From: petertrei@gmail.com   
      
   On 10/6/2025 11:54 AM, Paul Dormer wrote:   
   > In article , djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J   
   > Heydt) wrote:   
   >   
   >> [Hal Heydt]   
   >> Contrast California...  For many years California required all   
   >> high school students to take Driver Ed.  What triggered that   
   >> requirement was a EdD dissertation on comparative accident rates   
   >> between trained and untrained drivers.  The author of the   
   >> disseration was Wallace A. Jones...  Dorothy's father.   
   >   
   > I read a news report a few years back that people were putting off   
   > learning to drive until their mid-twenties.  (The minimum age for having   
   > a licence is, I believe, 17.  I think I knew only one person at   
   > university who owned a car (and it was an old banger).  My father, who   
   > never went to university, was in his thirties before learning, and that   
   > was probably because we moved to the north-east where there was less   
   > public transport available.  My mother never learned.  I certainly never   
   > needed a car living in London (and before my recent accident, walking   
   > around Guildford was not a problem).   
   >   
   > Conversely, of course, the minimum drinking age is lower here.   
      
   The environment does have an effect. I learned at 17, but that   
   was in the 70s, and I was living in the suburbs.   
      
   I didn't have or need a car when at university in central London,   
   nor for a decade afterwards in Manhattan. I actually let my   
   license lapse, and had to take paid lessons to get it back The   
   lesson on highway driving ended in five minutes, when the   
   instructor said 'Oh, you really do know how to drive, don't you.'   
      
   Since, I've lived in rural MA, and a car is pretty much a   
   necessity. I'd really hate to be unable to use one as I get older,   
   but the "(Supervised) Full Self Driving" in my car is   
   pretty damn good (though not perfect), and I have strong hopes   
   that by the time I can't drive, the car will actually be able   
   to do it for me.   
      
   If fully autonomous cars are available, I can see *many* people   
   forgoing learning to drive by hand, just as few Americans   
   learn to use a manual transmission.   
      
   pt   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)