[kenneth]

I hate driving, and I never bothered with getting the driver's license. Eventually, it got to a point where I just felt limited and embarrassed by not having a driver's license, and went took a few classes and dealt with it.

I was 24 when I got my driver's license and I've probably driven a dozen times total since then (rental cars in Hawaii, Colorado, or LA mostly). It's really easy, and I feel a lot better for having that ability. I'm 100% glad I did it and added that valuable life skill to my arsenal, despite still hating driving and still almost never using it.

I recommend it.

[ghaff]

There are a lot of things you can't do if you can't drive. I was just in Nevada and Death Valley on vacation a few weeks ago. Utterly undoable without either yourself or a companion driving.

I suppose you can just shrug and be OK with pretty much staying in or near cities but that seems to close off a lot of options.

I also couldn't deal with day-to-day things without a car but that's at least somewhat manageable depending upon where you live and work.

ADDED: I'm not a typical Silicon Valley developer to be sure, but I couldn't even have done my first job absent a drivers license. It may be worth asking if you want to be employable outside of certain bubbles where you'll be the weird person who always needs a ride because they can't drive even though they don't have a disability.

[esoterica]

> It may be worth asking if you want to be employable outside of certain bubbles where you'll be the weird person who always needs a ride because they can't drive even though they don't have a disability.

You say that as if only a tiny minority of jobs will let you get by without a car. Most white collar jobs will not require you to drive anywhere.

[ghaff]

Leaving aside commuting; we'll assume you and friends/partner are fine with only living, working, and socializing where you can easily get around by public transit, walking, bike, Uber now and then and restricting your choices accordingly.

Every half-way senior engineer I know (and I'm not even talking sales, system engineers/solution architects, product managers, and so forth) routinely travel to customer sites or branch locations that require driving under at least some circumstances.

Uber/Lyft have absolutely helped with some edge cases. I was at a work event just a couple weeks ago where my default in the past would have been to rent a car and I didn't because, while the venue was about an hour drive from the airport, I didn't actually need to drive once I go there.

It is absolutely the expectation at most jobs that you can drive if need be.

[kenneth]

I have never once in my career felt like I was held back by not having a car. The only occasion where driving was more convenient was during rare business trips where and we'd simply get a rental car.

If you're a white collar worker in NYC or SF, you're more likely than not not to own a car, or if you do, to use it almost exclusively for personal reasons and not for work reasons.

[ghaff]

NYC in particular is something of an outlier. In any case, this thread was about not having a drivers license, i.e. unable to rent a car.

As a counterpoint, I've frequently had to drive to customers, job sites, etc. but then I mostly haven't lived or worked in a city.

[kenneth]

I would say that suburban / rural America is more of the outlier. Most of the world's white collar workers work in transit-accessible cities, and the rest of the world is much less car-driven than the United States.

But yes, I'm in agreement with you that the DL is an essential skill and that not having it can be limiting.

[esoterica]

> It is absolutely the expectation at most jobs that you can drive if need be.

You're making a broad generalization based on nothing but personal anecdote. In my personal experience, on the other hand, I don't know a single person who has ever needed to drive for work.

[Kiro]

If I could choose I would never leave my apartment.