Where I live, a car is a necessity, stores have plenty of off-street free parking, traffic is not a problem, and I don’t get tickets. Shopping in person is not a problem.
There are things I want to touch and handle before I buy them. I do online when I’m sure of what I want. I’m always bothered by these big brown boxes for stuff that I could have carried out of the store without a box.
Agree. I’ve never had an issue with parallel parking either.
The one thing I struggle with is parallel parking on the left side of the road, such as on a one-way street that has parallel parking on both sides. I’m only used to doing it on the right and I just seem to take a lot of extra steps doing it on the left for whatever reason.
I briefly lived in Boston and was frequently in situations where I was left-parallel-parking and I got to the point where I was pretty decent at it. But that was a long time ago and I’ve definitely lost my touch.
But where I live now that almost never comes up so my rough skills in that area are no big deal. It costs me two minutes once or twice a year at most, which is a price I’m willing to pay.
I suck at parallel parking and parking in general. I’m not sure I’m that good at driving either, and certainly don’t enjoy it as much as some people.
Sign me up for self driving vehicles all day!
Also, parallel parking on a 30 degree incline with cars behind you waiting for my slow ass gives me anxiety.
Heck, I am starting worry about my regular parking skills given the lack of practice I have had lately.
They’re called “Uber” or “cabs.”
Where I took my first test, the driving portion included parallel parking, so I had to have it down pat, after hearing that so many friends had failed due only to messing it up.
I took my drivers test in NYC, right before moving down to FL where driving is essential. I had heard NYC road tests are notoriously hard. Like, if you hit the curb is automatic F.
Parallel parking was required. I ended up hitting the curb…but the proctor pretended like it didn’t happen.
So I passed.
Lucked out.
Not sure what I would’ve done in FL without a car.
You probably would have taken the test in Florida. Maybe it would have been easier there.
Sooooo… after freezing for 5 years, driverless tech is (still) at an exciting moment in history!
Just a couple months ago, Waymo took their safety drivers (back) out of the cars. They now have a small app based ride-sharing service operating in Arizona. They also partnered with UPS and Walmart with little delivery bots. That said, I think it’s all still far far too small to call a real thing. More like a billion dollar tech demo. I don’t think they need to be able to drive all places, all times, etc. but they do need to have scale to call themselves a business.
They also recently shared a lot of data and offered prize money for predictive models. Sign in - Google Accounts …So maybe YOU can figure out self-driving cars, since clearly they can’t.
Waymo says it wants to expand but hasn’t given any dates, so I’m not going to either…
…Naturally, Elon Musk is telling the world that “level 5” is coming “this year”, and is now doubling his “full” “self-driving” “beta” program. Bs Bs Bs.
But… in practice this means that there’s now 2,000 or so Teslas that will try to handle Stoplights and Intersections and other complex situations, instead of just crashing into fire-engines on the highway. This is cool, because the drivers share this on the internet, and you can see where they succeed and fail. Here’s a success from today.
And here’s a recent failure all around:
…So I still don’t think they’re very close to autonomous. Still, I find it exciting to watch improvements in real time. Each test it passes that it previously failed is a sort of history in the making.
I had no friends and no car down there. In NYC I used a friend’s car. And this was pre smartphone and uber.
Not sure how I would’ve managed.
I am not a believer. When they get close, they (the collective “they” meaning the whole industry trying to perfect self-driving cars, not only Tesla) will undoubtedly have some fatalities that will set back the public’s willingness to adopt the new tech. I see self driving cars still decades away. Social inflation will drive the economic cost upward faster than the novelty of the tech will drive consumer demand.
Why would you have needed a driver’s license if you didn’t have a car? Were you looking to get one, but first needed a license?
ETA: nevermind, went back and read the post. I think I understand.
ETA2: Apparently it’s a thing where you can hire a company to pick you up with a car and a licensed driver to take the driving test.
But you were probably allowed to separate the horse from the wagon, and that made it easier.
Mr father hired a driving instructor to take me to the test. He desperately wanted me to pass, and he believed the instructors had a deal with the cops.
So this guy comes to pick me up. There’s another girl in the car. The car drives very differently from any car I’ve ever driven, but i get to practice and get a feel for it as we drive to the testing place.
So we get there, and the other girl goes first. And i stand there, waiting for her, getting anxious. Eventually she returns in tears. She has failed.
This isn’t going well, i think.
I get into the car, and very very carefully try to do the test course. I was not a good driver at the time. We get to the parallel parking test, and the cop picks a place with a car in front, but nothing behind. I kinda park. Then he asks me to back up, and i grind into the curb. I pull forward, try again, and hit the curb. On the third try i do a creditable job. We drive back, and I’m sure I’ve failed. Then he fills out some paperwork and hands me my temporary license. I’ve passed the test.
WTF? I drove hesitantly and hit the curb.
On the drive home, i learned that the other girl had driven into a street pole on the three point turn. Kinda hard. It’s possible the instructor actually was bribing the cop, and the cop didn’t want to fail both kids. Or maybe the cop recognized that i was being very careful, and just needed a ton more practice, which i wasn’t going to get until i had the licence. Who knows.
But i was relieved that i passed, when i didn’t think i deserved to.
LOL
oooh!!! (shaking fist) Young whippersnappers with their self-parallel-parking cars!!!
also, data = data+1
I rear-ended someone a month after getting a car in FL, about two months after I got my license in NYC.
My first and only at-fault accident
I had to take the test in a stick shift when I’d only practiced parallel parking in the automatic transmission driver’s ed car.
I got a perfect score on the road test but I lost 10 points on the parallel parking portion because the car was crooked when it wasn’t supposed to be. That was still good enough to pass. Tester was impressed that I was taking the test in a stick… said he hadn’t seen that in years. But of course it was permitted and my Dad only had the one car, so… 
If we earned/lost “points”, they didn’t share that with us. We were tested on a two point scale. Pass or fail.
=
To be clear, I don’t really know if I’m a believer either. The tech is difficult. We might very well have flying cars or super-intelligent robots before we get widespread self-driving cars.
I think regulators are mostly moving out of the way for AVs, but I agree reputation risk might make waymo overly cautious right now.
People have literally died because they had a seatbelt on and only because they had a seatbelt on. Same for airbags.
I see self driving cars as being mandatory in the future. Humans suck at driving. The number of people dying because of self driving tech will be so insignificant compared to human driver casualties it won’t be even close.
Just like seatbelts and airbags, people won’t have a choice.