<p>We live in a suburb about 15 minute drive away from the city. Our burb has only limited bus service; walkscore.com reports “Walk Score: 42 out of 100 Car-Dependent” for our house. My daughter attended local schools through 8th grade, then went to high school in the neighboring city (Walk Score: 97 out of 100 Walkers’ Paradise) - which has good public transportation but not much after midnight. </p>
<p>My d. is now age 20 and when home on vacation - as now - keeps up with the friends who live in our suburb as well as her high school city friends, who are all the same age or older than her.</p>
<p>She is frustrated with her city friends because none of them can drive – so when they get together in town for night-time activities, they expect my d. to drive in from our burb, pick up each friend from their respective homes, and drive them to/from whatever the destination is. She’s tired of playing chauffeur for young adults age 20-22. The nondrivers rarely think to offer money. </p>
<p>All of the suburban friends can drive – when they get together they have no problem with choice of a meeting place such as a restaurant, including travel to the neighboring city, because everyone is able to drive and if they choose to car pool they take turns doing the driving, and the others always chip in to help with gas or parking fees. </p>
<p>The nondriving city friends do have parents who own cars and can drive – and even though they are now young adults, they rely heavily on their parents to drive them from place to place. My d. says she was the only kid among her group of friends to have a driver’s license and regular use of a car in high school. </p>
<p>I’d note that I have many adult friends in the city who do not own cars, but they have drivers licenses and either rent cars from time to time or sign up for vehicle sharing programs like zipcar - even with great public transportation in the city, there are always going to be times that a car is desirable. </p>
<p>My question, to those of you who live in cities: Is this common? At what point do your city-dwelling kids learn to drive? If they haven’t learned to drive, do you continue to chauffeur them around?</p>
<p>Your daughter CAN say no. There is no reason people can’t take public transportation to a central meeting place. She can even ask them to chip in for gas. There’s no reason she should be a doormat–or a taxi service.</p>
<p>I grew up in downtown Philadelphia and went to school in the suburbs–the opposite situation from your daughter. I got my driver’s license late in high school, but none of my friends were allowed to drive into the city. It fell to me to teach them how to use the public transit. Perhaps your daughter should consider helping them learn how to drive. It is, after all, a useful skill.</p>
<p>I live in NYC, I do not own a car and never felt the need to have one as in many parts of the city, having a car is more of a luxury than a necessity. Parking in NYC in is not readily available, is not cheap as some places charge $20/hr and violation tickets can range from $60-115. With the city going through a crunch, there is talk about tolls coming into Manhattan. As much as people complain about it, overall we do have a very good mass transit system when compared to other places and unlimited metrocards are your friends. Very few people drive into the city unless they absolutely have to. Her friends who have moved to the city after graduation, did not bring their cars with them.</p>
<p>The friends who live in the burbs come into the city on LIRR, Metro North, Express buses.</p>
<p>My D does not drive (after paying for drivers ed in high school and outside lessons). She is only contemplating getting a license because she is applying to grad programs outside of NYC. Now that we no longer live in manhattan, if she is hanging out with her friends (out with them as I type), she takes the mass transit or if it is really late, she takes a cab home (~$25-30)</p>
<p>I grew up in NYC without a car and didn’t learn to drive until I was 27, just before getting married and moving to suburbia. Before that I was either living in a city or on a college campus that didn’t require a car. I had occasional friends with cars, but for the most part we all took public transportation and walked a lot.</p>
<p>Just say no. It’s not your daughter’s responsibility to teach them how to drive. I believe in NJ you have to learn to drive from a professional. My daughter takes a train to meet her friends in NYC. What would your D’s friends have done if they weren’t meeting your D? Walk, cab, subway or bus?</p>
<p>I went to school in Los Angeles, and everyone could drive. But, public transit in this city is spotty at best. However, my friends who’ve moved up to San Francisco do not drive anymore. </p>
<p>Is there Zipcar service where you are? That might help, the kids in the city can drive out to the burbs.</p>
<p>I didn’t learn to drive when I grew up in the city, but that was more because my dad didn’t really encourage his daughter to drive (yes, really) and I could take public transportation everywhere. But everyone else I knew could drive. Seems to still be the case today here in the Chicago area. New York is very different, I’m sure. I would love to live in Manhattan and dispense with a car for good!</p>
<p>dmd77 – most of the city buses stop running at around midnight, and its not such a good idea for young women to be riding the bus alone late at night anyway. That’s why I noted it seems to be mostly a night-time problem. I think in high school the kids would likely have had earlier curfews, and were getting around by bus during daylight or early evening hours – but now that they are older, they are more likely to be starting their evening activities later. </p>
<p>In any case, my question isn’t about how my daughter deals with this problem – she knows she can say no, but her frustration is because so many young adults seem to lack this basic skill. It’s not just a matter of my daughter’s convenience – it is a bunch of 20-somethings who don’t have drivers licenses and don’t know how to drive cars. </p>
<p>My son just drove across the country with a city-dwelling passenger who does not own her own car – but she could help with the driving along the way. So its not just a matter of day-to-day transportation.</p>
<p>I’d also note that my son’s job requires him to have a driver’s license – he does not drive FOR his employer (that is, they aren’t asking him to make deliveries or transport passengers) – but they do expect an ability to travel. He had a job in hand with good pay & benefits within 2 weeks of graduating college. I don’t think it is that unusual for employers to want people who can drive, especially for higher level (management track) positions. So it seems to me a pretty critical skill to acquire.</p>
<p>calmom - I agree that knowing how to drive is a necessary skill. As a parent, I wouldn’t want my kid to not have the ability to drive when needed. Everyone should learn to swim and everyone should learn to drive.</p>
<p>Everyone where we live learns to drive…daughter has moved to Boston where no college students she knows have a car there.
I am concerned about when she needs to move to LA and have a car there…huge difference from the driving she has always known</p>
<p>Why is it that such a city has such odd public transportation with all the car traffic there ?</p>
No, you don’t get it – yes, there is zip car service… but these kids do not know HOW to drive. They don’t have driver’s licenses. If they want to take a trip outside of the city or travel to any other part of the country, they won’t be able to rent cars. They essentially are stuck in the city unless they have an obliging friend to take them somewhere else… and their options are limited as to where they could move or find work. </p>
<p>My question is NOT, “what should my daughter do”. That isn’t the gripe: she’s frustrated because her suburban friends have all grown up, but the city friends seem stuck in childhood when it comes to their dependence on other adults to get around. Its not that they are living without cars – my d. attends school in NYC without a car and my son lived for several years in SF without a car – its that these young adults have never acquired the skill. </p>
<p>So my daughter’s question to me was, “when will they learn?” She doesn’t mind occasionally giving a friend a ride – but she’s tired of feeling like she is their “mommy” every time they get in the car. It’s not just the car and driving – the nondrivers behave differently in the car. For example, her driving friends are more likely to suggest better routes, or point out a road hazard or a parking space – the nondrivers just sit and chat among themselves, oblivious to traffic around them – so it simply is more pleasant when my daughter is driving if her passengers are also licensed drivers. </p>
<p>So my question here is: when and how did city-dwellers pick up that skill?</p>
<p>Cartera, I’m glad you posted because I felt the same way about swimming – my son really hated swimming lessons, but it was one thing I made him do as a youngster because I simply thought it was a skill that needed to be acquired.</p>
<p>Calmom: As a young woman living in Philadelphia and then Boston, I often walked alone at night. Learning street smarts and how to do that relatively safely gave me a great deal of confidence. </p>
<p>My daughter, who does not drive a car (although she has a license), commutes by bicycle in her city (Portland, OR) at all hours of the day and night, since she works in the theater. </p>
<p>If your daughter and her friends are going to places from whence they can’t get home safely without driving, perhaps they should be reconsidering where they are going.</p>
<p>And to answer your question: city non-drivers may a) never get a license (I have 50-something friends in that category), b) get a license when they feel the need (having children sent some over the edge), or c) when they don’t have to be on their parents insurance any more.</p>
<p>dmd77… you are not responding to my question. I don’t need you to lecture me on what my daughter’s friends ought to be doing. If your daughter has a license, then she is not like these kids – and my question to you is when and how did she get her license. </p>
<p>And your comment about “reconsidering where they are going” is just an illustration of the problem: the lack of ability to drive is a huge limitation on lifestyle choices. My d. doesn’t have to worry about which neighborhoods she has to traverse to get from Point A to Point B… she just gets in the car and goes. </p>
<p>This is not a commentary on “who owns a car”. Eleven months out of the year, my daughter lives without a car. But if and when she needs a car, she has the ability and skills to use one. This is a skill that her city-dwelling friends do not have.</p>
<p>I didn’t get my driver’s license till I was almost 22. I’d been too young in high school and never needed to drive in college (Boston). My older son has a learner’s permit, but shows no interest in doing some more practicing so he can take the test. He’s interviewing for a summer job in Santa Barbara, where I think being unable to drive might be annoying. We live in a town where you need a car to get around town, but it’s very easy to get into Manhattan. Most kids do learn to drive, but it’s not a given that they have regular access to a car. My younger son turned 16 last summer, but has not insisted on learning to drive. He considers the limitations of the junior license more annoying than having a parent pick you up!</p>
<p>FWIW, I agree being able to drive even if you don’t drive is useful. At the moment though we are enjoying the fact that our insurance is low.</p>
<p>BTW, I learned to drive because I’d gotten a grant to drive across the country to photograph fire stations. Needless to say, I didn’t tell the grant funding agency that I couldn’t drive!</p>
<p>Calmom: I edited my post and answered your question, but badly, because I don’t know the girls involved. You and I have no way of knowing when they’ll get a license, but I think it’s a legitimate question for your daughter to be asking, since she’s the chauffeur.</p>
<p>I understand your daughter feels safe driving through neighborhoods where she wouldn’t consider walking at night, but frankly, I think that’s short-sighted. If there’s a car problem, or another problem that would require her getting out of the car, now she’s in a neighborhood she doesn’t know and where she doesn’t feel safe. </p>
<p>And things happen: my daughter–driving her car, before she sold it so she could live off the money while she looked for work–managed to high-center her car on a snow/ice drift. It took four people to get her car out of the situation. On another occasion, she decided it was too dangerous to drive–ice storm–and instead walked the rest of the way home, a distance of three miles.</p>
<p>As a person who has lived in NYC the majority of my friends do not drive and never have had a drivers license and have no desire to get one. It really does not present a big deal to them because they still manage to go wherever they need to go. It would have to be an absolute emergency or a last resort issue for me to drive because that is just how much I hate driving and wil tell people that I don’t drive.</p>
<p>Driving in NYC, especially in manhattan is a major pain in the butt and most people avoid it at all costs. When gas was $4 over the summer, you couldn’t pay a person with a car to drive into the city.</p>
<p>I have a friend who is one of the best non-drivers I know and it amazes me how she knows how to get almost anywhere (and takes the best route) by car and she doesn’t drive. I know people who drive and are not worth a plugged nickel when they are not driving their own cars.</p>
<p>I am quite sure that if you ask you daughter about her friends especially those who are native NYers, she will come across a large number of them who are non-drivers and an even smaller group with cars. </p>
<p>I could not imagine a large number of students in Morningside Heights who have cars considering the lack of parking in the neighborhood, the #1 is right at their front door, the bus running down broadway, and metro-north right up the street. Even as it gets late, there are not at a loss to hop in a cab to go anywhere they need to go in the city, which can be more cost effective than driving.</p>
<p>I have two friends from high school (now 50something) who, aside from college/grad school, have lived in NYC all their lives. Neither has ever learned to drive. Both have jobs in the city that require little travel, and when they do go somewhere, they either take public transportation or a cab from the airport/train station to their destination. But NYC is unusual in that respect; in most other cities it can be very useful to know how to drive (the Zipcars are great), since public transportation only takes you so far and/or stops running past a certain hour.</p>
<p>The point is… I am not talking about teenagers – I’m talking about young adults, some of whom have not acquired a skill that others picked up as teens. My own daughter has traveled on her own all over the world-- so this really isn’t a “safety” issue. </p>
<p>When my son was living in the city without a car, he moved several times. Every time he moved, he needed to either borrow my car or have me come up to help load all of his stuff and carry it from one place to another. We got to be pretty good at this – I drive a compact car and he owned 2 carloads worth of stuff. Sometimes I would drive into town to help him with a laundry run, so he could do more than one load of laundry at the local laundromat, rather than being limited to what he could carry. </p>
<p>So I am not criticizing people who have that lifestyle choice – but the point is that my son did have a drivers license, and even though he didn’t really like to drive and did not own his own car until age 23… he had the ABILITY. He was able to take jobs that required him to drive or to relocate. </p>
<p>These young 20-somethings will be finishing college in the next year or two. Its a tough employment market. When my son interviewed for a job last spring, they told him they liked him but had decided on hiring someone else for the local position – but asked if they could send the resume out to their other offices. He said yes, and within a couple of days had calls to work in upstate New York and in Ohio. He ended up taking the NY job… and now he is relocating again (same employer) to the Pacific Northwest (promotion, salary increase). So the flexibility to live and work away from main urban centers also represents an opportunity, especially for a young person beginning their career. </p>
<p>Times are hard, and I think that jobs are going to be scarce for new grads for the next few years. So my question is about this <em>skill</em>. I’m not just talking about young women – my d. has male friends who also are unable to drive. </p>
<p>Sybbie – we are not talking about my d’s NY college friends. I can understand why people who have spent their whole lives in NYC might not drive – although my guess would be that most of my daughter’s college friends have licenses, simply because most come from somewhere else, and there are more who are from suburban areas than urban areas. (NYC dwellers at her college are more likely to be commuters than dorm residents in any case). Again, my d. does not have a car at college and has no desire whatsoever to get one. But she has the life skill of knowing how to drive.</p>
<p>Calmom- I just had this conversation with my tennis partner. Her son has worked in Washington DC for 3 yrs. He does not have a car in DC. This past spring he needed to relocate to the Midwest to run a campaign. He needed a car. His Mom suggested he get a couple of friends to fly out to Ca with him and take a road trip and visit National Parks along the way. He had no problem finding people who wanted to go on the road trip but he had a hard time finding people who were able to help share the driving. Most of his friends are 3-5 yrs out of undergrad and still do not drive. He ended up with 2 friends along for the trip. 1 licensed. The non-licensed driver was so blown away by some of the places they visited he has since gotten a drivers license. There are some place that are difficult to travel to see if you don’t drive. I think they went to Lake Tahoe, Idaho, The Tetons, Yellowstone and Glacier and several others. Places that would be hard to visit without a car. The non-licensed driver had also never been camping.
I have a tenant who is in grad school at UCSB. She is just learning to drive. She said for her growing up in San Francisco she did not have the opportunity to drive or learn. Her parents did not own a car. They did have a license. They rented when they needed one.</p>