I DO enjoy driving, especially backroads in the right car (something low and quick, with a manual trans). I could go on for days about why, but I won't bore y'all with that.

I will say that considering that driving is an activity that doing poorly can get you killed, there seems to be very little interest in doing it well.

Small town, Dad was assistant fire chief, later fire chief of the volunteer dept. Single car family so zero chance of using the car. Sophomores were required (not an option) to take Driver's Ed before the risk management lawyers scared the school boards. Even with passing driver's ed. I bought a car before I could legally drive it and that was 4 years later! Better jobs required transportation. D Ed car was dual controls, manual clutch equipped with a glass milk bottle between the instructor's feet. Starts and stops had to leave the bottle upright or it was back seat for the next rotation of drivers (typically 4 plus the instructor in the car). Ended up with many automatics as wife didn't want a manual. When we could we bought a P U with manual transmission for me. 90's kid drivers learned to drive manual transmissions with me telling them the automatic's were not being driven, only aimed. With three generations of drivers out there with little or no formal driver training they really are aiming their automatics! I could go on but it is getting longer than planned.

I thoroughly enjoy driving. There's nothing like the open road with little to no purpose listening to tunes. I've seen more than half the country behind the wheel. Unfortunately as we've gotten older my wife is terrified to be in any car with anyone driving other than herself, I'm not remotely exaggerating. Living in Arizona almost anything worth seeing/doing, aside from the many attractions of the city proper, is hundreds of miles away. Combined with covid fears and my wife's fear I refrain from driving significant distances with her. My last vacation, about 200 miles away in the wilderness forest of northeastern Arizona, caused me a world of shit that's lasted two months so far because I went ALONE and enjoyed the peace.

Once I get a 4x4 I intend to drive more often, further distances, and more remote places...alone.

Love to drive open roads, no freeways, little traffic, in a sports car! Like to be looking up at mountains, not going up them. Just the feeling of driving with you and the car, toward infinity, no better feeling. Wonder how long we will have that right left?

Love driving, but NOT in traffic! Got my license 20 minutes after turning 15 (in FL). Always liked fast cars. Finally got a real handling car (STI), and became addicted.

Now have a Lotus 7 kit car (200 hp, 1,400 lbs), Focus RS (350 hp). Wife has a Mini Cooper S Convertible. These all handle very well. We also have a Jeep Grand Cherokee for lugging us and luggage around, and I have a 2004 Ranger with torsen axles that can drive up the side of a tree. They are a nice relaxing change, but always great to get back to the performance cars.

My brother has a CTS-V, and races it. He has been bugging me to track my Focus RS or Lotus. Will have to do that someday, when I have the time. We are both thinking of building a Factory Five '35 Hot Rod truck kit. Would be pretty cool to lap a BMW in a truck!

We also like working on cars. My brother and I pulled an engine, put it in another car, and turned the key in <2 hrs when in college. I have a spare engine and transmission for my Ranger. Cool, 4.0 SOHC Cologne engine, first produced in 1962, and makes better torque and HP than a modern 4.0L Toyota truck engine. Plan to rebuild and port it, to reinstall in the Ranger.

I like driving but these days I must be on guard when driving the back roads here. Lots of idiots on their phones and on my half of the narrow path. As a retirement gift I bought my wife a new Lexus RX350 that rides like it is floating. I have never had a speeding ticket but this car is one I must employ the cruise control in at all times. The learning curve of all the bells and whistles is a tuff process for this old analog guy in a digital world. I have to sit for a few minutes in the driveway before venturing out just to get all the systems set for me.

I admit to being ambivalent about driving. I can certainly enjoy driving cross country without a lot of clutter to deal with. Driving from stoplight to stoplight in the city isn't a lot of fun.

I have to admit, though, that I look forward to self driving cars becoming more reliable and common. Sitting in my car with a good book as I travel across the country, looking up at the scenery from time to time does sound attractive.

And there is a very good chance that I will never have to face the idea of becoming too old to drive safely and losing that ability to get around -- assuming I can still get to the car.

YES! Got my first car when I was 10...drove it around the yard. Also down the street when the parents weren't home.
All the trouble I got into when I was young was all due to the NEED TO DRIVE!

To this very day, I love driving fast and give me a winding back road and I am in Heaven.

I used to wake up at bout 2:00 am and climb out of my bedroom window to the roof of the back porch, down the trellis and sneak through the yard to my dad's car where I used my secretly made key to start it. I would have arranged to have some buddies at pre-arranged pickup spots and we would joy ride for an hour or so. Some of them would do the same thing so we could do this pretty often without raising suspicion. It would be another 3 years before I was 15 and could get a learners but I did not have to practice a lot for the drivers test. Since this was 1953, in Southern WV, the roads were terrible and steep but there wasn't a lot of traffic.
I still like to drive especially on our trips to Italy. Everyone thinks that Italian drivers are crazy but they are not. They take great pride in their driving skills and when you get the gist of their techniques, you can trust them and glide along with the flow at a very nice clip. On the autostradas I pretty much stay out of the extreme left lane though because going over 200 kph is probably not the best idea for us oldsters.

Thank you for posting this article and spurring many of us to recall a time when we were truly free; free to not only choose but to act on those choices. Eric Peters at EPautos is a fascinating and intriguing writer. I wound up reading over ten of his articles online and I thank you for that. I recommend others to take the time as well. He brought me back to the thrill of driving and made me want to jump into my Miata and hit the back roads once again. Nothing says freedom more than the beauty of driving a stick, reviving the engine toward redline and shifting when you feel like it. Thanks, freedomforall.

Old cars are the best.

You're talking my language.here. I love to drive, used to take care of my own cars until they computerized everything. First official car was a '68 Mustang, but before that I got to drive everything from a recycled auctioned cop car to a great little Nash Metropolitan (Dad had two). I spent a few years after age 60 as an OTR trucker (class B) driving all over the country and a few years as a proud owner/ operator of a 37' motorhome which we lived aboard as we traveled from the Atlantic to the Pacific several times. Just sold my manual transmission pickup last year because hubby could no longer climb up into it.

Yep, and when I coerced my wife into getting her own license (at age 35), she was amazed at why she waited so long...

On the other hand, there were two situations where I disliked driving, on mountain roads with logging activity and in the winter.

The writer of the piece is either atrociously sloppy, or ignorant, or both. Hill holder clutches were in the 1949 Studebaker, and I'm sure they weren't the only one. His discussion of shifting, which was a mishmash of automatic and manual transmission terms (you don't need a clutch to put a car in drive) was ridiculous.

That aside, I was jealous of my friends in South Carolina, where I went to high school. I had arrived from out of state after the state changed the age for a driver's license from 14 to 16, and was one of the few in my sophomore class without a license.

I'm a good driver, with a good record, but renting a car has become a problem in some states, as they demand any driver over the age of 75 purchase the additional insurance in the rental agreement instead of relying on his own auto insurance (which in my case covers any accident I have while driving a rental vehicle). It's another way for the government to exercise ageism, a crime for which they've absolved themselves of responsibility. Now when we vacation I have to let my wife drive, since she's younger. Fortunately she loves to drive, especially in a convertible, and I'm getting accustomed to being navigator and photographer, so she doesn't have to take her eyes off the road.

Him be me da dino him say yeth.

I don't know where this person lives, but I got my full DL at the ripe old age of 14. So did everyone in my Drivers' Education Class. I made a perfect score on the written test and the Highway Patrol Officer who observed my driving complimented me. I have had one ticket in my entire 70 years of driving. It was in a little town in Central Texas that paid their one officer from traffic fine revenue! I laughed when he told me I was going 35 in a 30 mph zone! Paid the ticket though.

Love it, can't afford to do it anymore. Not only are the cars more expensive but local governments keep taking away road space (and parking) instead of building more.

We really need to find a way to privatize roads and parking, and the industry of building more, before governments make it impossible for most people to own cars. Which they've been working up to for decades now; that's why most new housing is dense-pack apartments with nowhere to park. This is the main element of the Great Reset and all these stupid Covid shutdowns are for the purpose of letting them get away with it.

I wonder how similar the set of people who like driving is to the set of people who really value freedom.

I love to drive and through the years, sports cars have been my passion. My first car was a Datsun 240Z. But my dad was a hot rod guy and when he learned that you could put a short block Chevy 350 in it, I think he was trying to kill me... Onward to today, I am in love with my 2012 Audi S4. 3 liter supercharged and such a fun car to modify. It came from the factory with around 330 hp, with everything I have done to it so far, it is pretty close to 475-500 ish. Big , luxurious with a serious bad attitude when you wanna go for it, and handles more nimble than you might think from a four door.

Now here's a subject I can get into. My brother and I used to work on and modify cars when we got our first automobiles. He still lives in New Jersey and I'm in Arizona, he races six-wheelers (he has 4). I have a 2017 Red Nissan Sentra ST when I traded in the Leaf with a depleted battery pack. I love this car it has a CVT tranny, 4 cylinder EFI with three setting engine management system. The Sport Mode is a blast but it does consume more fuel that way. The suspension is tight with fairly wide tires on it. Going up Rt 89A Oak Creek Canyon (known as the switchbacks) from Sedona to Flagstaff it hugs the road. I will never buy or be coerced to buy an electric car.