Learning not to drive

American columnist Michael Kinsley describes his latest rite of passage

From one day to the next, you don’t give much thought to the fact that you’ve used one up. But the arc of a human life is marked by several special occasions, even happy ones, where this thought must cross your mind. Some of these occasions are purely ceremonial and have evolved specifically to serve the ceremonial function of noting that you’re one step closer to wherever it is we all are ultimately going. Others are dictated by biology.

There’s your birth, of course. First day of school, confirmation or bar mitzvah, last day of school. Your university graduation. Your (first) wedding day. The day you turn thirty, then forty, then sixty. If you’re not careful – or even if you are – these ominously round numbers can move you into the next age bracket in charts published in places like the

Economist. Sixty-five is a key birthday, at least in America, because it’s the day you’re supposed to retire and get out of the way. It’s also, for many, the day the cheques reverse direction and they start paying you, after decades when you paid them.

The day you move to a nursing home, or ‘assisted living’ as we say here. Or back in with your children. The day you die. That about covers it, but it leaves out a significant life milestone: the day you get your driving licence. That is your sixteenth birthday in most of the United States (each state gets to decide for itself). Oddly, no ceremony has evolved to mark this occasion. But none is really needed. A driving licence means freedom: freedom to go where you want, when you want and with whom you want. Of course you need a car, too, or access to one. But an amazing number of teens seem to be able to swing it, even if it means taking an after-school job.

A driving licence is about more than just freedom of movement. It’s certification that you’re an adult. One day you need Mom to take you to a movie. The next day, you can take people to a movie.

It stands to reason that another significant life milestone must be the day they take away your driving licence – not because of anything you’ve done but simply because you’re considered too old. In America, the rules about this are all over the lot. Some states require older citizens to take a test in order to qualify for renewal; some don’t. The ages at which this rule kicks in also vary.

I just turned 65 and though all around me I see octogenarians mowing down pedestrians, I gave up driving a couple of years ago because I have Parkinson’s disease, which affects your ability to perform all the actions and reactions involved in driving, and can also affect your ‘executive function’, which basically means your ability to think straight.

Although I was diagnosed 24 years ago and the symptoms are still fairly mild, I decided not to fight it when the subject first came up. In half a century of driving, I had perhaps two moving violations and one minor but actual accident (which unfortunately happened a few months before). In my view, I was a better driver than average, Parkinson’s and all.

But I gave up without a fight because (a) I know that the person who will be most affected (i.e., me) often has a distorted view of his or her abilities, and I could be wrong about mine; and (b) as I thought about it, I realised that the very worst thing in the world that can happen to you – worse than being killed yourself – would be to accidentally kill someone else. The risk of this exists for anybody who drives – even without Parkinson’s disease. Eliminating this risk, I thought, would be calming, and might even reduce the Parkinson’s symptoms.

Not driving is a skill, just like driving. It’s a people skill. You learn how to beg for lifts to events and how to graciously accept people’s invitations to go ten minutes out of their way to drop you somewhere, instead of saying, ‘Oh no, you really needn’t bother – it will only take me 45 minutes on the bus and another half-anhour or so walking. And it’s really not raining all that hard.’ As with all aspects of Parkinson’s, I’ve been lucky in every way except getting it in the first place. I’m very lucky to be living in the age of Amazon and Uber. I don’t have to leave the house to get practically anything I want. And when I do leave the house, there can be a car waiting to take me where I want to go. I also live in probably the second most accommodating American city (after New York) for public transport. The Washington Metro – once a gleaming tribute to the city – has deteriorated into a disgrace, but it still gets you where you want to go. Or at least sometimes.

What I spend on substitutes for driving, like deliveries and taxis, probably adds up to less than the cost of maintaining a car. But I miss driving more than I expected to. Looking back, it’s hard to believe that not so long ago I could just get in a car and go wherever I wanted to. And what I said about getting the keys applies to turning in the keys as well: it’s about more than convenience or freedom of movement. It’s about adulthood. Not being allowed to drive is infantilising.

Nothing can be done to stop people getting older. But why not allow us to grow old slowly, as we do in real life? Why must it be all-or-nothing-at-all? There are almost 200 million Americans with driving licences. They drive an average 13,000 miles a year and kill 35,000 of their fellow citizens in the process. What if I were told that I could keep driving, but not at night, not on the motorway, not on major driving holidays like Labor Day, which is at the beginning of September, and sundry other rules. That is a deal I would take.