[W]holesale prices on big SUVs such as Chevrolet Tahoes, Ford Expeditions and Toyota Sequoias are down 17% from a year ago. Full-size pickups have fallen as much as 15%…

In moral deliberation, “what everyone does” is irrelevant except insofar as it changes what one ought to do or can do. It is of absolutely no use whatsoever to try to think of the principle which if everyone followed, we would be better off, because we don’t make laws for others. The point of moral deliberation is to find what’s right for one to do, and simply because one is a moral universalist and believes that anyone in that situation would have the same duties does not mean the point of investigating duties is to find out “what everyone should do”. “What everyone should do” is of no moral significance whatsoever.

Since I don’t believe in God or morality which is imposed on us in abstraction from our involvements, I think all moral duties derive from the situations we find ourselves in, or can expect to find ourselves in. So, I entirely agree that as the “age of driving” comes to an end, the duty to have the ability to drive will fade. I do not think any duties are absolute outside particular situations, because I just don’t think its possible to know in advance what moral demands will be made on us, although we can make good guesses.

To clarify, I never argued that there was a duty to get a license, merely to have the ability to drive (this would probably include the ability to drive different kinds of vehicles, i.e. manual, gas and diesel, trucks and cars etc…). I would agree first aid training falls into the same category of duties. There is something like a duty to know basic first aid training because you can expect the possibility in which said training would appear as a necessity in some situation is not obscure.

Another point to consider is if the advantages of everyone being able or licensed to drive are outweighed by the cost in lives on the road of private automobiles being the dominant form of transportation.

Part of the reason I resist the pressure on me to get a license is that if I had one and no car, I would drive rarely, which would make me a decidedly less safe driver than someone who is on the road every day. I also wonder if the incentive to get behind the wheel out of convenience would prove too compelling, especially considering how much more convenient driving makes backcountry skiing.

Certainly, in areas where driving is an absolute necessity, there would be a strong argument for a moral duty to acquire driving skills, but everyone learns to drive in these places anyways. It’s in the city, where such a circumstance would be much rarer, where you would find the most people who can’t drive.

I do not mean that everyone is so dependent, but from my observation of Milan’s friends, their normal patterns of behavior often require someone to act as a driver. What sort of skills one depends on is contingent on the actions one engages in.

However, this is not so important for my argument. What I really wanted to point towards was the existence of certain contexts where the ability, but not license, to drive a car appears as an absolute necessity. Such as, if someone needs to get to the hospital and there is no ambulance service – or even if there is, in rural areas ambulances take twice as long as a car because they have to travel in both directions. (Of course they can drive faster which someone mitigates this, and perhaps they are safer than speeding).

I think the strong requirement to learn to drive is derived from the reasonable possibility that one might one day find oneself in a situation where this skill is indispensable. Saying that there will likely be someone else there to has the skill doesn’t feel like a way to shrug off the moral requirement, because if everyone made that argument, then it would become false.

In the UK I use public transit to get virtually everywhere, including airports, my parents house, friends houses, and entertainment such as Wimbledon or Brighton Pier. In Vancouver I get around by cycling & public transit, except for the times I purchase things like large furniture or large plants (though often the retailers will deliver). When I travelled to Yosemite from Vancouver, Greyhound buses took me the entire way. Even at the extreme of having a stress fracture in my leg, I got around using public transit & occasional taxis.

As such, I see no problem with urban societies in which the only drivers are professional drivers – people in buses, taxis, fortlifts etc. HOWEVER, such societies would require a better developed etiquette for using public transit, eg. not smoking at bus stops; not having loud, protracted personal calls on crowded buses; and using a hankerchief when you sneeze.

That is one of the ways in which it is like smoking. At one point, diners in restaurants and office workers would have assumed the right to smoke wherever they were.

Now, people are legally obligated to take the health and comfort of others into account – at least when it comes to the absolutely vile habit of smoking.