Is autism becoming infantalised?

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A bit of both might be good. In places like cities where public transport is good, then lessons on using public transport might be good, in places where public transport is horrific, perhaps 20 hours of lessons or a mix.

I never said disabled people were not respectable, I just think there are better ways of enable them to achieve there potential. People who think the ideas are harsh might grow to like them and find it useful once the anxiety has worn off.

You must live in a place with excellent public transit. Your comments don't reflect the reality for my part of the USA at all. Not only is driving considered essential for day-to-day life where I live, but most people also value the ability to travel a bit (to other cities, states, National Parks, even across the border to Canada or Mexico). Our public transit is very slow and doesn't reach many places, locally or otherwise. It is a major sacrifice of quality of life here to be restricted to the bus.

I see it exactly the opposite way: in the US, public transport sucks
Not driving in urban Central Europe is not a problem at all.

Public transport does, indeed, suck, outside of major cities. Even within major cities, it can suck.

I live about 20 miles from the downtown area of NYC. My commute via public transport can be 1.5 hours on a relatively decent day. It's only about a 30-minute drive.

Agreed.  Were I to commute via public transit, the trip would be about 270 minutes one-way.  This does not take into account that the nearest bus stop to my office is about a half-mile away and about 100 feet lower in elevation through desert scrub.

Using my own car takes about 20 to 40 minutes, door-to-door, and I don't have to put up with other passengers.

Where I live, it doesn't just suck, it doesn't exist. It's a 20 minute drive just to get to the nearest bus stop. And that bus wouldn't take me anywhere near where I might need to go generally speaking.

We're both British but I get the sense he lives in the countryside.

Unless you live in a small village, public transport in the UK is fine.

If we're talking buses within a city/town.

Train fares are far too expensive and trains are rubbish and getting worse and worse and the fares going up and up and loads of delays.

That said, I did use to get a train every day to uni. Some days waking up at 6am and catching the train at 7am and getting on it again at 8pm. If I missed it, that was it for the night. So it was important to get the tram or to run in heels through the city after last lecture was over.

In my city, buses are every 10 minutes, if you get on one for adults then it's clean and nice and comfortable. (School buses are another matter). Only reason not to take one is cos of Coronavirus - avoiding cutting down on being inside with strangers. I can walk most places without crossing many roads or walking by the side of many roads though.

It was the same in my home town and that was just a medium sized town. Only difference was more roads but they weren't massive roads, they had pavements & little kids get taught to cross those kinds of streets safely on their own. It would have taken going to the outskirts of town before a bus/car was actually needed by a neurotypical or HFA, able bodied adult (rather than walking).

Everyone I know who drives here regularly in my city is between 40 and 60 (age where you get a free bus pass).

Frankly, public transport outside of cities of about 50,000 or so (or their suburbs) is nonexistent in the US.

Even in parts of Nassau County in New York State (a place with a relatively large population density), one has to walk a few miles at times to get public transport.

As far as the subject at hand: I believe some people can "do better"---but one can't tell a person's "functioning," usually, unless one knows a person well.

I live in a moderate sized town which is close to several other decent towns. There is a fair amount of country in between but depending on where you want to go the busses range from ok to terrible. The train track in my town was demolished years ago but other towns have railways but none within walking distance. The busses can take hours for a 30 minute car trip at its worse.

Mainland Europe seems to have good public transport while the US basically doesn't have any at all, even within their cities.

It depends on where you live more than anything else but in places with terrible public transport, a car and licence will make a big difference in an aspies life.

It would make a big difference----but there are people who are just not suited to driving. And when a person not suited to driving is on the road, that person becomes quite dangerous.

It took me until I was 37 years old to get my license.

Agreed. Not everyone will be able too but driving lessons will soon find that out.

Good job on getting your licence too.

Interesting.

First time I regularly had to go somewhere with bad buses and hard to walk to, I was in my 20s. Same library.

First time I caught a bus regularly, I was 4.

First time I caught a bus regularly alone, I was in my 20s. I was one of the 'free taxi' kids at school. School buses are horrible - I caught one once with a couple of school friends and it was completely lawless. 15 yo bullies ruining it for 11 yo kids & aspie kids. I either got a taxi or parents car and saw no need to travel beyond where I could walk or cycle in my free time.

NT kids would have gone on the bus to town with their mates at the weekend.

I think I could have benefited from being encouraged to do the bus alone as a teenager - go to the library or something. But only in my first town. Second town I lived in was horrible & staying at home was best idea - physical safety first.

Maybe it's a thing about tourist towns? I was six before I went somewhere without a ton of stuff for kids. Maybe tourist town = better transit? We used to walk to town and the beach too, as a family. I'd cycle round the block on my stabiliser bike - we had one 'high street' in one direction & one corner shop in the other.

There is no way it would be sensible for me to drive a car on a main, or any other, road. Public transport is OK as long as I know exactly where to get off and to get back on again to get home

Not everyone can drive but assume you do the 20 hours of driving lessons and the instructor concludes you can't drive, then it'll be on record that you officially can't in black and white. Perhaps it would be cool to have a policy in place for people who are unable to drive to have free public transport or allow them to jump the queue.

It's an idea that if in place takes the ambiguity out of what people can and can't do and it extends beyond driving. One of the other benefits might be less BS from the benefits office who are notorious in wrongly assuming people lie about their disabilities.

You didn't specifically, and I don't think I said you did, just that your ideology is the same as the ideology which is used as an excuse to remove benefits. Once the idea gets accepted that the disabled aren't disabled, the door is open to ignoring their disabilities.

As you say, a lot of people would voluntarily accept free driving lessons, and I don't see much good coming of applying force to the others. And I wonder how such force would be applied, and who decides what is just a bit of healthy stress and what is unacceptable? It doesn't look like you're saying the individual on the receiving end of this proposed coercion would be the judge, though I can't see who else would be in a position to know.

Compulsory job training - I thought that had always been the purpose of ordinary schools. It's one of the things about schools I have a problem with, so I'm not likely to support further pushing around. I'm more interested in the Steiner and Montessori kind of school ethos where they're gentler, and they don't make a kid do a thing till the kid is ready for it.

Personally, trying to force me to do anything usually does more harm than good. The few people who have tried haven't known me well enough to tailor their "suggestions" to me. For example, I can multi-task if I'm given the freedom not to and the freedom to decide what to multi-task and how to multi-task it. I'm the only one who knows how I tick, and I often find it very difficult to explain to others how that process works. So if somebody tries to multi-task me, telling me that I can spend x minutes on this and then while I'm waiting for x to come to the boil I can spend y minutes on that, etc., then it's not likely to work. I can't explain why it's not going to work, but the most likely work is that the interfering busybody who took the initiative will have just stressed me out for nothing, and resources will have been wasted. To a large extent, I have to do things my own way, setting my own pace and my own targets. And I think it's often like that for Aspies.

As for this free cars issue, my point is that most of them won't be able to afford to buy their own. You've already suggested they should do menial jobs. I suppose you think all they have to do is work hard and one day they'll be millionaires. There might be one in a million or so who somehow gets that far. But for most, they'll be stuck in that poverty trap forever. There just aren't enough places higher up. And to get one, you have to be ruthless and dishonest. Business is no place for the compassionate and sincere.