July 7, 2012

"Why drive? Why own a car? Why ‘go’ anywhere?"

Generation Y doesn't see why.

31 comments:

Shanna said...

I hate articles like this. The writer just asserts that these things are true, without reference to individuals or statistics.

The horse went away because it was replaced. A smart phone does not replace a car.

edutcher said...

Uh oh, Barry's going to think he's winning by jacking up the gas prices.

MayBee said...

That doesn't sound like the kids I know.

chickelit said...

LOL. There's a whole 'nother generation behind the Y'ers and they have more "Y" in their genes.

Saint Croix said...

My new Althouse insult for all that is bad:

"BS in shorts!"

Paddy O said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Paddy O said...

Generation Y?

What is this, 2004?

I think she has her generational terminology way out of date.

Also, I'll bet she's writing from the context of New York, while growing up outside of the city.

In places where cars are needed to get to places, kids want cars.

chickelit said...

edutcher said...
Uh oh, Barry's going to think he's winning by jacking up the gas prices.

He's foisting the malChusian Nighmare..

Ron said...

Why stay in college? Why go to night school? It'll all be different this time!

Ross said...

Am I the only one who thought after reading the article that a hundred years from now, all people will be fat like the ones in the movie WALL-E?

ndspinelli said...

Less inexperienced killing machines on the road is fine w/ me.

Sometime when you're sitting by a busy road take note of the number of drivers talking/texting. My observations has it at ~30%. And, ~60% are women. When I investigated auto accident personal injury suits the cell phone records would be the first thing I would check.

Jason (the commenter) said...

Generation Y conveniently doesn't care about the things it can't afford.

Astro said...

My son and his wife travel to Napa every year, and have traveled extensively through the US.
A friend has two daughters. One is a musician who lived in Australia for a while but now travels around the US performing chamber music. The other daughter lives in Paris and travels to London for her PhD research.
My sister's son spent the past week diving in the Caribbean. Last year he hiked the Philmont region.
Another friend has a son who does missionary work every Summer in S. America.
No, these kids never go anywhere.

Mitch H. said...

Yeah, new cars are astronomically expensive, and the elites, in all their wisdom, just did their damnedest to destroy all the beaters and crap old cars they could get their pious, saintly claws on a few years back. Now, suddenly, they're discovering that kids, not having access to cheap cars, have all come over "sour grapes" on the subject of driving.

What a surprise. Blind fools, stumbling around in a clutter, Victorian parlor, wondering why every third step hurts their toes so much.

jacksonjay said...

This works as long as mommy can/will continue to drive the little shits to the mall!
I gained more freedom than my kids when they got licensed!

Lyssa said...

I agree that this article is silly, but I (as a late Gen-X-er) actually had a surprising number of friends who chose not to drive in their late teens. I never really could figure out why (I suspect a lot of it was that their parents weren't willing to work with them on it, and they wouldn't admit that it bothered them. They would say that it scared them, or that they just never got around to it, or something like that).

I personally couldn't wait, and didn't even mind that this meant that I usually was the one who got to bus those friends around.

Pastafarian said...

I've got to corroborate this article's thesis with my own personal experience, I'm afraid.

My own son is 17, and he has no desire to get a driver's license. I'm ambivalent about it; I know he has to have one eventually, but this delays the day that I have to worry about him trying to get a Honda Civic up to 100mph and wrapping it around a tree.

So I haven't pushed him on it like I should.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

And, with the shyness of face-to-face contact removed, virtual romances can proceed quickly from one stage to the next

Are they going to be having virtual children as well? Doesn't bode well for their future.

This article is a lot of cow flop (aka bullshit). The examples he is using consist of people who live exclusively in the urban enclaves where you have the conveniences, stores, delivery of food handy. And....as noted it works if the parents enable the little lazy fucks by driving them everywhere and becoming their chauffeurs, maids and cooks.

Fortunately, the rest of the world outside of the urban cesspools is creating real, not virtual, children and living real lives in touch with other people and with the world as literal functioning people.

Michael K said...

That sure doesn't sound like my 22 year old daughter who has put 150,000 miles on her car in six years. She drove from Tucson to Orange County for the weekend. When she was going to college in San Diego, she had a job in Mission Viejo, 60 miles away, and commuted. I paid the gas bills which were about three times what she was earning.

DADvocate said...

My kids certainly looked forward to getting a driver's license and a car. My youngest got her license in May and I bought her a used Hyundai Elantra a couple of weeks later. She's in heaven.

I know a very few people who have a kid not interested in driving. Almost always, the kids is a physical slug, a couch potato, but often smart, technologically sophisticated and socially awkward. Maybe that's why they don't want a car, they have no place to go, no real friends to visit.

Bender said...

What explains it?

"Smart growth". Urban village.

Also, the modern tendency of parents to teach their children to be leeches off of other people by infantilizing their teenagers and 20-somethings by continuing to spoon-feed them money and provide a place to live instead of demanding that they get the hell off the couch and on their two feet and find a job to support themselves.

bagoh20 said...

Not only do they not notice the water in the pot getting warmer, they think something great is happening.

Foolish amphibians.

Ralph L said...

I wonder if it makes a difference that there are so many only children now.

MadisonMan said...

@Pasta, my 16yo is also unwilling to learn how to drive (despite my many suggestions). My 19-yo loves to drive. Just another way they are different.

As the 16-yo is a boy, this is saving me on car insurance. And he can walk or bike just about anyplace he needs to go. Exception: his girlfriend, who lives south of PD. They need rides to visit each other.

richard mcenroe said...

They're not "doing" anything from home. They're just "looking" at it. That's a sometimes necessary substitute but it's not a replacement. At least we're not letting the mushrooms vote on line yet.

gk1 said...

I guess the entry level to teen sex has been lowered. Back in the day you needed to have a means of travel in order to score a girl friend. Nothing says "loser" like having to take a bus on a date or get a ride from mommy.

SteveOrr said...

IF this guy’s right, Mitch makes an important point. Cash for Clunkers was a scandalous disaster. Classic Glazier's fallacy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

I’d vote against Obama on that program alone. What depresses me is that Obama is still bragging about it.

Balfegor said...

This describes me more or less. I have a license, but I haven't driven in years, and have never owned a car. I get about by public transit and cabs. As I live on the Eastern seaboard and am not a great nature fan, this has not generally been a great inconvenience. I hope this trend continues strong so that in a decade or so, there is a thriving middle market in chauffeur services.

Unknown said...

By not buying a car, these "free riders" are sticking the rest of us with the cost of bailing out GM and Chrysler. They need to pay their fair share.

Justice John Roberts has shown the way by affirming that it is constitutional to tax inactivity. Anyone who does not own a car should be assessed a $3000 tax as their fair share.

leslyn said...

Why drive? Why own a car? Because driving a manual high performance car is ONE HELL OF A BLAST!

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