When did you first learn to drive?

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I didn't learn until I was 25, and that's only because I had a friend who insisted on teaching me when she discovered I still had not learned. My girlfriend, who is also an Aspie, still has not learned at 39. It scares her and she won't take me up on my offer to teach her.

I first learned when I was 15. I did Driver's Ed which was included in my high school for one of our classes.

Never. I have really, really bad visual-spatial thinking. I am afraid of cars. I cannot estimate distances (like how far are two things away from each other). I have no intuitive physics (again, I guess this is because of bad visual-spatial thinking). I panic a lot.

I don't think I ever will.

If I want to go somewhere, I use public transport (bus, tram, subway, train, city train...) or go by bicycle or just walk. I think it depends of where you live. Also, we have night buses and night trams here (no subway at night, though...), so I will always get home safely. Bikes can be borrowed spontaneously almost everywhere in the city. The public transport is quite good here.

I got my permit shortly after my 16th birthday, but didn't start driving regularly until I was 20 and I got my license then too. However, I don't really drive much anymore and I'm afraid to drive alone and my mom doesn't allow me to. I don't have a vehicle that runs either. I tend to get rides from family or friends when I need to go somewhere.

24

I learned on the farm. At 16 years plus 2 weeks for "practice" I got my chauffeur's licence, driving stick shift on ice.

I haven't yet. And I am 34. I have considered saving for a license and I might try to get lessons next summer but I am just not very good motorically so I don't know if I will actually be able to pass. Everyone around me doubts it too, but we'll see. And if I can't then...it's not the end of the world. You don't have to drive yourself anywhere as long as trains and busses exist. And thank goodness for that

I was 19 and I only did it because Morgantown had really sh***y public transportation and I was more scared of another year living in a dorm than I was of driving a car.

Turns out, it isn't near as hard as I thought. I don't like driving in cities and I don't have real good spatial sense, but I go slow (like rigidly stick to the speed limit or a couple MPH under and leave myself plenty of room to make turns and I've been OK so far.

I've even pulled trailers and drove the biggest UHaul they make and nothing bad happened. But I was scared s**tless though.

I didn't get my drivers' license until I was 37 years old. January 10, 1998.

I'm 18 and I still don't know how to drive. I'm planning on taking driving lessons over Christmas break.

I was very late in this regard. I first learned at age 31. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to pass the driving test and didn't take it up again until I was 46. I finally became licensed at age 48 on July 9, 2013. I did something really stupid and had my license suspended for three long, awful months this year. I was finally reinstated last month and began driving again two weeks ago.

25

Can't afford lessons, let alone a car, neither can i afford public transport, so walking is my only option.

Need a job to get lessons, but also need a car to get to a job, an endless cycle of doom.

I got my drivers' license when I was 33 years old (I'm 40 now).

It's quite expensive getting a license in Denmark and I couldn't afford it + a car (also very expensive here) until that age.

Reply to Everybody:

I wondered if my learning to drive late in life was an Aspie thing, and it seems to be the case at least for most here. I also had terrible spatial reasoning, at least when I started, but that's gotten much better over years of driving. I had to get over that and my hyperfocused mind. It made me a downright dangerous driver, and there were scary moments in the first few months. I now have a scanning routine and I am much, much better at situational awareness and the ability to judge distance, time, and speed than I once was. At least behind the wheel.

I live in the suburbs of Chicago. In the United States outside of major cities, public transportation is either non existent or sporadic, unreliable, and developed in a haphazard fashion. Not having your own car in a rural or suburban area is a major handicap. Its like a third world of busses and trains. A drivers liscence is not expensive and easy to get as long as you can pass the written, vision, and driving tests. My hypothesis as to the reason for the sh***y state of public transport in most of the US is because the government wants everyone to have to buy a 2 ton metal box that guzzles fossil fuels.

To the person who said they cant afford lessons, I had a friend who taught me. That's the best way to do it IMO.

It is only in the US you can get a friend or parent to teach you. That is very illegal here. You have to pay for a pro drive instructor and as another one from Denmark pointed out earlier, that is expensive. A license here costs at least 10,000 DKK and most likely it will climb to 15,000 DKK with extra lessons or even more. That is about 2,300 USD.

On top of that cars are expensive too and very hard to afford if you don't have a high paying job or save for years. That is why I am doubting getting it in the first place because I am pretty poor and I probably won't be able to afford a car anyway. Luckily my parents are loaded and they got my sister a car, so I am thinking maybe they would buy me one too. Otherwise there is always the option of borrowing other people's cars, but its not as paractical as having your own and in any case it all depends on whether or not I can pass.

I have mirror movements in my hands so everything my right does, the left copies....its not very practical with a steering wheel. Imagine if I go to change the radio while driving and my right hand goes right and then suddenly the left one on the wheel does the same and the whole car swerves to the side.