Does society require us to drive?
There are a lot of things that people within our society take for granted sometimes. We’ll take for granted that we’ll have food to eat every day, a roof over our heads and clothes on our back. To quite a few people those aren’t really reality. They work very hard week after week to keep those things in their life. Other people within our society also take it for granted that they’ll get their driver’s license and a vehicle will be there for them to drive. Are they taking those things for granted?
There are many people within our society that will do other things to get around as opposed to driving. They may walk, ride a bike or take public transportation to get to their destination. Some others will rely on friends or relatives to get them to their destinations. In their mind, they don’t need to drive. Do you need to drive?
As a kid I would either walk or ride my bike to visit friends, go to school or go to activities I was involved with. Rarely did I get a ride from someone. My mom doesn’t have a driver’s license so it would have been my dad any way, but since he worked a lot, I knew that wasn’t going to happen too often.
But can learning how to drive improve your quality of life? Some people I’ve taught to drive at Young Drivers of Canada had a goal in mind when they signed up for driver training. They wanted to move up within their company they worked at through promotion and needed a driver’s license in order to do so. They actually had a solid reason for learning to drive. But was it really necessary?
I’ve met people who were CEO’s or presidents of companies but never learned to drive. I also taught someone to learn to drive who was a lawyer and another who was a neurosurgeon. They reached their career goals without learning to drive early in life. So the question often comes up, do you really need to learn to drive?
Depending upon the society you live in, it would definitely serve you well. Learning to drive can seriously come in handy. Learning to drive doesn’t mean you have to get a vehicle and pay insurance each year. I’ve met people who have a driver’s license but don’t own a vehicle. If they want to head out of the city, they’ll rent a vehicle and drive where they need to go. If they have to travel for their job, they can still rent a vehicle and do so. They don’t need to own a vehicle, but that driver’s license came in handy.
When I was 16 years old, I was getting rides from friends and my older sister who was able to drive. I wasn’t really thinking about getting my driver’s license because I had alternative modes of transportation. However, a good friend of mine suggested we both learn to drive and because of that, we took a driver training course together and got our driver’s license. During our course, our classroom teacher said we could become a driving instructor after driving for just a couple of years. I leaned over to my friend and said “They couldn’t pay me enough to be a driving instructor”. I guess I was wrong.
That a good question. The society we have created is one where we are doing many thing unnecessarily or extremely inefficientlt.
Lets take driving as an example. Public transport can be very cheap, efficient and less damaging to our environment But we need to keeep people busy and occupy till they die. So yes society wants us to drive.