"Driving is a privilege" is a slogan created by authoritarians. The word "driving" doesn't appear in the constitution one way or the other. Travel is a right.
The analogy would then be that driving is the modern equivalent of walking or some other pre-automobile mode of transport. For that to be relevant you would then have to be making the case that driving is only a privilege and not a right because walking is only a privilege and not a right. Which you're not actually claiming, are you?
Walking is a right, sure.
Driving a car is a reasonable parallel to pulling a carriage with a horse, sure.
Driving or carriages are akin to walking? No.
Everybody might have the right to walk that no one can take away from them, but everybody doesn't automatically have the right to a horse and the land required to support and feed that horse, to travel through a city with a horse on a daily basis without having to contribute back to the very real piles of horse shit a day in the hundred of tonnes that needs to be cleaned away, etc.
Some means of travel have wider social consequences, costs to the commons, that need to be addressed.
EDIT: Original versin of AnthonyMouse comment specifically mentioned a right to a horse and carriage.
The analogy would then be that driving is the modern equivalent of walking or drawing a carriage with a horse, even if cars didn't exist 200 years ago. For this to be relevant you would then have to be making the case that driving is only a privilege and not a right because walking is only a privilege and not a right. Which you're not actually claiming, are you?No one is claiming that you have a right to have someone else buy you a car or a horse, any more than you have a right to have someone else buy you a radio station.
> to travel through a city with a horse on a daily basis without having to contribute back to the very real piles of horse shit a day in the hundred of tonnes that needs to be cleaned away
Ordinances that require you to clean up after your animal or have emissions controls on your car are orthogonal to whether you have a right to operate one in general.
When you store paper in a self-storage shed, the police need a warrant. If you store a PDF on a shared electronic system, often it’s just a subpoena.
Google “third party doctrine” and the “Stored Communications Act”
The constitution is a piece of paper; it’s not internally consistent and not even rational.
You’re free to walk
True. The license to do so is a voluntary contract with State which persons may or may not sign. Alternatively, avoid "motor vehicle", and don't use words they regulate such as "operator".
Anyone in USA is free to travel in a personal conveyance for non-commercial purposes while respecting property rights of others.
> driving is a privilege
Commercial licensure of that regulated activity using those words is a privilege.
Driving is not a privilege. Anyone with funds may purchase a vehicle and drive it on private property.
Making use of roads paved by the public (through tax dollars) is a privilege. If you've failed to support the creation and upkeep of that road (by failing to pay registration- and license-related taxes) and failed to meet the minimum requirements (license, registration, vehicle insurance or a waiver, sometimes vehicle inspections, etc....) of the body that built and upkeeps that road (a governing body: local, state, or federal), you don't have permission (and you certainly don't have a right) to drive on that road.
Even if that's not the way it "should be" (expressing no opinion here), it's the way the law enforcement and judicial branches will enforce the rules of the road on you. Sovereign citizen(-adjacent, perhaps) BS like this is only likely to escalate a traffic stop and aggravate a judge. If you don't like jail, I recommend against this line of action.
But this is where we get into trouble, because then the same logic would apply to walking on public roads.
And the only ingress or egress to the vast majority of residences is a public road. Otherwise the place where nearly anybody lives is fully enclosed by someone else's private property.
At which point this claim becomes "leaving your house or going back home is a privilege" which is facially unreasonable.
It also doesn't align with the way we talk about anything else. If you fail to pay your taxes you don't lose your right to a jury trial just because juries are funded by taxes. If the jury convicts you of tax evasion and the government puts you in jail, the warden will search your cell whenever he wants, but we don't say "privacy is a privilege, not a right" or claim that the government can revoke this "privilege" without due process and conviction of a crime.
And you can't get out of this by saying "but you could just walk," because in many cases you can't. The path between many locations is accessible only via limited access highway where walking is actually prohibited. It's the rule rather than the exception for the distance to be prohibitive -- it isn't reasonable to walk from one city to another, regardless of whether or not it is physically possible.
After all, voting is a right, and if I cannot be at the polling place, I'm entited to vote by absentee ballot. They don't even require a stamp!
Walking is equivalent to breathing, whereas driving a car is at best equivalent to riding a horse.
If you get a benefit from licensure then you should voluntarily contract with the State so you can get whatever benefits are in the licensure contract.
Traveling by personal conveyance is a right. I'm not engaged in plumbing or electrical businesses so I don't take those licenses. Same for driving. I am licensed for septic installation.
At the end of the day, because the ability to drive is a function of competence and skill, it cannot be a right. Our ancestors in the 1890-1920 period weren't wild-eyed socialists - they lived through the early days with no rules.
Can a function of competence and skill not be a right? How do you square this with the first and second amendments, for example?
With the first amendment, competence and skill don’t apply. Anyone can express themselves, assemble, complain to the government or hand out manifestos, including ignorant or stupid people. I can go start a religion and exercise all sorts of bizarre practices without approval or reprisal.
Liability is always a thing. Your physical harm to people or property is separate from the scope of a fishing license or some other State contract such as a driver license.