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I know this is a bit old. But I can drive finally!!!

coius

coius

68030
well, not by myself, but stupid law says you need a learner's permit before getting a full license. and I think I just remembered something... I sorta needed a log. but I didn't get it :-/

it's kinda funny. In order to use a permit, there must be one person in the car that is at LEAST 21. Well... I am 23yrs old :p Does that count?

 
Bus, bike, or rides from friends. I have been either a:

too lazy

or b:

too cheap

to get a license/permit. the reason is is because of how driver's license are issued. here, you MUST have a learner's permit BEFORE a license. It doesn't matter how old you are. It sucks, because you gotta go through a whole year before you can get the license. It's a new law they passed about 2 years ago that made this happen. I hate out senators...

 
In some parts of the country, a car is not a 'necessity' at all. I know people who didn't even THINK about getting a license until they moved away from New York City.

Here in Portland, Oregon, I know multiple people that, even with a license, drive very rarely. (My mom didn't get a license until she was in her 30s, my sister was in her late 20s, and I have one good friend that just got her license last year, at age 26.)

Wow, Nebraska now has a minimum period of time between permit and license? Of course, it's been 15 years since I got my license, so rules might have changed here in Oregon, too. When I got mine, it was 30 days. (i.e. You had to have the permit for 30 days before trying for the license.) The other thing is that most states say that if you have EVER had a valid license, you don't need to bother with the permit any more. (So, for example, one friend let his license expire, and didn't have a valid one for 4 years. When he re-applied, he could go straight for the license, he didn't need to go through the permit period again.)

 
well, see... I had a learner's permit last, which means I really didn't have a license. It seems there are a few stipulations to the rule:

1. You MUST have a permit before a license

2. The minimum to get a license on your own is 18, you can get a permit starting at 16, but even with a permit, you can't get a full license till you are 18.

3: if you have a permit up until 21, but don't get your license, you have to go through it all over again.

Since the last time I had the permit was 17, and didn't get it when I was 18 (I didn't have a job and there was no way in heck my parents would shell out the money for the car, even as a graduation gift), I had to go through the process again since I went past the 21 mark w/o a valid license.

Then again, one of the main reasons I didn't get a license in the first place was because I got the crap scared out of me when driving back from louisiana and in arkansas, a truck came up on my rear with dead brakes, and there was a semi in front of me, and one coming at me in the oncoming lane. It quite frankly scared the **** out of me. Actually, to the point that I didn't even drive enough to carry out the rest of the log.

The nice thing about if you are over 21, you don't gotta keep a log :p

If I wanted to, I could just get the permit and go for a full year without even touching a car. but since I need to go down to louisiana again to see my grandparents/uncles/aunts, i will need to take turns driving so my dad isn't driving the whole trip. The nice thing is, we will be taking a van instead of a tiny 2-seater honda. Not bad though.... I will sleep or play games on my lappy in the car when my dad drives, or I will drive while my dad takes it easy. The nice thing is, all there has to be is a 21+ person in the car. So, my dad can lean back while I drive. I just love loopholes.

Oh, and I will be getting used to driving around the city before I get on the interstate. That's so I can get used to driving before I have to get down on the trip.

Wish me luck that I don't crash the car! (nearly did that several times when I was 17)

Oh, and it's funny. I didn't even think about taking it till today when I went with my dad while he was paying taxes for his house. We grabbed a brochure, and while we were at lunch, i read it and brushed up on the laws/stuff and went back 4 hours later and took the test. not bad missing 1 question on a whopping 45 question test :p

At least this time I am older and have more common sense :D

 
Oh great, more smog. :p

I wouldn't worry too much about the dangers of driving. 21 year old people are usually more mature about things, may that be in your own actions or judging the actions of others. So it should be somewhat less nerve-wracking this time around.

Ontario has a graduated licensing system. There is a 1 year permit, though I think you can have that reduced to 6 months if you take an accredited course. IIRC, you need someone to accompany you in the vehicle and cannot drive on certain classes of roads (highways and expressways come to mind). Even after you graudate from the permit, there are restrictions on your driving for yet another year or so (no expressways, and I think no highways). I'm guessing that there are even more restrictions if you are under 18.

I really don't know why I know this crap since I steadfastly refuse to get a drivers license.

 
You must have a driver's license and car in Houston.

There is no respectable public transportation to speak of. We have buses, and here in the more central part of the city there's pretty frequent bus stops, but out in the burbs, they have maybe a bus stop every mile and only on the major street. You would have to walk from that bus stop down a busy 6 lane street and then down an 8 lane highway and several other roads, most of which lack sidewalks, and do this for at least one mile, to get to your house. That's if you live in the city limits or right outside. If you are outside the city limits, no buses go there and you may have to walk miles into the city limits to the bus stop. At the very least most buses have a bike rack on front where you can put your bike so at least you can bike to the bus stop.

I did everything through a driving school. I just had to take a basic written test to get the permit. When you graduate the driving school you get some papers, take the papers to the driver's license office and then wait about 5 hours in line, get your picture taken and you get a temporary paper license and your real license in the mail a few weeks later. There is no driving test if you go through the school.

 
You know, I've pretty much stopped taking the "you must have a driver's license" bit seriously because most motorists either embellish the adversities of other modes of transportation or because of lifestyle choices that they made. Simply put, people choose to live in subdivisions that make it difficult to accomplish anything without driving, because those subdivisions lack local services and lack the density for local services to ever be practical. In doing so, not only are they making the driving decision but they are also making inadvertent decisions about agriculture (farmland is often converted into a subdivision) and the environment (wildlife habitat is often converted into subdivisions). Government fiscal policy is also decided when people move out to the burbs, because roads are by no means cheap to maintain.

Yeah, there are people who need to drive. Some will need to do so because it is part of their job, and others because their job forces them to live in remote locations. But those people are in the minority.

 
The main reason I got my license was because after I hit 18, I started wanting to go out, and most places would refuse me entry without either a license or an 18+ card. Turns out that you have to go through the same process to get either, so I thought I'd go for my license, which would give me the added ability to drive as well :D

 
You know, I've pretty much stopped taking the "you must have a driver's license" bit seriously because most motorists either embellish the adversities of other modes of transportation or because of lifestyle choices that they made. Simply put, people choose to live in subdivisions that make it difficult to accomplish anything without driving, because those subdivisions lack local services and lack the density for local services to ever be practical. In doing so, not only are they making the driving decision but they are also making inadvertent decisions about agriculture (farmland is often converted into a subdivision) and the environment (wildlife habitat is often converted into subdivisions). Government fiscal policy is also decided when people move out to the burbs, because roads are by no means cheap to maintain.
Yeah, there are people who need to drive. Some will need to do so because it is part of their job, and others because their job forces them to live in remote locations. But those people are in the minority.
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Come to Houston. Please. You will change your mind.

I live in an apartment in southwest Houston. It's inside of "The Loop" 610, a 38 mile circle around downtown Houston. I'm not downtown, but I'm not in a particularly suburban area either. All the land has been developed. You could not live very much closer to downtown without paying a significantly greater monthly rent or mortgage, living in a significantly worse neighborhood in terms of crime, or taking a greatly reduced amount of space for the same rent. The rent here is $1000 for a 3 bedroom apartment of about 1070 sq ft which is split 3 ways with 2 other roommates.

The nearest full-line grocery store is one mile away. Most people walk at about 3 MPH, which means it would take 20 minutes just to walk to the grocery store - not including cross walks where you may have to wait until it is safe to walk. As sidewalks are often missing or unmaintained, much of this journey will either be in the grass on private property, or in the street where cars whir by at 40 MPH. Once you actually buy the food, then you are limited as to how many groceries you can bring back - maybe 2 of the standard large paper bags. Using any cart or other conveyance would be impossible due to the missing or unmaintained sidewalks. It would take you about 45 minutes (counting crosswalks, etc.) round trip, and you would have to do it more often than if you had a car, perhaps twice a week.

If you ride a bike to the grocery store, you must face the same poor sidewalk situation, as well as having to bike on the street where cars may very well run you over. It may take you only 15 minutes round trip, but you will be able to carry even less groceries than if you were walking, as you'll have to use some type of basket or backpack. It may take 3 trips a week to buy the same amount of food as 2 walking trips or 1 car trip.

You could take the bus - except the bus is not going directly to the grocery store. No - it's going to several other stops first, and who knows how long that's going to take? You can hold 2 bags in your lap - but you're going to pay $1 each ride - that's $4 a week.

In contrast, the same trip in a car would take less than 10 minutes round trip, and you could go only once per week or even less since you can carry a huge number of bags in the car. Gas costs would be about 20¢. It's difficult to calculate things such as total cost of the drive here (insurance, car payment, maintenance, etc.) but I'm willing to bet it's less than $4.

To summarize:

Walking - 2 trips a week - Carry medium amount of food - Free - 90 minutes a week. - No pollution

Biking - 3 trips a week - Carry small amount of food - Free - 45 minutes a week. - No pollution

Bus - 2 trips a week - Carry medium amount of food - $4/wk - Who knows? - Almost no pollution (the bus pollutes whether or not you're on it, but your weight on the bus contributes a very small amount)

Car - 1 trip a week or less - Carry massive amount of food - 20¢/wk (gas) - 10 minutes a week. - Minor pollution

That's just to go to the grocery store that's only one mile away.

Don't get me started on going to work.

 
Car-centered suburban living is a 60 year old fad, not a natural order of things, and this fad has run out of gas.

All this driving around and processed foods has made Americans fat! What a difference from a place like Japan which is even more food-centric, but I think folks there buy only enough groceries for the next day or two, because they have easier access to food, and are pickier about freshness. And per capita, I'll bet the French, Swiss and Italians have far more neighborhood bakeries.

And if the sedentary lifestyle + processed foods has turned folks a bit soft in the middle, they can buy a health club membership! In other words, pay for convenience (car-based lifestyle) and pay to undo it's effects! Gotta love this country [;)] ]'>

 
I can drive, but I don't. I really don't see any reason to living in the city as everything I need is within walking distance. Uni is about a 10min walk, we have a couple of local shops literally down the stairs and the supermarkets are ~10min away. If I'm feeling particularly lazy and don't fancy the ~20min walk into the centre of town I can get a bus from outside my flat.

It also makes no economic sense for me to have a car. I use the bus maybe a couple of times a month which is going to be slightly cheaper than keeping a car... once I had paid for the car itself, maintenance, road tax, insurance (I'm under 25 and live in the city without secure parking, so that would be sky high), parking, petrol (at over £1 a litre and rising), etc...

Anyway, congrats for passing your test! Learning to drive is a good thing to do, even if don't use it often! [:o)] ]'>

 
Car-centered suburban living is a 60 year old fad, not a natural order of things, and this fad has run out of gas.
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What are you supposed to do if you get a new job? Just move to where your job is? WTF?

We moved into a new house in 2002. The location was chosen because it was very close to mom's current job, and the schools were nice. It was a very lucky combination. My mom is getting older, though, and her job was stressful. She chose a new job working downtown. Of course that means driving a long distance to work every day. The neighborhoods surrounding her new place of employment are run down old shanty homes, OR, expensive new apartments built over some of the torn down shanty homes. Do you expect her to live in the ghetto neighborhood, or to pay $2000 a month for a cramped 1 bedroom apartment when she pays $1200 a month for a comfortable 3 bedroom house? Then I'm supposed to go to a school that has no good computer programs and gets maybe half the money per student than the high school I went to? We'll shop at stores frequented by the drug dealers and thugs? WTF?

 
I'm sorry, but some of your claims sound absurd. I know that Toronto is liable to be quite different from Huston, but I'm renting a 3 bedroom suite on the second floor of a house for $1300. As an added bonus, we get all of the cherries that we can eat in mid-summer as well as the privilege to plant our own garden. This is on the boundary of downtown core of a major metropolitan centre. We are within walking distance to two street car routes, one subway line, and one bus route. More importantly, we are close to the ammenities, including groceries, first rate schools (K-PhD), libraries, and well over a dozen computer stores. :) If you are getting cramped quarters, bad schools, and are stuck with a low paying job when the cost of living is high -- then I suggest looking for a better city to live in.

I live in a good end of town, but I both work and volunteer in the bad ends of town. While you do see some shit happening, there are also a lot of really good people in those communities. As a friend of mine put it, she probably wouldn't want to raise kids there -- but she knows how to make the right decisions, so it doesn't make much of a difference to her. While crime may be worse in some of those neighbourhoods, it's not likely to happen to you unless you make the wrong decisions. Most of the paranoia that people feel surrounding these places is simply due to sensationalism to boost the ratings of news programmes or surreal crime dramas.

I'm sorry Mike, but when I read comments like those, I tend to see them as a list of excuses. Excuses that aren't much different from a child refusing to sleep with the lights turned off because of some fictitious monster under the bed, mostly because they are too scared to look under the bed to judge for themselves.

 
I'm sorry, but some of your claims sound absurd. I know that Toronto is liable to be quite different from Huston, but I'm renting a 3 bedroom suite on the second floor of a house for $1300. As an added bonus, we get all of the cherries that we can eat in mid-summer as well as the privilege to plant our own garden. This is on the boundary of downtown core of a major metropolitan centre. We are within walking distance to two street car routes, one subway line, and one bus route. More importantly, we are close to the ammenities, including groceries, first rate schools (K-PhD), libraries, and well over a dozen computer stores. :) If you are getting cramped quarters, bad schools, and are stuck with a low paying job when the cost of living is high -- then I suggest looking for a better city to live in.
I live in a good end of town, but I both work and volunteer in the bad ends of town. While you do see some shit happening, there are also a lot of really good people in those communities. As a friend of mine put it, she probably wouldn't want to raise kids there -- but she knows how to make the right decisions, so it doesn't make much of a difference to her. While crime may be worse in some of those neighbourhoods, it's not likely to happen to you unless you make the wrong decisions. Most of the paranoia that people feel surrounding these places is simply due to sensationalism to boost the ratings of news programmes or surreal crime dramas.

I'm sorry Mike, but when I read comments like those, I tend to see them as a list of excuses. Excuses that aren't much different from a child refusing to sleep with the lights turned off because of some fictitious monster under the bed, mostly because they are too scared to look under the bed to judge for themselves.
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Houston is a lot different from Toronto or New York or any of those. It is car centric. The roads are wide and plentiful and generally well thought out. The bus system is insufficient. The rail system is a joke (very few limited stops, mostly downtown and to a few close neighborhoods). The weather is also a lot more fierce. Temperatures are in the 90°F+ range for a period of months every year (longer than summer). You wouldn't want to talk 20 minutes outside here in the Summer - it's just too damn hot.

Maybe you see it as excuses - but you don't live here.

 
What are you supposed to do if you get a new job? Just move to where your job is? WTF?
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What I'm saying is, there are other realities outside of Houston.

About 13 years ago, I sold off almost everything I owned including a nice '86 Mustang SVO. And without any job lined up, I flew 2000+ miles from Hawaii to the continent, and wandered about for awhile looking for places with good public spaces, and when I found something, I went job hunting. I won't say it wasn't tough at times: I went from earning $30K/year with generous benefits, to $5.75/hour and no benefits. Once I went for 18 months without steady work (I couldn't get myself to apply at Lockheed Martin). But here I am, still standing. I voluntarily went car-less for 9 years, and when I finally bought one, it was almost on a lark.

With all of the money not spent on cars and other stuff over the years, I went traveling: I figure it's educational to see how people live in other areas. To date, I've been to parts of:

England

Canada

France

Germany

Austria

Netherlands

Italy

Japan (quite a bit of it)

China (incl HK, Beijing, Xian--and Kashgar which is not far from Uzbekistan)

Malaysia

Indonesia

Vietnam

Thailand

Singapore

Cambodia

So trust me when I say that there are realities beyond Houston, Texas, USA.

[;)] ]'>

 
What are you supposed to do if you get a new job? Just move to where your job is? WTF?
Click to expand...
What I'm saying is, there are other realities outside of Houston.

About 13 years ago, I sold off almost everything I owned including a nice '86 Mustang SVO. And without any job lined up, I flew 2000+ miles from Hawaii to the continent, and wandered about for awhile looking for places with good public spaces, and when I found something, I went job hunting. I won't say it wasn't tough at times: I went from earning $30K/year with generous benefits, to $5.75/hour and no benefits. Once I went for 18 months without steady work (I couldn't get myself to apply at Lockheed Martin). But here I am, still standing. I voluntarily went car-less for 9 years, and when I finally bought one, it was almost on a lark.

With all of the money not spent on cars and other stuff over the years, I went traveling: I figure it's educational to see how people live in other areas. To date, I've been to parts of:

England

Canada

France

Germany

Austria

Netherlands

Italy

Japan (quite a bit of it)

China (incl HK, Beijing, Xian--and Kashgar which is not far from Uzbekistan)

Malaysia

Indonesia

Vietnam

Thailand

Singapore

Cambodia

So trust me when I say that there are realities beyond Houston, Texas, USA.

[;)] ]'>
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I never said there weren't realities beyond Houston, Texas, USA. I said in Houston, you're going to be a hell of a lot better off with a car than without. That's all - I'm done talking about it.

 
Because of where I live is so vast (up to 35 miles out from downtown) and my friend's sometimes living in other counties. It's a MUST for a car here to get where I want to go. Public transportation SUCKS here, sometimes as much as up to 3 miles from the nearest bus station. And there are some areas that you DON'T want to take the bus, mainly from the area that the bus runs in (usually where there is crime such as drug dealings, and yes, it's true. we have a shooting in those areas EVERY night. no doubt about it. it's on the news). During the summer it can get to 110 Deg F+ and down to -22 Deg F in the winter, and sometimes down to -50 Def F with windchill.

Other things can be that sometimes the busses are unreliable, and with having to go across town, you may need to take 5 busses just to get from the eastern-most part of omaha, to the middle of omaha going north, south, or west. and then, since I have 2 friends that live in other counties, Omaha doesn't even OFFER busses in there, and no one wants to be pay to put bus lines in there.

So, as much as people say cars aren't needed, wait till you come across a city like mine, where nothing runs on time, or doesn't run to a place at all. With bus routes being as much as 6 miles apart, it's not a decent way to get around. We also have NO subways, and NO streetcars. So yeah... I don't like to drive, but I gotta. If I want to get anywhere, or even to a job, without having to get up at 2am just to get to a job at 6am, it's not going to be feasible to not have a car.

I would like to not have to drive, but it's turning out that I can't rely on other people anymore.

Then I got a whole 'nother problem. Rudeness while driving. It seems that we have been voted as one of the rudest cities to drive in, where no one gives a **** if you are about to be run off the road because the lane ends, and no one wants to let you into the main lanes.

 
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