Honest advice: Get out of your car if you want to be less lonely

There is still, in our increasingly progressive, anything goes world, a slight shame in making some admissions. One of them is uttering the sentence “I can’t drive” well into your thirties.

- Helen Coffey, The Independent

It's less outrageous a statement in London — even if people can drive, plenty don’t, what with there being nowhere to park and Ulez and a public transport network that usually gets you there faster than a car would anyway. But head outside of the urban bubble and the confession becomes cause for consternation. People eye you with a mix of rank suspicion and abject pity. How, they wonder, can you possibly get around? How can you possibly live your life? As someone who's been on the receiving end of this mild humiliation for nigh-on 20 years, I can’t help but take some small pleasure in the recent revelation that driving, far from being the be-all and end all, might actually be making us miserable. A new UK study analysing official statistics on loneliness and transport use found that those who depended on cars were more likely to feel lonely and disconnected than those with access to good public transport.