Non-drivers in the UK
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¶1My name is Andrew and I'm a non-driver. I don't drive motorised vehicles known as cars. I can, but I won't. I probably should, but I don't. I'm a non-driver.
¶2For a skill that in terms of human history is still relatively new — it's approximately 127 years since automobiles were available to the public — driving is considered innate. "You don't drive?" people say, quizzically. As a form of defence I have developed a few retorts. But for all the bravado, I feel like a good-for-nothing.
¶3So accustomed are we to the idea of being able to control a complex piece of machinery at high speeds, that we never mention it. You never hear: "Meet my husband... he's a driver, don't you know!" It is only the non-drivers that are afforded special demarcation. I'm also a non-racist, a non-astronaut and a non-morris dancer, but nobody cares about all of that.
¶480% of UK men eligible for a driving licence have one. However, there are some five million males — including myself — who will never drive our partners home from dinner parties. Quite a lot of us will not do so because we find it too scary. There is no medical term for the phobia of driving, which let's face it is a pretty rational fear, unlike say, balloons (globophobia) or felt (textophobia). We are simply "the nameless".
¶5Even in today's liberated age, the idea of a non-driving woman is still fine, but Driving Mr Daisy is not. Aside from people so powerful, they don't have time to drive, because they're busy writing film scripts in the back of limos, the rest of us have to drive. If we don't, society raises a collective eyebrow. Why the big deal? It's only driving! In car ads, however, the notion of driving is presented as being cool, exciting and manly. Hardly any other form of potentially fatal human activity is so casually and misleadingly glossed up.
¶6I know that statistically my fear is irrational, so why have I made my life so difficult? Well, I hated driving lessons, even though I passed first time. On hearing the news, I sniggered: "Are you sure?" I then moved from Norwich to London, where a large proportion of friends and colleagues either couldn't or didn't drive. It wasn't an issue, but as the years went by the idea of getting back behind the wheel became more and more terrifying. Scientists believe that younger men, particularly teenagers, have virtually no sense of mortality and as such the emerging ego regularly tries to "cheat death" in order to gain social standing. I don't think I ever had that mindset, and I certainly don't have it now. I have a "life wish".
¶7So what is life like as a non-driver? Well, it's socially awkward. Often, I feel absolutely stupid. My four-year-old daughter recently pointed at a car being driven down the road and roared: "That car was driven by a man. Men don't drive cars!" I went red. Thank God, I don't have a son, I thought.
¶8Another time I was asked to move the family car a few yards back, while my wife had popped into a shop, and I found myself shaking like a leaf. "I can't move it!" I mumbled with an apologetic shrug. "You'll have to shoot me."
¶9There are benefits, of course. Being a non-driver means I simply don't understand Top Gear, something I see as a gift. It also means I don't get upset by fuel prices, car parks or speed cameras. But, hands-up, I wish I did drive. I want to drive to experience the oft-cited freedom of the road. I often think of all things I have missed. The routes and journeys my life could have taken if I had been less dependent on Tubes, buses and cabs.