<p>How many people do you know getting around Detroit on bikes in the winter? Biking in the winter in Detroit is not feasible for the majority. Big ups to the folks that are able. The majority of the folks here still struggle to get around without a car and it’s not like we want it that way. There’s the cost of car insurance (among the highest in the country). Would love to ditch my car. Like being able to get to work more.</p>
<p>Learning a new skill is often easier when you are younger. It is often easier for a kid to learn foreign language than an adult. </p>
<p>Learning a musical instrument is easier when you are younger - it becomes second nature. </p>
<p>Most things are easier to do with lots of practice. </p>
<p>More experience will help with driving. Not driving will make it harder to learn. Maybe hiring additional professional drivers will help. I was tremendously freaked out when my D learned a few years ago, and even posted asking for help here at CC. i was stressing out over being nervous teaching her, even though I taught my boys a few years earlier with less issues. She is a great driver, now, although does.not have a car in college. She has needed to drive roommates car and take a shift of driving over Thanksgiving trip with roommates, and I am glad that she had experience learning with us in supervised situations. </p>
<p>I have heard that AAA offers an amazing teen driver program. </p>
<p>If I had to do it over again, I would have bought additional behind the wheel hours for her, because of my nervousness.</p>
<p>Every person I know who learned to drive after their mid-twenties is a terrible driver. (Probably about ten folks or so, none of whom I ever want to ride along with as a passenger again.)</p>
<p>I’d look for a private instructor, and see if she does better with someone who isn’t a family member. If she still doesn’t…maybe she’ll just choose to live in places where driving isn’t important. Lots of people do.</p>
<p>(But the state ID card works just fine as ID, and she probably shouldn’t have a car at U. Chicago given the parking challenges anyway.)</p>
<p>is the OP still around?</p>
<p>if so, how does your daughter take polite correction? Does she flip out or take it to heart?
my son did not take correction well, and that probably added to the time for him to learn how to drive.
Does your daughter seem anxious when she drives?</p>
<p>I can’t wait for self-driving cars to become available.</p>
<p>I’d like to see your evidence that driving is harder to learn after age 25, Samurai. Driving is not like learning a foreign language-- which is a good thing, because for most people learning a foreign language is much more difficult after about age 12. Unlike learning to drive, learning language is built-in. There is evidence that babies start to learn the sounds of their mother’s native language even before they’re born. People aren’t learning to drive in utero.</p>
<p>Perhaps, 25 isn’t the magic number, but you’re not making it any easier on yourself if you wait until your middle-aged to learn how to drive.</p>
<p>I learned to drive at age 27. I lived most of my youth in a major city in a European country with a fantastic public transport system. Learning to drive was a lengthy and costly process. You had to pass a stringent theory test first, take tons of lessons with professional driving instructors and then take another stringent practical driving test. I had no interest in learning to drive! </p>
<p>Then I moved to another European country, a well known university town with sucky public transport but very cycling friendly. Everybody, including old grannies, bike everywhere and so did I! What finally motivated me to learn was planning a family. While you could certainly get by, not being able to drive would have been limiting. I didn’t want that for my kids. I took tons of driving lessons and passed my test third time lucky! </p>
<p>I sure was happy to be able to drive when we relocated to the US. It would have severely limited my family’s choices and lifestyle. </p>
<p>I would definitely encourage the OP to not give up on his dd. She may need many hours behind the wheel with an instructor to feel confident but she can do it.</p>
<p>I think it’s strange that so many here are using Detroit as the standard for whether a place is feasible to live without a car. OF COURSE Detroit is one of the most car-reliant major cities. I cant imagine a time in the city’s history in which the urban planners might have said “let’s hedge our bets on this auto thing and lay down some light rail tracks just in case.” Having said that, I do think people who choose where they are going to live and work have to take their transportation issues into consideration. I would never move back to south Florida and expect to get by without driving. Yet plenty of people (especially those who can’t afford cars) do. Is it limiting to not drive? Yes, for many. But we all make choices and have to work with our limitations and preferences. </p>
<p>There is also a substantial group of people (myself included) who value being less dependent on cars even if we have them. Many of us use “walk score” ratings to decide where to live. For me personally, being in the car all the time would detract from my quality of life. So I make the choice to live in neighborhoods that have stores and restaurants in walking distance and that are served by a bus line. The sacrifice is having a much smaller house than I could afford in the suburbs. But that is my choice and it works for me.</p>
<p>I also find the use of Detroit odd. The girl has been admitted to UChicago EA (is she going there?), so it makes more sense to talk about the need to drive in Chicago.</p>
<p>There are places to live if you don’t want to drive and there are places to live if you want to drive and there are places to live if you don’t mind the occasional drive.</p>
<p>This girl sounds like she may have some spatial/movement from the OP’s description of her attempts in bicycling and swimming. Maybe for her, driving is not an option.</p>
<p>Didn’t mean to toss Detroit out there as the example - just thought immediately about how difficult it would be to navigate here without a car. But I’ve also lived in areas where I didn’t need a car so I get that the kid might not need a car at college, I’ve lived both scenarios. I’m also a bit of a white knuckle driver.</p>
<p>My son has lived in Los Angeles without a car, which some people would consider impossible. He found an apartment within walking distance of his job, he is an avid cyclist, and he also found it helpful to use buses or taxis to get to certain places. </p>
<p>It’s important, though, that he CAN drive and has no reluctance to use rental cars when it’s convenient to do so.</p>
<p>She may have some spatial issues. My sister certainly did, and we could not imagine her driving in her teens. Mid 20s, she learned, drives many hours per week now, and prefers road trips to flying for the most part. A little more maturity, brain growth wisdom, may help it all come easier. </p>
<p>Heck, I didn’t learn till age 19. It was all too much at 16, the California hills with stick shift, the driving instructor, my mom’s old car. Later, with a sympathetic boyfriend, still using stick shift, things went swimmingly, and I passed the test without a problem. </p>
<p>One D didn’t get her license till age 20 or so. She was busy with foreign exchanges and college aps for a few years. Finally she was home two summers in a row, took the test a few times, and passed on the third try. One reason for her failure was MY failure to remember to teach certain basics, such as how to align tires when parking on hills. I really wish she’d had the professional teaching, and drivers’ ed school that her sister had, to reinforce the basics. By the time she learned, she had aged out of the local classes. She also had aged out of the family errand trips that provide valuable practice for young learners. With my other two, they put in many, many hours driving around town, on family vacations, etc. </p>
<p>This D never drove a day of her college life, as she was on the west coast, far from family, and then has lived her adult life without need for a car, between years in Europe and East Coast cities. But she has certainly needed it for summer jobs and errands while home. </p>
<p>If there is any anxiety in your approach to driving with her, get someone else to teach her, whether a professional or a family friend. And just continue with teaching calm basics, even if the permit requires multiple renewals. Drive that same neighborhood route, time after time, adding skills slowly after a basic route becomes comfortable. </p>
<p>Yes, you can life sans driving, but it certainly limits options.</p>
<p>One can get by without learning to drive but in this country it can limited you. You may be ok if you live in a big city (and not Detroit or someother rust belt cities) or even in the suburbs. It would be extremely hard to live in the country without a car. Are you really going to bike 5 to 10 miles to the grocery store and back? How does one carry the gallon of milk and the 50 lb bag of dog food, softner salt, etc? I get it, Cardinal Fang. People can adapt without driving but for many of us, knowing how to drive is an essential skill.</p>
<p>I think Detroit just got used as an example so many times because so many Detroiters happened to be on the thread, and whether you can live here without a car can be kind of a hot button issue here-- I hadn’t known there were so many of us!</p>
<p>I personally have been to very few places where the average person, and especially the average family, could get by without driving skill. I was 17 years old before I ever saw my first bus or taxi cab anywhere even on vacation-- and it was a thrill! I was almost more excited by the buses at umich than anything else. I know there are lots of places where you can, the question is just whether you want to limit yourself to those places because there ARE places where you really do HAVE to drive, and situations in life where it may be expected-- especially in those places where you do have to drive. Most employees here are expected to take a turn picking up and dropping off guests of the company at their hotels before and after work… by the grace of God I have not been asked yet, because I will have to do it. They asked me if I had a car at the interview, even though the job has nothing to do with driving. I don’t think there was really anybody meaning that you absolutely cannot get by without driving anywhere in the world if you are really determined not to, it’s just not necessarily practical not to pick up the skill if you have the opportunity to do so. Most people don’t want to be confined to living in just one type of place. I would hate to be unemployed and not be able to take a job anywhere I can get one-- or to tell my husband, “Sorry you can’t take that dream job, I can’t live there!” I do think most people, barring some sort of physical or mental impairment, can learn to drive well-- especially teens and young adults who just haven’t had the opportunity to get enough practice yet. </p>
<p>That is the one thing I miss the most about living in Ann Arbor, though, was the way you could walk almost anywhere you needed to go. If only they had a grocery store downtown. If I could have afforded to live there I would have stayed. One thing we like about where we live now is that though it isn’t walkable, there are a lot of walkable downtowns a short drive away where we can park and walk for the day. That’s the closest I could get… those walkable areas are really outlandishly expensive to actually live in. I’ll be at the height of my career before I could afford that, so it’s a good thing I can drive.</p>
<p>I’m actually really hoping my kid experiences the freedom of a Chicago or a New York type of lifestyle even for a little bit of time - she’s under no obligation to remain in Michigan and I’m encouraging her to move away, hopefully somewhere walkable.</p>
<p>I’m not sure the OP is just worried about driving in Chicago. His D may not even have car access there.</p>
<p>I think he’s more concerned about driving in general…when she’s home in the summer and on breaks. The Stepmom is tired of driving her around, while her own D (same age) isn’t such a burden.</p>
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<p>I get that the OP was concerned in driving in general. My point is that Detroit as an example was pretty random with absolutely no connection with the OP’s situation. It may have been more useful to the OP to use a more relevant example.</p>
<p>Slackermom just a thread gone passionate is all. It wasn’t random. It was about whether driving is a necessary skill and took what I thought were normal twists and turns of a topic.</p>
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<p>You’ll find that discussions here on CC wander and meander once they get past a couple of pages into areas that are not always absolutely relevant to the original post. Our points of view are all influenced by our own situations and it’s not unusual for people to provide examples of their own experiences. Other locations have also been mentioned - NY, Chicago, Toronto, Boston, Cleveland, Charleston, Maryland. The issue from the OP is not simply what may be right for an 18 year old heading off to college in Chicago but what need she may have in the future to be able to drive. She may very well never need, or want, to drive but no one can predict that at this point.</p>
<p>Great discussion I thought. Passionate.</p>