People who refuse to learn how to drive a car, why?

Simple: I fucking hate driving. I hate the smell, I hate the noise, and I hate the stress. Thr environmental impact isnt exactly a plus point either. You could say that I'm lucky to live in a place with good public transport, but I actively sought out a place with public transport because I didn't want to rely on a car.
Final nail on the coffin: I developed Menieres disease, so I am prone to intense vertigo attacks at short notice - I couldn't get a license even if I wanted one.

I just don't need one, so never bothered with it.
- Same here. I grew up in a big city, moved around to different big cities, always been on foot, biking or communal traffic. Never felt the need for a car. I'm in the upper middle ages now so I doubt it's going to change.
  
  You time traveled to the Middle Ages to avoid cars? That's dedication!

We have good public transport and I believe reading something on the way to be a better use of that time.
- But you can read while behind the wheel of a Tesla 🙃
  
  You can technically read behind the wheel of any car ...
  
  hits and kills kid crossing the road because Tesla is a lying piece of shit and their "self driving" doesn't actually work
  Oops.
  
  You don't need an overpriced piece of junk for that. That's why american cars are plastered with useless safety instructions

Cars are expensive to buy and maintain. Also I don't think finding a parking spot and then parking is a fun activity. Also the metro can in many cases be faster, and I can use my phone while I'm in it.
- Trust me, you could absolutely follow the example of other drivers and use your phone while driving.

I'm personally baffled at how many are killed in automobile accidents. 44,000 Americans every year. American KIA numbers for the entirety of the global war on terror is around 5,000. That is roughly only one month's worth of automobile deaths.
Americans dead in Vietnam is around 58,000 over ten years. That's only a year and a half worth of automobile deaths.
Even in WW2, over 4 years, 416,000 americans lost their lives, around 104,000 per year. Even during the deadliest war in history, automobiles today still kill 44% as many year to year. Granted the war did not touch America as much relatively but are still mind boggling statistics.
It feels as though learning to drive is merely fueling the cycle. More cars cause politicians to invest further in road infrastructure instead. More people giving up on public transportation further starves it of the funding it deserves and desperately needs.
- It feels as though learning to drive
  Yous should probably start there
  Fuck me, the worst, most selfish and badly trained drivers I've ever seen in my life
  How the fuck could anyone be ten times worse than the Italians?!?!

I have a license, but never use it. I'm Dutch. My work and the train station are less than 10 min by bike, the supermarket is a 5 min walk. I can do almost anything by bike and sometimes public transport and it saves me hundreds of euro's a month.

I have a license. I enjoy driving as a leisure activity.
But I hate driving to work. I just take the shuttle and enjoy listening to my podcasts. We have a decent public transport system as well, so it helps.

I had no access to or use of a car until I was around 23. Up to that point I lived in a country where you could cycle for most of your daily routine, take the bus a couple of times a month and the train sporadically.
I moved to a country where cycling was for the poor and foolhardy, me for several years, and public transport was atrocious.
Public transport has marginally improved, my bicycle hasn't been used for 20+ years and our household has one car.
Learning to drive is a process. It takes time. Just like learning to fly a plane takes time. If you have a need to drive, learning how is step one. In my country even when you pass your test, you are required to keep a logbook for at least two years and drive in a variety of conditions before you can actually upgrade your probationary licence.
- Wow which country did you go from and to where?
  It seems like a downgrade, but there must have been an economical / life quality reason that you had moved.
  
  I was born in Australia, moved to the Netherlands as a child and as an an adult moved back to Australia where I am now.

According to medical checkups, I am fine, but I know for a fact I am not a safe driver. I have bad attention span, sight, reaction, field of view, and tiredness issues. I am ideologically repelled by cars. And it looks feels dull to me to drive and also to study for an exam.
- For me, it's the opposite. I'm autistic, without ID (aka intellectual disability), but apparently, I have practically the same amount of rights as people with ID. I was forced to go to the psychological exam, where nothing was wrong, but I got accused of being irresponsible and have to wait another year. Great.
- I feel you mate.
  Also get easily tired in a car. Already got in an accident with another car at slow speeds. Luckily it was a company owned car :p

Basically, confidence. I don't have enough confidence to drive a car. Heck even riding a bike gives me anxiety that I'm going to collide with somebody or get hit by someone.
- Just wait until you try canoe.
  
  I have, didn't get far. lol

I don't want to get a license only to forget everything because I won't drive.
I see having a car as a necessity only. For me, it's only acceptable if public transport/bicycle is not an option. Unfortunately, the latter is almost never an option due to how everything is built car-centric, but the former very often is.
Also, I don't know anything about cars, I don't have to think where to park that huge piece of shit, I don't need to be my own driver, I don't need to do any maintenance, it's more ecological and even cheaper than just gas.
!fuckcars@lemmy.world

I got my license at 18 before I moved out, but my parents made the entire ordeal a nightmare. It was more anxiety than it was worth to get my required miles in with them as the instructor. People living in large cities often never get the opportunity, it's high stress and taxis are readily available. Car ownership is expensive and public transportation is available, as well as biking. In uni I taught several Asian students how to drive because countries like Japan often have expensive training programs, and insurance is painful for testers. European cities are often designed for micro mobility and bikes and smart cars are preferred just because of size.
- Aren't taxis incredibly expensive where you live? They are here.
  
  They typically are quite expensive, but if you don't use them daily, only use them when absolutely needed (which is when other options are not available), it will be cheaper than maintaining a car.

I don't like driving..
I don't need to drive
Owning a car is stupidly expensive. And its an expense I don't need to pay.
Cars make people lazy and entitled and create divisions between them. When you're driving you're not around other people like you would be on public transit. They're bothered.
- That's a very narrow view. It depends a lot on where you live and what interest you have.
  You realize there are a lot of people that live and work and do stuff where it is practically impossible to cope without a car?
  Driving does not automatically mean you want to avoid other people.
  
  I don’t need to drive
  They literally explained their reason. There's no need to bring up other circumstances. Them not liking to drive will also lead to them avoid moving to places that they must drive. An activity that will take a significant amount of your life is going to be an important factor to decide where you move to.
  
  Cars automatic make people disjointed from the people who live around them.
- My coworker has the same reasons except he has another coworker drive him to/from work so his reasoning is kinda sloppy there.
- I rode the 16 bus in Denver for a while as my commute to work, and believe me I am so happy to be separated from those people.
  99% of them were fine but the other ones … let’s just say they aren’t ever guests in my car.

As an experienced driver, highway driving is much easier,, and relaxing, then street driving.
Familiarity breeds contempt of course. But genuinely, on the highway there are less variables to account for so it's easier mentally
I love driving, I find it very relaxing, opens your perspective to see the world. I grew up driving, my family always drove, everybody I know drove, got my license as soon as possible. That's what everybody around me was doing too.
I think parts of the world were you see driving as being more luxurious, or difficult to have, or just unaffordable, then driving becomes a status symbol, it's not as universal, but also the infrastructure is less universal because most people are on foot or motorbikes. In those contexts driving can be more stressful than using the other methods.
- Depends on where the highway is. If it's rural and away from big cities, it can be relaxing. If you're trying to drive to / through Toronto, it's a fucking nightmare. People will drive up your ass and cut you off then brake immediately, not let you into your exit lane which starts and ends with little notice, and the signage leading up to it was blocked by bumper to bumper traffic and big trucks. Yes, I am bitter about it.

Instead of car, people of my country usually able to drive motorcycle.
But not me. I'd rather take my bicycle. I don't want to deal with cost of maintaining motorcycle.

I don't think people are "refusing", it's not like it's mandatory or anything. Nobody's trying to force you to drive a car.
I know I'll never be able to afford a car, they're incredibly expensive to buy and operate, and most of my travel is already covered by our excellent Trams, Buses and Trains, which can get me basically anywhere comfortably and quickly.
For the times I need something special I can ask someone for a lift, but that happens only a handful of times a year. A car would be a big, expensive, risky piece of equipment to just leave sat around for someone to steal...
- I don't think people are "refusing"
  I know a few people who have no reason NOT to learn to drive, but just don't and instead mooch off everyone else.
  My folks had a falling out with a couple they'd been friends with for ages because they refused to get their licence... But then expected them to come and pick them up from the train station when they were invited to dinner, spent most of the night telling everyone how smart they are for not having a car, and then expecting a lift back to the train station. Having just spent a couple of hours banging on about how much financially better off they were, I saw it as essentially stealing to then demand someone else use their asset and running costs to carry them around for free.
  My sister in law finally got her licence at 30-something after a couple of decades constantly harassing family members for a ride.
- I don't think people are "refusing"
  This is kind of a pointless assumption. There are billions of people. Yes some people are refusing.
  If you’re not refusing, then the question isn’t aimed at you.
- Some people certainly are refusing. I know someone who is almost 23 and refuses to get a license. His parents got a car for him and his brother (who never leaves the house) so he could drive just chooses not to. He even had his mom drive him to his job every day over the summer.

I drive but I hate it and try to do it as little as possible. I have never liked them. The exhaust and danger. Walking and riding a bike is enjoyable. Public transit allows you to do enjoyable things (suduko, play a video or video game). Its not till the last few decades that the environment came into thought around it for me and I realized how incredibly bad the direction of society went around it. I had biked and walked through high school but was traveling by car a lot after that but mostly as a passenger until I started working. Then in the 2000's I started biking and I had no idea why I had not been doing it before. Then I realized the infrastructure to make it safer and easier to do had not really been there before then for my city and its gotten way better since. Its like biking in the winter. I do more transit then and I thought I was the weather but I eventually realized I actually more just don't like biking in the dark which got me to do it more in terms of weekend day activities. That being said everyone should learn if they have the opportunity because there are still to many jobs where you might need it and its not hard to get. Should pick up a cdl if someone like work will cover the cost. Driving actually would not bother me as much if for a job as presumably there would be benefit (both my pay and whatever is getting accomplished for society) but just to get myself around when there are so many better options. Yuck.

So, what’s your reason to not drive a car
I simply don't need to, nor do I want to. I live in a country with good public transport - in a city with comparably well working public transport. There simply is no need for me. There never was.
I can get around the city either by train ("normal" trains and subways) or by bus. On weekends there is a 24 service for all trains and subways every 8-20 minutes (depending on line). There are also night busses connecting party areas with the nearest train stations and the inner city with the outskirts.
In the mornings and afternoons on weekdays there are additional commuter busses and trains and subways on most lines so the service is scheduled on a minute basis on some lines for some time during rush hours. The "worst" it gets is every 30 minutes in the middle of the night.
And if I don't want to take public transport I can always use my bike or my electric scooter. The bike lanes are not Netherlands quality, but they're okay. It's also fun to drive by traffic jam having my inner monologue making fun of alle the people waiting hours over hours on the streets 😄
The great thing is: Some time ago the government and the individual public transport providers of the cities and areas made a country-wide ticket for all public transport. So I can just hop on a bus in my city, drive to the train station, enter a regional train that goes to another city in another federal state, come out the train station and take the nearest bus I want without having to pay anything except the monthly fee for the ticket or checking if the ticket is valid in that area.
When I want to take longer trips further away I'll likely take a train on our highspeed railway network covering basically the whole country (not covered by the ticket I mentioned). It's notorious for being delayed or having issues, but my individual experience is much better than in the memes that exist.

Not wanting to learn or not wanting to drive?
Knowing how to drive is a useful skill that can come in handy (vacations, emergency) even if you don't do it regularly.
Refusing to drive daily - absolutely, for political, social and economic end ecological reasons. Everyone living in range of an acceptable public transport should refuse to drive. And those who are not should not stop pressuring and voting local politicians to implement one. It's 2024, there's no reason to depend on cars for everyday transportation.
- Unless your rural. Public transport in my area could never work. Even in 2024
  
  OK to the person that down voted me please tell me the most rural place you've visited and a plan to implement public transit? In my area house can be separated by up to 9 miles. It takes a school bus 3.5 hours to pick up and drop off before and after school. So how could public transit be implemented in any meaningful way? Let's say I worked in the city which is a 42 mile drive, now first I would need a minimum 2 hour ride from my house to the small town. Then after that I have to wait in some bus station, then its at least 1 hour before I get into the city so at a minimum I would have a 3 hour trip to and from work everyday. Now to make it worse it isn't a perfect world because lets say my bus from home to the station and the bus into the city are off from each other, now its 4-5 hours or transport one way everyday (8-10 total)........ Do you see how that couldn't work in any meaning full way? Now if you want to say bullet trains, or trains, that is ridiculously expensive to implement and grand scale, and just like in China would end up being mostly traveled only by elites so it wouldn't even be accessible to me.
  Not to mention with only 800 people in a 50 mile radius the amount of taxes that each person would have to pay to build a public transit here would be insane.
  Now if you want to go county wide, my county has a population density of 10 residents per square mile compared to the entirety of New York City which is 29,000 people per square mile.
  Or even worse the country of Korea and my state are similarly sized, my entire state has a population density of 67 people per square mile, Korea has a population density of 1,000 people per square mile.
  More populated areas make public transit plausible but, the US is mostly rural space and that is different from pretty much every other country.
- Is both for me but I'm running out of options

I actually had my first driving lesson just a few weeks ago (I’m 18). I ended up quitting after four lessons because 1) I/my parents don’t own a car, 2) it would cost me all of my savings, and 3) I really don’t need a car nor a driver’s license. I live in a walkable European city and the public transit is pretty good. Honestly, good riddance; the theory seemed very heavy and I couldn’t wrap my head around it, and even if I managed to get a license I would still need to get a car. So, sure, I might miss out on fun independent road trips; on the other hand I’ll be able to appreciate trains and ferries even more for what they are.
- Fyi maintenance jobs sometimes supply a company vehicle. Shortly after I bought my car at 26, I was hired as a technician and they supplied a van.
  
  That’s nice, but I reckon I won’t work with maintenance.

Driving used to stress me out, but you honestly just get used to it. Your brain just autopilots 90% of it once you’ve been driving over a year or so.
The 90% autopilot frees up your brain to focus on the big picture of what’s happening. You’ve just gotta be careful you don’t slip to like 95% autopilot where you’re not paying attention anymore.

I do have a license but refuse to drive. I guess the main reasons would be:
I get lost very easily and navigating while driving is much harder (no stopping, turning around etc)
You can't entirely zone out or use that time to do something else like reading so if it's a daily commute this is just lost time
Road infrastructure here is terrible. I actually find it much safer to drive at night because at least you can see the headlights of cars coming out of blind intersections
Just like there are (many) places you can't go without a car, there are also places you can't go with a car because there is no parking, mainly the city center, which is the place I visit the most
You also can't drive drunk and I kinda like drinking.

A bit unrelated, but where I live the price of car school doubled in the past few years. It's the reason my girlfriend still hasn't started driving school yet. I could see that as an important factor. If I had to get my driving license for the current price, I might also reconsider. Cars are generally ludicrously expensive compared to everything else. Here you could pay roughly (converted) 120 bucks a year for public transit, or pay 80 monthly AT LEAST to drive (just gass and ensurance).
- Both public traffic and driving sounds pretty cheap to me. Insurance, road tax and fuel gets me on 200 bucks a month.. Public traffic takes way longer and is more expensive somehow... (Netherlands BTW)
  
  Ey! I studied there for 2 years, awesome corner of the world :)
  200/month that's 2400/year, now to me that sounds insane... That's twice my car expenses and even that's like double of what I pay for transit and food.
  Here in Prague a yearly public transit ticket is 3650kč which is actually closer to 160$ (my bad) or roughly 150€ a year. Either way it's an order of magnitude less and then some. The kind of money I'll happily just throw out there. And inside Prague it is most definitely faster than by car. I dread driving here.
  In rural areas the story is a little different, 9385kč (~380€) a year including Prague and the surrounding area, so I can visit my ma. I used to have this pass before my car. Still MUCH cheaper, but I admit, it's like twice as slow to go by rural busses compared to driving your own car.
  Sadly don't know the transit pass prices in the Netherlands, cus I just biked everywhere (didn't have a car as a student and sure as hell wasn't gonna pay more than I had to at the time). But it's hard to imagine they'd be much more expensive.
  
  You gotta include maintanance, repairs and depreciation too
- In Germany it's roughly >400€ per month to own and drive a car, with all costs included, and 50€ per month for nationwide public transit and regional trains
  
  Nation wide? Fuck yea! :D

I have a licence but I grew up in a place where many people don't bother with getting a licence. Car ownership is expensive. Learning to drive take a lot of effort and public transport is available from 6 am to midnight and run very frequently. Also taxis and ridesharing is relatively cheap. This is Singapore.

It's simple: I don't want to, and I don't need to.
I can use my bicycle or E-bike. And on a family trip someone else will drive.
It also saves a lot of money.

I really don't need to but I frame it the other way round to your question, I've never needed to, so I don't need a reason to not drive a car, I'm lacking a reason to.
- Yeah this pretty much. Why would I drive a car? it's a huge waste of money for absolutely no benefit to my life.
  I've considered learning/getting my licence just to have it "just in case", that way at least if that once every few years thing comes up where I absolutely need a car and a taxi just won't cut it, I can hire one or something? but it's just kind of not come up yet.

Originally, undiagnosed ADHD. The pathway to get licensed was somewhat annoying for me, and I couldn't be bothered engaging with it. I've also always had great access to efficient public transport, which I took to school so was accustomed to using it.
There's been lots of secondary reasons over the years - for a long time I had fines to clear before I could progress getting licensed. The fines were bullshit, and I wouldn't pay them out of principle. Now they've expired, that roadblock is no longer in my way, but I'm still not licensed.
Sometimes it's annoying, but only really in the sense that I'm proud of my independence / don't like the rare occasions that I'm dependent on others for travel. I'm in the US on holiday now, and there is comparatively almost zero public transport - that sucks. When I've travelled around Europe, Asia, New Zealand, or at home in Australia - the issues are pretty few. I don't feel held back enough to care, and it seems like a money pit.
I have learned to drive a car, though. I'm just not licensed to, and don't. M 33

I get sick in cars and busses, my parents have driver's licenses but they hate to drive so they avoid it, and I don't have the time, the money, or the need to get one. I live in a big city too so I can safely rely on trains.
Btw even if I'd get one, it's usually on the off chance that I need it and I'd still try to actively avoid driving whenever possible.

A few reasons come to mind following the first one.
The first and foremost reason would be trust. Driving as an act always has seemed fragile if one scratch or bump caused by a minor thump by you can get you sued, one even slightly delayed response can cause you to hit a reckless pedestrian, and one even slightly miscalculated turn can turn into a destructive crash. A friend of mine once joked that driving is society's new way to apply Darwinism so that those with concentration/patience/coordination/streetsmarts survive, and there are complaint groups whose complaints make that joke uncanny. Especially considering I am not up to par in terms of body and mind, leave me out of that please.
It's unnecessary. It has often caught my attention how people who do drive will drive the distances they can easily walk. The grocery store is a few minutes worth of driving away from me but twenty minutes of walking, which is still not bad. Except for maybe going to the doctor, which I go with people in groups to do anyways, I can live on my feet.
I get to say hi to Mrs. Robinson while ~~lightening my gorgeous red hair~~ keeping my body loosed and stretched.
I don't contribute to pollution. Climate change might be over-politicized like Covid but they're both still very real things. One could say one benefit many years from now is I can tell my peers I wasn't one of them.

Not my priority

I was stubborn as I wanted public transit and active transport instead.

Phobia

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.

because they gave me a license anyways

I'm not allowed to learn to drive. Where I live, people drive like crazy and they follow some sort of "law of the jungle". Having ADHD doesn't help either.

Subway that arrives almost to my office. Yes it's a bit slower overall, but I can doomscroll my phone for a hour per day instead of rotating the wheel for the same amount of time.

People with ADHD, Dyspraxia (a motor disability), and some type of insomnia disorder have significantly higher rates of car accidents – around 4x more likely for ADHD and 3x more likely for insomnia disorders (driving while sleepy is around as dangerous as driving while drunk). At minimum 25% of all car crashes involve people with ADHD or insomnia disorders (which is why your car insurance rates might skyrocket in some states if you get diagnosed)... I have all of those. Yet, somehow, they still allowed me to get my driver's license, and I got it with single-digit hours of driving experience at the time... very American to give licenses that allow you to drive 13-ton vehicles to people who shouldn't even qualify to drive on public roads.
I still have no reason to waste tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a few years on a car though.

Other than making sure to be wearing your glasses if you are near sighted enough that your local licence requires it, glasses are an irrelevant factor. It's not like you are going into active combat duty...

I'm not someone who refused to learn to drive, but I have made pointed efforts to avoid driving but for rare exceptions that usually involve driving other people to appointments. For reference, it's cold as shit, rainy, and more often snowy where I live 7-8 months out of the year. Our biking infrastructure isn't great, but it's better than most of the US.
I hate traffic and everything surrounding car-centric culture and I'm lucky enough to live close enough to work that I can easily walk or ride my bike if I don't want to take a bus. The grocery store is a bit harder to manage, but usually something I can do on the bike. I repair everything on my own and ride a bike that's 40+ years old and the joy I get from riding it is a stark contrast to the experience of driving the same route.
Sure, the narcissistic behavior of drivers, the exhaust and other fumes, and the stress of are all factors that make me hate driving, but the single thing that bugs me most about cars whether I'm driving, walking, biking, or just sitting on my couch with all of the windows closed is the NOISE of cars. Engine noise is annoying, honking is annoying, but the tire noise above ~20 mph is a constant assault on my senses.
That's why the bike trails are nice, not because I don't have to breathe exhaust or worry about getting hit by a car, but because they are the only quiet and peaceful places in our city. They are the only place cars can't go.

The more you know, the more responsibility you have
- Yeah, I taught my partner to drive manual transmission in case I'm incapacitated and need to be rushed to emergency care. Bit selfish of me.

I don't like it, haven't really needed it, prefer public transport and have terrible motor skills.

I have an e-scooter that gets me everywhere I need in town, and can use a taxi or get a ride from friends/family if there's a situation where the scooter won't work. Cars are expensive to insure, run and keep fueled, and money is tight enough as is.

Friend of mine never got their driver's license. They live in NYC and don't need one. They also were concerned about safety- they have ADHD and are prone to inattentiveness, and they didn't want to be driving a car when that manifested.
I have a license but I also live in NYC. I don't need to drive. It's pretty great. It's expensive in time money space and externalized costs, and it's often less effective than just taking public transit.
Unfortunately most of the US is resistant to investing in mass transit and density, so it's going to be shitty car-first spaces for a while.

...my grandmother never drove in ninety-one years after suffering a siezure in her youth; now i work with a girl who does likewise...

I don't need to, I have to much to learn with Uni already, and anyways taking public transit is more convenient in Santiago.

Apologies in advance, I'm not exactly your target audience:
I can drive just about anything short of a semi-truck (when I have to drive a car, it's usually an old manual Subaru), but I still refuse to drive whenever possible: Partly for environmental reasons, partly for financial reasons, and partly because I would much rather ride my ebike or my bicycle instead.