Across the country, fewer young people are learning to drive.
If outlets like RTÉ are to be believed, then this is something to be actively celebrated. Why? Because young Irish people “are moving away from their parents’ attachment to cars.” An increasing number of young people between the ages of 16 and 24, we’re told, view public transport as not just an alternative form of travel, but as a “pro-environmental” means of getting from A to B. The Irish Times previously asked, somewhat scornfully, do we really need to know you to drive, anyway?
Although we don’t need a car in the same way that we need food, oxygen and water, learning to drive should be considered a vital part of any individual’s formative years.
And, up until very recently, it was.
Call me a sceptic, but I can’t help but feel young people’s lack of desire to obtain a driving licence has less to do with protecting the environment and more to do with a reluctance to put in the actual graft. Shunning the driving experience is not about saving the trees; it is about saving themselves from the discomfort of actually having to learn a valuable skill.
Now, to be clear, I am not talking about a young person getting an L-plate and pretending to know how to drive. I am talking about an individual actually sitting the test, passing it, and becoming a fully-fledged driver. Passing the test takes time, effort, money, and patience. Lots of patience, in fact. As I write this, it has become normal for applicants to wait as long as a year to sit the test. Leaving the ridiculously long waiting period to one side for a second, learning to drive requires considerable sacrifice. As many readers will no doubt attest to, long hours spent in a car with a stranger can be uncomfortable and awkward. But, ultimately, learning to conquer the clutch, three-point turns, and dreaded hill starts in the company of a sometimes overbearing instructor can be genuinely empowering. From the discomfort comes true growth, as well as a sense of accomplishment and mastery.
Learning to drive isn’t just about obtaining a licence, or at least it shouldn’t be. It’s about becoming a fuller, more defined human being. It’s about adding another string to the bow of life. Sadly, in this age of instant gratification, where it’s much easier to order food than to cook a meal, and to swipe left (or right) instead of venturing out into the real and striking up a conversation with a member of the opposite sex, it has become much easier to simply dismiss the need to drive. As fewer young people opt to get married and have children, is it any wonder that fewer are also learning how to drive? The lack of desire to obtain a licence, I contend, has a lot more to do with delaying, or permanently postponing, the transition into adulthood than it has to do with protecting the planet. It’s much easier to say that driving is a destructive practice than it is to honestly admit that you couldn’t be bothered taking lessons and, quite possibly, failing the test.
At its core, driving is an art. That is why Formula 1, the pinnacle of motorsports, is so popular. We marvel at the ways these supreme drivers manipulate their machines and maneuver corners.
For men, especially, driving was, up until very recently, intimately connected with the idea of masculinity. To be truly masculine, one needed to know how to drive. It was, not that long ago, unthinkable to be an Irish man and not know how to drive. It was considered a failure of sorts, like not knowing how to tie one’s laces, boil an egg, or kick a ball. Today’s lack of desire to learn how to drive is less a crisis of masculinity and more a crisis of modernity, one that affects both sexes. With greater advances in technology, from AI girlfriends to mass automation, we are moving further and further away from what it means to be truly human. The car – more specifically, diesel and petrol engine cars – once considered a core part of one’s identity, is now seen as a hindrance, another problem that needs to be eliminated. Self-driving vehicles, specifically designed to remove humans from the driving equation, are the future.
Self-driving cars, we’re told, will make roads safer. This may or may not be true, but what is certainly true is this: they will remove a core aspect of what it means to be human.
The psychologist Lynne Pearce, an academic who has dedicated the bulk of her professional career to examining the psychological benefits of driving, has discussed the numerous downsides to driverless driving. The car is, first and foremost, a sanctuary of sorts, one of the few places where we are alone with our thoughts. There is a reason why America’s Route 69 carries such cultural sway — not just in the US, but all across the Western world, Ireland included. Driving, in its purest form, is a transcendental experience. It is, in many ways, almost religious in nature. Alas, like religious belief, the desire to get behind the wheel of a car is in decline.
As more people turn away from driving, we must ask ourselves, what are they turning to instead? Technology and devices that, on the whole, extract meaning from life and diminish the concept of human agency. As more young people retreat into their isolated layers and virtual worlds, there doesn’t seem to be a need for cars. Fewer people are learning to drive because fewer people have anywhere to go. Why learn to drive when the bulk of your time is spent at home, mindlessly scrolling and staring at a screen?