, what kinds of jobs you can take, etc. I traveled for one job and had to rent a car at those locations to get to the companies I was auditing. If I fly to a vacation spot, I usually need to rent a car once there. You are limiting your options in life if you don’t drive. That’s why I would see it as an essential life skill. Mandatory? No. But life limiting if you can’t do it at all.</p>
<p>My D doesn’t seem to be in any rush either at 16 to get her permit. I will let her decide when is the best time, but I do think it is a life skill that everyone should master. Whether they choose to drive often is really determined by individual preference and necessity. But for emergency situations everyone should have the skill.</p>
<p>Obviously, you have not been to Minneapolis to watch the 50 yo + bikers on our award winning trails bike even during winter to and from work, or know much about the higher than national average of bikers in the Metro Area. We also have large numbers of people who use the Nice Bike program. Tons of bike lockers and bike rentals in Minneapolis.</p>
<p>Most people do not bike in their work clothes–lol,they change at work. and most employers provide bathrooms with showers or single person bathrooms to freshen up. </p>
<p>Having a car is just not essential in the Minneapolis Metro area with our zip cars, biking, busing & train systems. In addition to many families, with children residing in or near downtown. </p>
<p>I don’t think people with kids are giving up cars to bike to work in January.</p>
<p>At any rate I don’t care whether people choose to drive or not, but I do think that a young person should be encouraged to learn the skill if possible. You don’t know what life will require of you later.</p>
<p>My mom used to be able to drive but can’t anymore. She seems to get along okay. If I lived in a major city with all day public transit then I probably wouldn’t drive myself. It’s expensive and a hassle in the snow. But if she needs to find a place with appropriate public transit she’s really limiting herself on where she’ll be able to work.</p>
<p>“unemployable in Detroit”? Hmm. I doubt that’s true, but if it were true, being unemployable in a place where there are no jobs anyway doesn’t bring me to tears. People who don’t like to drive, like me, aren’t unemployable where I live. And I don’t seem to be unemployable in Austin, either; some guy just tried to recruit me for a job there.</p>
<p>Look, if your kid wants to learn to drive and you want to go through the entire dreary process (practicing frequently? for a YEAR? I can think of a lot of other things I’d rather do than spend endless hours in a car watching someone drive, which sounds to me approximately as appealing as spending the same time in the dentist’s chair) go ahead. But don’t pretend that everyone needs to drive everywhere they might live; that’s just not true, and it’s getting less true every year.</p>
<p>I just don’t agree. I have traveled extensively in Europe and never rented a car there. I have gotten all the way to the Inner Hebrides without a car, and traveled throughout Italy with two little kids without one too.</p>
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<p>Then learn later! I know SO many kids in my midwestern college town who get through high school and even college without knowing how to drive. And I see plenty of adults (often grad students) behind the wheel of drivers-ed vehicles all the time–they use my neighborhood as a practice area. At my suburban office, there are a number of people (including me) who either occasionally or always take the bus. One can’t afford a car, another grew up in the suburbs and just never learned, and another is legally blind. There are such things as carpools in addition to buses and trains, too.</p>
<p>We had a mother in our neighborhood who didn’t drive (had 5 kids and dad worked 45 minutes away). I could never understand why they moved to our town. They had no family here to help. Our neighborhood is 2 miles from our small town of 4000 people. We live about a mile from the bike path to the town. The big city is 30 miles away. There is no bus service, no taxis, nothing. Winters are brutal with snow and below 0 temps. This poor woman was always trying to beg rides. The thing is everyone is busy and no one wanted to do it on a on going basis. After several years of this, she learned to drive. I would hate to be in that predicament. One never knows where life will take you. Don’t push but do encourage her to learn to drive</p>
<p>The OP’s daughter is still in high school. It may be a bit soon to worry if she’s limiting her career options. </p>
<p>There have been some great suggestions for places to practice driving that should reduce her fears/stress. Only the OP (or daughter) can say whether he’s contributing to the problem. Maybe practicing with another adult, and/or in another car, would help, too.</p>
<p>When it was time for D1 to learn to drive, she was a nervous wreck and would have happily remained a non-driver. We realized she did better with DH than with me, so he took over driving lessons even though he was only available on weekends. It wasn’t until she saw how spread out her college campus was that she got motivated to master her fears and she got her license a few weeks before the start of her freshman year. She had one minor fender bender a few months later, and has been an excellent driver ever since.</p>
<p>I don’t agree about “having” to rent a car on vacation. I too have traveled extensively in Europe, without renting a car. Here’s one of my vacations, tragically limited by not driving: fly to London, stay for a week, see shows and enjoy the city, then fly to Madrid, train to Granada, stay a week in the Alhambra, eat tapas, rent a bike a couple of days for wonderful bike rides in the area, explore the narrow twisty roads of the city by wandering around, fly to Barcelona, stay downtown, eat tapas, enjoy walking around the city, visit various buildings and a park designed by Gaudi, rent one of the city bikes for an afternoon ride along the beach, eat more tapas, come home. What a terrible vacation.</p>
<p>I would LOVE for the Detroit area to have a world class mass transit system. I’ve lived in the Oakland/SF Bay area for a number of years so know what one looks like. I don’t think Detroit will make it in my lifetime and I’m not elderly either.</p>
<p>That’s the take-away from this thread. Thank you, all. You guys are great. Lots of wonderful advice and encouragement. Except for C-Fang - jk. </p>
<p>Someone made a very good point about not worrying if the permit expires. Artificial deadline. If she wants to learn and keeps practicing, eventually she will get her license. I’ll push just a little to keep her momentum going, but I’ll try to lighten up. </p>
<p>Also, I don’t think I am a terribly onerous instructor. I try to keep my mouth shut (even though I’m screaming holy terror on the inside - perhaps she can sense it). </p>
<p>Someone mentioned ice-skating. Funny, but she can’t do that either. I grew up in MA and grew up skating and playing hockey on frozen lakes and ponds. I taught D2, D3, and SD to skate and they got pretty good after a session or two. D1, probably about 11 or 12 years old at the time, never took to skating either. I could never get her to let go of the railing. After 4 or 5 sessions like that, her skating career was over.</p>
<p>I don’t think that getting along on vacation in Europe without renting a car has much to do with the demands of daily commuting to a job. </p>
<p>And I wouldn’t want to have to learn to drive while I was trying to raise an infant. It would be nice to know how to do it already.</p>
<p>In a perfect world we wouldn’t need to drive except for pleasure and there would be great public transport options everywhere. In the real world, that’s not the case, which is why, pragmatically, I would encourage young people to develop the skill.</p>
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<p>My H is a wonderful person in so many ways I can’t count them. But he wasn’t a helpful presence when my D was learning to drive. He is an excellent father, but that was one area where a disinterested third party really did help.</p>
<p>Maybe look into the fear aspect (she won’t swim, won’t drive, won’t ride a bike, won’t skate)? There’s something else going on besides not grasping the driving skill.</p>
<p>If she wants to learn, I would suggest driving with different cars to find one where she has a better sense of where she is. For instance, for someone who is having the problems OP described, I would think an SUV would not be a good vehicle to start in. With a small compact car, for example, she might more easily master the skills involved. </p>
<p>I can parallel park almost any medium to large size car, but give me a small one, and I have to try 2 or 3 times. I just don’t have the spacial sense of it, although I am sure I could develop it with some practice. </p>
<p>There’s still plenty of time for her to learn how to drive, although I would encourage her to learn before she HAS to learn for some reason.</p>