this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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M. 34

I'm currently studying for the theory and then the practice for the license and I hate it... But since I'm unemployed for like half a year now maybe it will give me more chances to get hired. Still I will avoid driving as much as possible, being on a highway scares me and I'm afraid of having an accident. Plus I wear glasses and I'm not sure if my reflexes or peripheral view are good enough...

So, what's your reason to not drive a car... money? For the environment? Are you afraid? You really don't need to?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Unless you experience physical pain from driving, it's a slippery slope because every facet of modern life gets easier in car culture if you have a car.

Just look at Road Ragers: people who experience extreme emotional duress from driving, possibly endangering everyone with their angry antics and maybe giving themselves health problems from the blood pressure fluctuations, and yet they keep doing it.

And some people even drive without a license, simply because getting between places in time is nigh impossible otherwise.

As for why I decided to give up renewing my license, here's my rant from elsewhere:

It's not just the pollution from the exhaust, it's not just the tons of trash/scrap that rots away in junkyards, it's not just the rubbers and plastics from tire wear and tear getting into ecosystems, it's not just the gigagallons of hazardous chemicals required to maintain, it's not just the steady trend toward "Cars as a Service" while locking your premium features behind a paywall, it's not just the carwashes draining their runoff into the local groundwater, it's not just the needlessly large cities to accomodate every individual having a car to themselves, it's not just the ever expanding highways in between cities that continue to have congestion but now take more space and more time to repair and do more damage to the environment, it's not just the asphalt island effect, it's not just the burden on local economies that is car culture, it's not just the hostility drivers have for pedestrians and bikers, it's not just the millions of accidents causing hundreds of millions dollars in medical damages and 40,000 deaths every year, it's not just the blatant disregard for millions of animal and insect lives left on the roadside and windshields as warnings, it's not just the arms race between assholes for bigger and louder and more dangerous death machines so they can feel like they're the only one on the road who matters.

It's all of it, and more.