[claudius]

The logic of this seems to be that driving has certain properties, these properties are worthwhile to experience and hence everybody has to learn how to drive.

What a silly idea.

While it is certainly true that driving might have these properties – I can’t really comment, as I don’t own a license, much less a car – but assuming that the only way to experience ‘accidents happen’ is by driving a car is rather strange. This especially holds since the idea that ‘accidents happen’ is a good experience is only remotely sensible because accidents not only happen in car traffic but basically everywhere else in life, too!

The same holds for the rest of the paragraphs: You have to plan irrespective of your mode of transportation (and of course outside of transportation, too), you have to replace the items in your possession after a certain time, be they socks, jeans, notebooks, washing machines or cars and of course you need safeguards outside a car, too.

To me, this article reads as if the author was unsatisfied with the original assessment that a car provides independence (which, of course, is not true: a car actually decreases your independence as you always have to return to it after a hike, for example) and tried to prop it up with equally unsatisfying extras.