America’s once magical, now mundane love affair with cars

It's kind of funny, more at the end of the day, and in my days off, I really enjoy driving.. even some heavy traffic doesn't phase me... It's when I'm trying to get somewhere by a certain time that it gets stressful...

The past couple years I've taken a 7-10 day road trip across part of the country... It's been very fun and relaxing. I'd much rather drive in a relatively comfortable car enjoying the scenery than flying, but to each their own.

"when is the last time you actually had fun driving your car"

I usually have fun looking forward to driving a longer distance. Once I am in the car, stuck in the usual jam while trying to leave the city, the fun is gone. And it doesn't come back when the road finally gets empty late in the evening.

I used to own a convertible. It was fun using it on summer evenings and nights, in the countryside.

I live and work in a suburb of a small city with fairly rural areas around it. I have fun driving at least half of my car trips.

even without the tolls & limits and what have you... I went on a roadtrip through the Southwest ( miles of open road and few limits, ripe for enjoying the drive ) and still the whole time I was bored & rather be on Facebook or reading a book

I live in Atlanta 1 block from a train station and the only time I use the train is to get to the airport or dinner in the nearby city of Decatur. I do live in a highly walkable neighborhood and work is a 10 minute drive. It's a 45 minute walk which I'll do in the fall.

I agree with this if you amend it to "... they believe it is much ..."

It is usually faster (some metros excepted) and usually more reliable, but people seem to consistently underestimate how much they spend on their cars. If you live in a major metro area (not its suburbs) my guess is that public transit is usually much cheaper. It certainly is in the ones I have lived in. If you've got a decent transit system (and that's a big if in North America), of course.

On the other hand, there are plenty of living arrangements that make transit impractical.

With the public transit in my city you're limited to a very restrictive set of hours, many stops are only serviced once an hour so you're restricted in how you go about your day (and every stop you make takes at minimum an hour!), and the travel itself can take upwards of an hour for a trip that takes ten minutes by car... during rush hour.

There is no Uber. Taxis are expensive and unreliable. It's too cold to run or bike most of the year. Everyone owns cars or has someone who does drive them around.

These articles always love to talk about Uber and public transit as eating away at the car market... But outside of the major centers where people are writing these articles, the car is still often king.

Ironically, they have put asphalt to the top of the Pikes Peak now...

As a vehicle for entertainment, sure. As a professional sport, yes. Grandparent meant it more as "what's the point of owning a car if you have 5 vacation days per year and never leave the city and all your commute each day is home->work->the store->home".

Except in some places, this is illegal. And because other drivers know that, doing it is fraught with danger.

Also, ride a bike and filter past all the motorcyclists who get stuck between the cars.

Only an anecdote from my life, not wanting to prove that you're wrong or something like that:

My family has never owned a car (mother is the only one who even has a license) and in the part of the world where I grew up (Switzerland) that was no problem. I make extensive use of the public transport here as I own a GA, a general subscription which is valid for almost the whole of Switzerland (exceptions are mostly ship lines and mountain railways).

For me it feels quite weird to travel by car because I am so used to take the train or bus.

Maybe I'll learn it someday but for now I have zero need to do so.

> I can understand never owning a car, but never learning to drive feels a bit like never learning to swim.

The difference being you don't need a license to swim. I can drive a car ( and agricultural tractor ) but I'm not licensed to do so on the public highway. It simply isn't worth the cost to me.

In my part of the UK one must take lessons with 'approved' i.e expensive state-vetted instructors as well as computer-based testing. Then hire of a car for the actual practical lesson, plus its cost. All-in here it costs about £3,000 to receive a license in your hand.

And then you can't actually drive on the highway without some form of insurance, starting at around £900 liability-only for new drivers.

Learning to swim cost me around £90.

>I can understand never owning a car, but never learning to drive feels a bit like never learning to swim.

I've never been a particular car person and the cars I've bought have tended toward the nice but practical. To never learn to drive though strikes me as just incredibly limiting.

I've almost always needed a car to get to my company's office on a day-to-day basis and even when I've worked downtown, I've pretty much needed a car for visiting customers, job sites, or while traveling. Even if some scenarios could have sometimes been handled without the need to personally drive, I would never have wanted to be "that guy who needs always needs some special accommodation because he never learned to drive."

Furthermore, I've gone on many many vacations that depended upon my ability to drive a car. Sure, I could just not do those things and attach myself to a group or avoid locations not accessible by other means but it all seems so limiting to me.

Whether you actually buy a vehicle depends on a lot of factors and, especially with the newer short-term rental options, one may be able to avoid purchasing one in borderline cases.

They did stop making cars that could be considered in any way stylish or beautiful. It doesn't help that modern cars are almost impossible to work on for anything but trivial repairs, now that they are so complex and computerized. In high school, I drove an old beater of a '85 F150, which was almost completely electro-mechanical. With a little know-how, a high-lift jack, and a basic set of mechanics tools, you could take the entire thing apart to the frame and put it back together. Many modern cars, you can't even change the oil without taking it to a garage with factory certified technicians. My '07 F150, you can't even change the spark plugs without taking half the engine apart, and then you need to have the proprietary computer system to re-calibrate the electronic timing.

Kingsville, Corpus Christi, Austin, TX

Tucson, Phoenix, Flagstaff, AZ

Regarding the statistic on urbanization, and given that I'm unable to speak to the impact of yet-to-materialize but inevitably arriving self-driving cars, many cities simply require a vehicle. Period. And rural areas require the same, for a completely different reason. Besides, I would consider a self-driving car a vehicle. As opposed to say public transit, bikes, segways, walking, or telepresence/phones.

I think you might have missed the point I was driving at. I'm not a gear head or car lover. I've never considered a car as something that impacted my status. And my cars have all been "commodity type" cars, that is, until I made memories with them, which would not have been possible without them.

There are already services which rent cars with unlimited miles and unlimited routes. Budget Rent-A-Car. But again, that is a vehicle. I've also bussed across the country and taken the train up the coast of Australia. Not the same thing. A road trip is not a road trip, blanket statement, if it does not allow for deviations in route and schedule, for any reason, or no reason whatsoever.

Before the arrival of Tesla, I would have said personal vehicles (self driving or not) were on their way out. But with advances in renewable energy, recyclable/ sustainable materials, and software which allows vehicles to either go their own way on dirt roads or coordinate enormous numbers of distinct vehicles in one super-efficient flow on shared, optimized infrastructure, it's my humble opinion that the personal vehicle has gained a second lease on life. Again, to me it simply boils down to the fact that there are too many pockets of awesome in this world. You can't build public infrastructure which makes them all accessible. That wouldn't make sense economically or ecologically. Philosophically it doesn't even make sense in many scenarios. It might be a pocket of awesome for the very reason that there are no convenient roads to it. And, no matter how many people we can squeeze into concrete jungles, there will always be a human desire to venture out, onto the road. As long as humans maintain their human nature, there will, in short, always be a human need for the personal vehicle to fulfill. And, by the nature of the need being fulfilled, that relationship between person and vehicle will not be mundane. Q.E.D.

The Dallas / Fort Worth area is referred to as a "metroplex." The vast majority of that metroplex has no adequate public transit, if "adequate" is to be described as "walkable without turning into a sweaty puddle during the summer time." But hey, if you want to walk 4 miles to reach a bus terminal to prove a point, be my guest. I'll be driving, and so will virtually everyone else in "generation Y."

People seek status. Vehicle ownership is a status symbol by itself. Owning a more expensive car? Also a status symbol. That they don't know what's going on under the hood doesn't stop them from wanting the most flashy thing they can afford.