In another thread of this discussion forum, a participant posted the following:
According to The Passion of Ayn Rand, she didn’t drive. There was some mention of them owning a car (and what type it was) when they lived in LA, and that Frank would chauffeur her to work in Hollywood. Among her letters I recall one, I think she was writing to the IRS of all people, which was about why she claimed some kind of expense deduction for her husband, where she says that she does not drive. Or it may have been the letter she wrote to the phone company asking them to extend the lines to their home, noting that in case of an emergency, if her husband couldn’t help, that she couldn’t drive.
This made me think of a funny anecdote. In one of his Ford Hall Forum talks in the early nineties, Peikoff mentioned that he’d just switched from a Pontiac to a Lexus. He declared that this was the equivalent of going, philosophically, from Wittgenstein to Aristotle.
“As she had feared, the distance to Hollywood became a severe problem. Frank had promised to teach her to drive their new Cadillac convertible, so that she would not be dependent on him. He gave her several driving lessons, then they both gave up the attempt in mutually enraged despair. Frank was a very bad driver-some of the most terrifying hours in the lives of his friends were spent in cars with Frank at the wheel-and Ayn, who found mechanical objects impossible to master, was unable to learn. Whenever she had to go to the city, Frank had to take her.” - Barbara Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand
Based on that, I will assume that it is a fact that Ayn Rand never learned to drive a car, never had a driver’s license, and never drove a car (except it seems in some learning attempts).
Ayn Rand was born in 1905 and passed away in 1982. She came to the USA at age 20, in 1925, at a time when automobiles were everywhere and very popular. Automobiles were a huge feature of culture, economics, and lifestyle during her entire lifetime.
This makes me wonder if there is some philosophical significance to Ayn Rand’s not driving any automobiles.
Does her non-driving have some logical relationship to some principle or principles of Objectivism?
Did the major female characters of Ayn Rand’s fiction drive automobiles?
In a related note, the philosopher Martin Heidegger argues in his essay “The Question Concerning Technology" that modern technology is essentially dangerous. He believes that modern technology forces us to misunderstand the world around us, including ourselves.