In a civilised country, driving would be reserved for those capable of doing so safely and efficiently (the qualifications would be on a par with certifications for operating similarly powerful industrial machinery, and would not be graded on a curve to ensure a car-dependent society can function), but infrastructure would be designed so that one could live a full life without driving.
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I always told driving is a privilege, not a right.
Driving is not a right. WAY too many people are allowed to drive. What’s worse is that WAY too many people have no option BUT to drive
What’s worse is that WAY too many people have no option BUT to drive
That's exactly why it's treated as a right. Can't drive?Can't live.
Wow what a bummer that trains, buses, bikes, electric scooters, and every other mode of rapid, inexpensive transportation has been un-invented. Those would have been really useful literally every moment since they were first invented. If we had those we could treat driving like it was the most dangerous thing people do every day, which it is.
My point is that driving is essential only because the people in power have unilaterally decided that it must be, and fuck them for that.
No, I get it, the problem the way we've chosen to build society, but now that it is the way it is, judges and juries are reluctant to ban someone from working and buying groceries for anything less than a prison sentence...
Like it's pretty crazy to me that the State (USA) can seize you car if you transport drugs with it, but not if yoU literally run over a human being. People with multiple violations and triple-suspended licenses still get to keep their cars.
Everyone has the right to drive, provided they can show the required level of skill and competence to do so.
Unfortunately, unskilled and incompetent describes far too many drivers.
Nobody should have a right to drive on public roads, they should have a right to prove that they deserve the privilege, and the privilege should be revoked a lot more than it is today.
everyone should have equal rights but me. i deserve special rights (a personal hole in the ground to crawl into for crying)
In addition to what a lot of others have said already, in a more egalitarian society most people wouldn't have to drive
And yeah, equal rights doesn't mean anyone can just do anything
Well yeah in a truly just society I would have one of limousine chairs that gets carried everywhere by a bunch of dancing whatchamacallits. You know, grad students.
Or, you know.
A bus.
I'm sure the passengers on the bus would love a 25 minute detour just to pick me up from my rural farm.
Yeah, isn't a world where all the transport money's spent on highways, so fun? Too bad there just isn't enough for, you know, a couple extra bus routes.
If we aren't building highways, how are the busses getting to rural communities?
Driving is a privilege, not a right. Easy fix.
Right ≠ permission
Yes, and it's especially obvious with the example of driving. Driving is a licensed activity where you have to pass a competency test before you're allowed to drive without supervision.
I've had the thought that a lot more things should be licensed with a competency test. Like, for example, I don't know... This is just off the wall and completely random, but maybe a person who runs for President of the United States should have to pass the same exam that people take as part of the process of becoming citizens. Probably the presidential candidates should take a much harder test, but that would require a lot of oversight to make sure the test isn't made to eliminate specific candidates.
But Trump took a cognitive test, he is good to be president. /s

Assuming he'd open the door himself and not have others do it for him. Also, missing a McDonalds bag in one of his tiny hands.
My mother has Alzheimer's and I am always with her when she takes that test, so I end up mentally taking the test alongside her. They actually have two different tests, depending on which doctor she sees, a shorter one and a longer one, and my mother mostly gets the shorter one. There's one part where they list four (five? let's go with four) words and have you repeat them back to them. Then, they ask you some other questions, and then they ask you to recall those four words again.
Other than misremembering the exact date, which I'm guessing everybody occasionally has the wrong date in their head, that question remembering the four words after being distracted by a different question is the only part where I could ever have lost points, since I have occasionally forgotten one of the words. It's the only question that I feel a normal person has a chance of missing. It truly is a test specifically for dementia.
The fact that Trump always says the test is difficult and that he got a perfect score on it, given Trump's history lying about things like winning golf tournaments, I think is absolute proof that he does extremely poorly on the test. He very likely fails it. He brings it up all the time because he's as bad at lying as he is at everything else. Good liars know not to bring up the lie a lot. Bad liars keep repeating the lie because they're afraid you might not believe them.
You know he's lying because his mouth is open.
In the immortal words of George Carlin: "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"
I don't want to drive, give me walkable cities and public transportation
Same I am forced to drive, please teleport me. At least biking is fun but you can't do 400km in 4h.
A high speed train would manage 400 km in way under 4 hours
Yeah but still would have to do 100km by car because no train station close to to destination I speak of. Or I would have to take RER and add 2 hours of travel time.
Equal Rights == None of us fucks are allowed to drive.
Honestly as a bicyclist I feel cars are way to powerful for regular people. Ebikes are great, fast and small
Trains and trams and busses.
God I wish... It costs me $250 a month for my car and I own the fucking thing (if you include maintenance costs) so I drive to work twice a day, five times a week, and try to get errands done during my return commute. I might drive once or twice on the weekend, and there are about 4.4 weeks per month on average. That means I spend $5.28 every time I drive. That is WAY MORE THAN TRANSIT COSTS!! Especially if we spent the money we spend on roads and cars, instead on trams or busses
For reference I also pay for car centric stuff through my utility bills. 10-30% of my utilities might be effectively me paying for the externality of ripping up roads to replace buried infrastructure, that then needs to be paid for AGAIN using my taxes when potholes form over prior ground disturbance, and paid for AGAIN when the road fails early and needs to be ripped up to fix the subgrade.
Equal rights means you are given equal access to the tools that will allow you to learn to drive. If you’re too stupid to drive that’s an entirely different matter.
Meanwhile, "Here, have a gun!"
I was at my first gun show with an older friend who knew guns better than I did who I was following around to keep me from making any stupid decisions.
There's a table with a sign for "Constitutional Carry," where they don't think you should need a special license to concealed carry a handgun.
My friend walks up to these two guys at the table, and says "Hey, just so you know, I hope you guys fail."
The younger of the two kind of bristles, but the older one, a dude with a long white beard, says "Oh, why?"
My friend says "Because I worked in a gun shop for fifteen years, and I helped fill out more concealed carry applications than I can count and..." at this point she gestures around at the huge room behind us, "I wouldn't trust 95% of the people in this room with any gun at all."
And the old dude behind the table smiles and nods his head and says "Yeah, that's a fair point."
So anyway, that's the day I bought a Ruger GP-100 in 357 Magnum.
Solid public transport would fix a lot of that but Ford and GM gonna Ford and GM.
People go "ooh, a trolley car!", when's the last time you heard anyone go "Ooh, a Lyft"?
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Everyone should have equal rights
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To ride the bus
Boom. Solved.
As a bus driver, hard disagree! There's people who will wait at a bus stop, wait in line to board the bus, and only then will they spend 5 minutes digging through their pockets or bags for fare.
Or ask where the bus is going, expecting me to tediously list out all the places this bus goes, and when asked the very reasonable question"where are you trying to get to?" Become cagey and refuse to answer. Then ask the same vague and open ended questions.
These people should report to the nearest artillery practice range asap
everyone should have the right to fail a driving test...
Driving isn't a right.
