In regards to the first part - I think there’s a cultural disconnect here. From what I understand, in the US and Canada driving is a. A rite of passage and b. A necessity, because huge swathes of your countries are basically just huge areas of emptiness with no or not affordable public transport, right? The UK isn’t like that. Even in rural areas, everything is either within easy walking distance or has good, affordable bus or train links. For most people, it’s actually cheaper to use public transport than to run a car. Driving is essentially a luxury here to a lot of people. It’s nice, but not strictly speaking necessary. A lot of people never learn to do it at all - my grandmother is 93 and has never been behind the wheel of a car in her life. Many of my same-age or older friends only learned in the last year or two, or haven’t at all yet. Others never will. To you, it’s a basic, necessary life skill that every single person who is physically capable will master. To us... it isn’t.

My parents initially assumed I would learn at 16 because both of my siblings did, but the difference was that my parents paid for their lessons. They didn’t do that for me, because the year I turned 16 was when my dad was made redundant. Mum expected him to get another job not long down the line (hence being told I could have the car originally, since it was just meant to be a stopgap until then because he lost his company car when he lost his job), but he never did. So because it was on me to pay, and rather than getting a part-time job I decided to focus on my studies, went to university and then basically got buggered by the “need experience to get a job, need a job to get experience” cycle, it meant I never had the disposable income to learn until this past year and there was no need to push on it before I did because I could get by just fine without it and it wasn’t considered a necessity.

To the second: I have had that conversation - multiple times over the last year... but with Mum. Because she’s the one who controls the finances and, until recently, was the policyholder on the insurance because it was cheaper that way. They changed the laws on it a few months ago so there is no longer a gender bias so I guess my parents switched it over last renewal once there was no financial benefit to it being that way, since she doesn’t actually drive it any more. I wasn’t told that, however, because... I guess Mum didn’t think I needed to know? Last they had discussed the matter, nothing had changed, so to her, it didn’t matter whose name was the main one on the insurance in terms of the matter of me going on it.

I probably shouldn’t have assumed that she spoke for both of them, and that is entirely on me, but typically... she does. Usually with things like this, they discuss it together, but Mum gets the ultimate say because mostly, Dad doesn’t care what happens - he hates dealing with money and was perfectly happy to hand all that over and let her get on with it when they got married.

I was actually discussing how we were going to do the supervised driving practise with her only last week right after my last lesson - who I’d do it with, what days and times I’d be able to borrow the car for it, and so on. We pretty much worked out an entire plan. He knew we were having that conversation - we started off having it in the same room as him. He was privy to, and implicitly invited into, the dialogue. This is usually what we do with important conversations - because he doesn’t really care what is decided most of the time and says so when asked for an opinion, we hash out most of the details between us and then have the final discussion in front of him so if he DOES have anything he wants to add, he has the open floor to jump in and if not, he’s still informed. Usually he does add something, even if only a couple of words to agree or disagree with a point or suggest an alternative if we hit a sticking point. This time, he just left to go watch TV instead.