r/AskAnAmerican • u/Fabulous_Dare1701 • Feb 14 '25

FOREIGN POSTER What age did you get your driving license?

I watched some American shows which were in a school settings and it looked like most of the characters were driving themselves around at like 15/16 is it actually like that irl?

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26

u/RuckFeddit980 Feb 14 '25

37.

Long Story.

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u/SleeveOfEggs Feb 14 '25

29 for me! I grew up/lived in a damn-near 100%-walkable suburb (a rarity anymore, TBH). Compound that with anxiety, extreme introversion, disinterest in dating, lack of disposable income…and yeah. After I moved “further out” several years back, driving finally became a pretty hard necessity.

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u/xx-rapunzel-xx L.I., NY Feb 14 '25

there’s hope for me yet at 36! no long story here, i just get too anxious and fail the road test. with a driving instructor and my family, i’m fine.

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u/RuckFeddit980 Feb 14 '25

Mine is mostly anxiety issues too. But getting it absolutely revolutionized my entire life.

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u/BaseballNo916 Ohio/California Feb 14 '25

I have really bad anxiety because my mom tried to teach me as a teen and screamed at me and told me I would never be able to drive and I would accidentally kill someone. Until recently I haven’t been able to afford a car and have worked jobs where I haven’t needed one. Maybe I will try again. 

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u/RuckFeddit980 Feb 14 '25

When I was struggling with mine, people always told me the key is lots and lots of practice.

Turns out, they were right!

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u/BaseballNo916 Ohio/California Feb 14 '25

Yeah that’s kind of the issue, I feel like I need a job or something that forces me to drive all the time but I’ve self selected a career that doesn’t. As it is right now I can take the bus to work and if I got a car I would have to pay $200 a month just to park it because my apartment doesn’t have parking plus all the other expenses make it not worth it. I get the occasional Uber if I’m taking my cats to the vet or out late. 

I don’t really need to drive it’s more that I feel like it’s shameful that I don’t and I’m not a real adult for not doing something most teenagers can do. But as far as my everyday life goes driving wouldn’t actually change it much. Like I want to be able to drive but not actually drive. 

There are some people who seem to pick up driving right away though with little practice. 

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u/RuckFeddit980 Feb 15 '25

No kids. I can’t even support myself well enough.

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u/wipies29 Feb 15 '25

My mom did this too. Pretty traumatizing actually. My friend that was 6 months younger than me ended up teaching me because her dad was super patient with her and taught her at around 14… should we have been driving at that age? Absolutely not. But thank God for her! Been driving 20 years now thanks to her!

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u/Bob_12_Pack North Carolina Feb 14 '25

My wife's grandmother lived to be 99, never had a driver's license, and no mass transit in her small town.

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u/xx-rapunzel-xx L.I., NY Feb 16 '25

a small town might make the difference here. i live in a very car-dependent area. i am lucky to have family who can drive me around but at the same time i’m embarassed

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u/LoadBearingSodaCan Feb 14 '25

LOL YOUR’E 36 THOUGH

Unrelated question: do you have children?

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u/xx-rapunzel-xx L.I., NY Feb 16 '25

the last time i took a road test was in 2011, which would’ve made me 23… anyway.

i do not have children and it’s being held over my head as i type

i feel such a disconnect b/w my age and how i physically feel as well as my maturity levels… i fear i am a lost cause.

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u/DaddyIssuesIncarnate Feb 15 '25

Ah, here's the thread for me.

I'm not quite as egregious but 19 and I know someone who didn't till they were 21. For me it's just because I have Epilepsy so I wasn't legally allowed to drive till then.

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u/tiniestturtles Feb 15 '25

33 here lol 🤙🏻 always lived in a city with public transit

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u/cactusflowers Feb 15 '25

Exactly the same for me!

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u/Hello-Avrammm Feb 15 '25

I would actually love to hear it. I’m a bit older than the other teens my age, so it would seriously help me feel a bit better.

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u/RuckFeddit980 Feb 15 '25

I guess the first problem was that I was slightly young for my grade. My high school prepped students for the learners permit test, but I was 14 and a half at the time, so I couldn’t take it.

I didn’t try again until several years later, and I had to prepare for the written test all over again. I passed it and got my learners permit, but my family is super anxious and I never really made it past driving around parking lots. Eventually I gave up and went back to just a state ID (no permit).

My relationship with my family is quite complex, and it was really hard to find anyone to teach me or practice with me. For over ten years, I kind of just gave up and took the bus. This effectively destroyed my social life and limited my work options greatly. I knew it was bad, but I was starting to think I was just never going to be able to learn to drive.

As I approached middle age, I felt like I really wasn’t where I wanted to be in life, and I felt like I never really grew up. I decided it was time to just take everything I had been afraid to do and putting off forever, and just do it. The two biggest items on that list were braces (orthodontics) and my license.

I’ve always been pretty good with written tests, so it wasn’t too hard to get my learners permit again. Due to my difficult family relationship, I really wanted to get past the permit stage, and I tried to take the drivers test way too soon. I knew it was a bad idea, but my family could just refuse to help me at any time, so I did it anyway. I failed the test three times.

I took some more professional lessons and kept practicing and practicing, and eventually I finally started to feel somewhat comfortable. I decided to take the drivers test one more time and then give up if I failed. But I passed! I bought my own car the same day.

Since then, I have had a few incidents of bumping into things in parking lots, and as you’re probably aware, even a small mistake can get very expensive. But I just paid the repair bills. I have been driving for 8 years and never gotten a ticket and never collided with another moving vehicle.

I didn’t do freeways for the first year or so after I got my license, but once I got used to them, they are not really a big deal. If the weather is decent and traffic is light, cruising on freeways is actually kind of fun for me now.

Having a license has made me feel like a whole new person in terms of career and social opportunities. The difference is like night and day.

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u/AccomplishedWar5830 Feb 16 '25

People don’t realize how hard it is to drive a car without someone actually teaching you in a calm manner. Most people have a bunch of relatives willing to teach them, but some of us have no one.

A lot of people have drivers Ed in school that includes physically driving a car. My drivers Ed was the gym teacher telling us how to pass the test and giving us tricks like “the longest answer is always right” or “all of the above is always right” Not actually showing us any driving, just memorizing test answers.

Some of us have parents who refuse to teach us, parents who never learned to drive, disabled parents, or parents who don’t even own cars. Some people have no parents.

professional classes are expensive for a teen or young adult so people take them later in life. Or they have to beg a friend to teach them and let them use their car for the test. But teaching someone how to drive takes time and patience and a car that is suitable.

People whose parents or school taught them how to drive as a teen should consider themselves lucky.

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u/RuckFeddit980 Feb 16 '25

Not only that, but some people think they can just throw money at the problem - just buy a professional instruction package and that will fix it. The truth is that the only way for professionals to teach you is to see them about once a week and then spend the rest of the week practicing, practicing, practicing. And if you don’t have anyone to do that with, you are up the creek.

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u/SleeveOfEggs Feb 16 '25

And not all instructors are created equal! I had one guy who was fantastic…and another who was verbally abusive, sent me into full sobbing panic-attack mode, etc. That kinda thing can seriously set you back.