Why learn to drive?

Recently I spoke to someone at an office party.  The conversation somehow moved to roads, which gave me cause to reveal that I had never learnt how to drive. This caused this someone to erupt into a violent chuckle. He sincerely apologised as he tried to control his laughter, managing to force a cough in order to stabilise himself after the shock of meeting a grown man who is incapable of controlling a car. I thought I’d better learn.

The last time I was behind the wheel of a car was when I was 19. I had five lessons, where I more or less learnt how to move a car forward. I’ve put it on the backburner for the last few years. This backburner has been fuelled by a range of highly unoriginal excuses, such as it’s bad for the environment, having car is really expensive, I’ll never use a car, etc.

So why don’t I drive? In addition to being plain lazy, driving seems like something from an alien world.  The length of the time that I have spent not driving has made the idea of me being in the driver’s seat seem completely unfathomable, something that I just don’t do. I’ve also been in five car accidents, all of which occurred before I was 12, which I suspect may have embedded in me a deep rooted reluctance to drive.

My renewed enthusiasm for getting behind the wheel made me particularly interested in an episode of This American Life, called ‘How To’. In ‘Roadrunner’, Ira Glass teaches Sarah Vowell how to drive. (Skip to 06:40 to get straight to the Sarah Vowell piece)

This is a fantastic piece of radio, since it bounces two great institutions of American radio off each other.  Ira Glass, the eekingly inquisitive host of the show. Sarah Vowell, who has the ability to deliver bitingly sardonic observations, all the while in her peculiar voice, which makes her  sounds like a cross between a small child and what I’d imagine a teddy bear would sound like if it suddenly gained the ability to talk.

Ira Glass

It’s episodes like these where the idiosyncratic personalities of the show’s contributors make This American Life an engaging listen. The show can sometimes works like a sitcom as the entertainment is from observing how established characters react in a novel situation. If this was a Friend’s episode it would be called ‘The one when Ira tries to teach Sarah how to drive’.  Inevitable larks ensue as the anxious Ira tries to handle a fear-stricken and reluctant Sarah Vowell.

It reminds me of when I first learnt to drive in the congested roads of Tooting Broadway. After a few minutes of tuition I was put in charge of the car. I didn’t experience the much lauded joy of driving. Instead, I felt as if I had inappropriately been entrusted with a weapon, capable of wreaking havoc, inflicting damage and maiming members of the public. As Sarah Vowell explains in the episode, “Driving is my greatest fear. And it's not a totally irrational fear. There are things about driving that are in fact dangerous, like learning to pass another car without hitting it.”

Sarah Vowell also sprouts wonderful rants on the evils of the car, on how the “car class” builds a destructive society that lacks in adequate public transport and guzzles fossil fuels. Such incoherent and nonsensical diatribes would be familiar to anyone who has asked why I don’t drive. You see us non-drivers like to make the best of our situation whenever we can. We are not lazy; we are financials geniuses who have carefully calculated that buying a car, paying for petrol and scouring for parking is something that only fools would indulge in. Furthermore, we are not too incompetent to pass a test; instead we are pillars of morality, eco-warriors who are the only ones willing to righteously stand up to those evil oil conglomerates and announce “No”.

Sarah Vowell

Listening back to her panic-fuelled recording in the car, Sarah acknowledges the absurdity of her reasons, saying “I don't know who that humourless fanatic was. Though in my defence, I was grasping for any reason to get out of this driving mistake. Let me assure you that I care about fossil fuels precisely as much as everyone else in America…. which is to say not at all.”

When I restarted my driving lessons last Friday, it felt completely different from before. It felt more natural. I think my teenage anxieties had left me. Perhaps my adolescent apprehension has been replaced by the hot headed hubris of the young adult.

I suspect it feels easier because driving is something I’ve developed a genuine interest in. Sure, I’m learning partly because it’s something I feel I’m obligated to do as part of the general human-experience. However, I’m increasingly drawn in by all the possibilities that driving offers.

There’s bit towards the end of the This American Life piece were Sarah Vowell finally finds joy in driving while ordering a meal at a Drive-Thru Burger King, indulging in her childhood desire to access fast-food on the road. I think I’d love all those little things I’ve always coveted from being a mere passenger. I suspect that I’ll feel that I have fully arrived once I’ve had the ability to gain full control of the stereo, change the CD, turn up the volume and speed off into the distance.