Universal excuse
As it happens, I can’t drive a car… actually, that’s not true. I can drive a car, just not legally or safely.
I never got around to taking lessons and sitting my test.
Not that it really hampers me. I work within walking distance from where I live, and public transport (despite being a little patchy) is enough to take me further afield should I need it.
The strange thing is that I dream that I’m driving, sometimes, tootling off down the motorway. Everything goes fine right up until the point that I realise that I can’t actually drive, then it turns into a bit of a bloodbath.
Yet I never dream about public transport, and I think that’s part of the problem when encouraging people to change their travel habits to something a bit more sustainable… I mean, how do you convince the subconscious that really it ought to be taking the bus? Is that symbolic of freedom and excitement?
I think, that in the future, when our love affair with the car is long forgotten and the public transport system is all we have, people will still dream of hurtling along at speed in a car, under their own control, whether they can drive or not.
Yeah, but in the future, they’ll have cars the fly and fold up into a briefcase like George Jetson’s!
Ian
That’d be great right up until the moment you open the wrong briefcase in a meeting:
*whomph* Car accident in the boardroom.
Ow. I laughed so hard, I think I may have damaged something inside of me.
Lol that’s funny. about the car in the briefcase (who
carries briefs anyway?) and the boardroom accident.
I hate public transportation, the long lines,
the narrow seats, the wretched dregs who
can’t afford better, the fumes and bustle
and fighting for a seat and glaring at the
ass with a cold who doesn’t know to stay
home when she’s sick, and the mewly ones
called children someone forgot to abandon.
“children someone forgot to abandon”
Oh those ones. You can help them out, and the rest of the world, by discreetly suggesting they play down there, where that high-voltage third rail is. It’s clearly the most fun place to play.
apparently there are some really nice train systems out there in other countries, i wish we had them, because i somehow just don’t like the idea of driving
I absolutely hate driving. I’m constantly convinced that some idiot is going to come out of nowhere and I’m going to end up dead. My family is pretty much a magnet for bad drivers.
Where I live, though, there’s really no other way to travel. Things are generally too far apart to walk, and we don’t really have sidewalks everywhere, so that’s out, and the only type of public transportation we have is a seriously over-funded bus system. We have these huge things that travel around our little town, but the most people I’ve ever seen on one of them is four, including the driver.
PT in Perth is great, reasonably fast, goes most places and is forever expanding the routes to include more remote locations. Ofcourse the same rules apply for it as any other PT system, a trip that takes 30mins in a car should take atleast 2hours via PT.
I love my car and the freedom that it gives me, but I do sometimes feel guilty about driving it for no good reason.
I don’t drive, and I really like using the bus or train. Interesting people show up. Also the bus is a good place to just sit and think. And…it does feel independent, considering it helps the enviroment and is inexpensive. You don’t have to put 99% of your paycheque to paying for a car, when you take the bus. Just $30 every month for a pass.
Then again, I live in a county where the public transport was voted best in the country, a few years ago. Buses are on time and come often, even if it does take one and a half times as long to get somewhere, depending on how many buses. I don’t mind that, though. Journeys are almost always more fun than destinations.
I don’t get people who never learn to drive. Sure, if you live in a city with good public transport, if you can’t afford a car, if you just don’t *like* driving, by all means use whatever method of transportation you prefer. But driving is just so useful as a skill that it boggles my mind that someone wouldn’t *bother* to learn. Even if you don’t own a car and don’t normally drive, it’s nice to have that in your back pocket should you ever need it. I’d put it up there with cooking or swimming as something you can probably do without most of the time, but you should still learn.
I have never driven (mainly because I find it audacious to trust your reflexes enough to stake people’s lives on them). I have dreams like that too. I hate them.
My brother says something similar about the relativity of motion: you could tell a policeman that if you measure your speed in relation to the coffee cup on your dashboard, instead of relative to the road, then you could not possibly have been speeding.