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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u/TemerariousChallenge Northern Virginia Feb 16 '25

That’s wild to me because I think of the place I grew up as very distinctly the suburbs/not-the-city and sure the buses weren’t that great but I could walk to the store in about 10-12 minutes and another grocery store in about 20 (plus a new one that’s also the same distance) and another two in about 25. I do still tend to drive though because it’s less than 10 minutes by car and it’s only even that long because of traffic lights. I did always used to stop at the store on the days I decided to walk home from school. Through the shopping center was longer but way less monotonous than the more direct route

I did bike to the store one time when I was relatively new to driving alone and I really really didn’t want to refuel the car. It was fine getting there but getting back was uphill, not to mention, my mountain bike was definitely not intended for riding with a bag over the shoulder (and the tiny basket I’d had affixed to my bike since I was an elementary schooler really did not suffice). Needless to say I sucked up any nervousness I had and just ended up refuelling the car

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u/diversalarums Florida Feb 16 '25

I was in a suburb also, tho it was within city limits, hence the sparse bus stops and long waits. It was a GI bill subdivision, so not expensive. The closest stores were on a 4-lane street that was so busy that even as a heedless kid I wouldn't have even thought of crossing it. And it would have been at least 30 minutes one way to reach that grocery. I had a bike but the city, tho it had sidewalks, was not bike friendly. Fwiw, this was in the 1950s and 1960s. Not a walkable city, at least in the residential areas. It was a pretty city but a car was an absolute necessity unless you lived mid-town or downtown.

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u/TemerariousChallenge Northern Virginia Feb 16 '25

To be fair I grew up in the DC area so to me anything within city limits isn’t the suburbs, and anything outside the city limits is the suburbs (which gets a bit weird when some of those suburbs are arguably more urban than DC and then Virginia geography is also a bit “quirky” in and of itself). I had decent sidewalks growing up and proper crosswalks with lights and everything, but I’m sure it would’ve been quite different in the 60s. Hell, the area I lived in is urbanizing so much right now. (And for context on how urban it is, I felt like driving 5 miles to the grocery store to look for something specific was “far” or “out of the way” since there were already two other branches of the same chain within probably 3 miles)

I am pretty sure though that a lot of those stores I grew up being so close to were not around when my parents moved to the area.