<p>Cardinal Fang, speaking of easily refutable, you have had three people from the Detroit area tell you that you are pretty much unemployable here without the ability to drive… we are the ones that live here, not you, so why do you know better than us? You don’t, the best you could come up with was that there are no jobs here to get to anyway so boo hoo-- real mature. Obviously there are jobs here, considering I have one. I have to be able to get to it. </p>
<p>I think the right answer is for all communities to have usable and safe public transportation and or be easily walkable or bike accessible, but my community is not. It will take generations for us to evolve that far. I just saw on the news the HIGH next Tuesday is 1 degree. There was so much snow last night, that still isn’t cleared 24 hours later, that I could barely drive my car this morning-- I would never have made it to work on foot or by bike, and in Michigan you don’t get to take days off just because it snowed. You could say boo hoo move someplace better, but if you honestly think it’s more practical to quit your job, drop everything, and move away from your family into what is most likely a much more expensive area, than it is to take the time to practice and learn how to drive properly, you are just trolling this thread. People who put their children in that position instead of teaching them to drive are doing them a real disservice.</p>
<p>If you don’t want to drive, or feel that you can’t drive, IF you can afford it and IF you don’t mind relocating you can get by that way-- it is FEASIBLE. But not everybody fits those criteria, and those people may very well NEED to drive. It is not practical for everyone to drop everything and move over something so silly as not feeling like learning to drive-- and first you made your tirade about BAD drivers, but then you went on to say that you’d basically rather watch paint dry than have to put in the effort to teach a kid to drive. So don’t come back and scream that bad drivers have no right to keep their jobs and should have to move because they’re endangering society, because that isn’t what you’ve been talking about anymore.</p>
<p>I don’t consider driving a car to be a life skill, sorry. Plenty of folks live in cities in this country and all over the world and never get behind the wheel. My D attends grad school in Chicago and takes the L and buses everywhere- only drives when she’s at home. Eldest S lives in Seattle and uses public transportation to work every day, but after 8 years there, just bought a car to make those trips to the grocery store a bit easier. Youngest son is a menace behind the wheel but knows that his dad will keep buying him cars when he wrecks the current one…</p>
<p>I moved out of the area a few days ago, starting my new job on Monday where I can look forward to a high of -11F (yes, that’s negative), and probably closer to the low of -20F when I leave in the morning. I will never call Ann Arbor cold again. There are buses here but I don’t want to stand 5 minutes out in that kind of cold.</p>
<p>As poor as most of Michigan’s transportation is, the Detroit Airport DOES have several cheap-ish options to travel to Ann Arbor. The Flyer runs about every 1-2 hours for about 16 hours a day, for only $12 one way (and $22 round trip). </p>
<p>I actually like driving, but can’t stand driving in the snow. Does anybody else have trouble seeing the lanes when there is a foot of snow accumulating on the ground? That worries more than skidding, believe it or not.</p>
<p>yes, typical issue with driving in snow, aajjc. Congrats on the new job, vladenschlutte. The local news reported 250 accidents this morning (in just Macomb County).</p>
<p>Yikes Vlad, have you felt cold like that before? I have experienced a few -20 days, and while thankfully I didn’t have to be outside for very long there seems to reach a point where your body stops registering cold… anything under about 15 degrees feels the same to me, it’s all just REALLY COLD! I hope you got a nice coat and BOOTS! My parking lot wasn’t plowed when I left work today and I destroyed my shoes and had to drive home with freezing wet socks… a normally 15 minute drive took me 45 minutes.</p>
<p>Because I know people from Detroit who get around by bike and who have jobs.</p>
<p>Car drivers everywhere always say that it’s impossible to get around their area without a car. So far, everyone who has said that to me has been wrong, so I’m skeptical that this time you’re right. The population loss in Detroit has been a big advantage for cyclists, and cycling is booming there. People commute by bike in the Detroit area for the same reason they bike commute everywhere. </p>
<p>One of my cycling friends, who lives in Detroit, says, “Detroit is really a fantastic place to ride. Imagine, 4 lanes of amazing road built for Cadillac and Lincoln boats throughout the city now deserted except for the roll of Kenda, Avenir and Schwinn tires rolling through. So much to look at and experience, fertile ground sprouting and sometimes exploding through the empty party shell that’s been left behind.”</p>
<p>And before you ask, warm clothes, studded tires and good lights.</p>
<p>It’s 10 below now and I was just outside. I can definitely tell the difference between 10 below and 15 above. In 15 above my ears don’t hurt. I don’t think I’ve ever been out in weather colder than this, I think it only dipped below 0 a couple times in the past 9 years in Ann Arbor. Now I have to worry if my car will even start in 20 below.</p>
<p>I have a kid heading back to Michigan in a couple of days. If she can, she will take bus back to school. If that doesn’t work, she will hopefully share a taxi to get back to town. Thevweather is going to be brutal, so waiting 60- 90 minutes for a bus ride may not be feasible. </p>
<p>That adds up. $60 ride isn’t really doable for most kids on a budget. </p>
<p>I am going back there in a few weeks and will be there for three days. My car rental through Costco is less than the cost of one taxi ride to Ann Arbor. Much more affordable for me to rent a car. </p>
<p>Not everyone drives, but having this skill can come in handy.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, are you actually saying that an incompetent driver’s right to drive incompetently overrides my right not to be hit by them? Seriously, do you believe that we’re all supposed to be driving around in tanks to be safe from bad drivers who drive around killing people? I’m supposed to be sorry for someone who wants to drive to work, even though they are dangerous? You are seriously saying, I don’t care if you die, Fang, drivers are more important than you are?</p>
<p>When I was a teenager, I got into a wreck while learning to drive. It was a fender bender. It was scary, and I was freaked out about driving. My dad made me get my license because he knew I never would if he didn’t push me. </p>
<p>Honestly, what was said was that it limits your options if you can’t drive- and it does. That doesn’t mean someone can’t survive, but their options are more limited. If they are ok with that, that’s fine. If you want your vacations to be in urban places, that’s fine. If you want to live in urban places, that’s fine. </p>
<p>I don’t see any cyclists on my 25 mile each way commute every day in the snow. I’ve not seen any 4 lane roads without huge amounts of traffic during rush hour either. There are barely any grocery stores in the city of Detroit. I don’t know how they’d get groceries. It’s not like NYC where you have markets all over and you can stop for one or two things each day on your way home from work. And, it’s really, really scary to be in anything less than a car. Lately, I wish I had a tank to drive to work.</p>
<p>Ann Arbor is much more “car free” than Detroit is. I could live in Ann Arbor without a car if my job was there too. Ann Arbor is also geared toward the student population there, most of whom don’t have cars. They get free bus transportation with their IDs- all over that area.</p>
<p>BarnardMom they don’t get fresh groceries in the city - they get whatever crap the local slumlord grocer will sell them. There are two new grocery stores in Detroit but just added this year and if you don’t live within walking distance of them, good luck to you (first two national chains added in the city in years). I see bikers in Royal Oak but I work in a large office complex in Southfield and no one is biking to work in the winter. The parking garage is full though.</p>
<p>You’re not just saying that bad drivers shouldn’t drive, though, you are saying that people who aren’t naturally good drivers shouldn’t bother learning to be better drivers-- because that’s just too arduous a task to endeavor-- with a teenager! You can’t make up your mind about what you are actually talking about. I guess you’re just feeling argumentative today and need to draw attention to yourself.</p>
<p>Remember upthread, when I said that drivers are constantly, incorrectly telling me that I have to drive to be able to do this or that? Thanks for teeing up an example for me to swat away.</p>
<p>I don’t live in an urban area. I live in the suburbs.</p>
<p>I don’t vacation only in urban areas. I love road trips-- I just don’t like road trips <em>in a car</em>. I’ve ridden my bike across the US twice, once west to east and once south to north, and I’ve also ridden from Portland, OR to Glacier National Park to Jasper, Alberta, and I’ve ridden in the Alps from France to Italy and back.</p>
<p>That’s awesome. I wish I were physically able to do something like that! One of the things I told my daughter after visiting her in NYC was that I think it would be cool to live there, but I couldn’t physically do it. </p>
<p>There are suburbs around here where you could make it without driving, as I noted. You just would have to have a job near where you live and that’s a real challenge in this economy. A lot of job applications do indicate that you must have access to a car to be considered, even fast food places where my kids have applied. Those suburbs do tend to be more “urban” to me… not farmland areas, but areas with lots of stores in walking distance.</p>
It’s going to be cold here tonight, too. Low of 46! This winter has been a cruel, cruel one with regular lows of 68 through the night. ;)</p>
<p>Do we really have the “right to not be hit by someone”? I’ve never heard it put this way…</p>
<p>On my way to hanging out with my friends, I witness an accident and almost got T-Boned by an SUV driver side. You can’t control other people’s actions, only your own.</p>
<p>I said no such thing. Don’t put words in my mouth. I said people who don’t want to learn to drive should not have to learn to drive. I further said that it is possible to live a happy life without driving. You wrongly insisted that it was impossible to get around the Detroit area without driving, something I know to be false because I know people who do it.</p>
<p>If the OP’s daughter wants to learn to drive, and her father wants to teach her, then fine, she should continue to learn. If she decides she doesn’t want to learn to drive right now, she will be like many other people her age who are choosing not to learn to drive, and who are nevertheless going to college and getting jobs. If she decides not to learn to drive right now, and later she decides to learn to drive, she can learn then.</p>
<p>I think people are confusing the need for most adults to know how to drive, with the need that most adults need to drive on a frequent basis. </p>
<p>I would not want to be in my fifties and suddenly find myself living in a place where I had to drive, yet not knowing how to drive. I wouldn’t want to be learning now.</p>