Can J. K. Rowling Drive?

As one of the most successful authors in history, J. K. Rowling could afford to purchase any car she wanted. The question is whether or not she is actually able to drive.

J. K. Rowling does not have a driver’s license. She has joked that this is due to her lack of spatial awareness, inability to operate machinery, and a general loose grasp on reality. Rowling has also referred to this fact in disproving an urban myth about a parking meter she supposedly used in Edinburgh, stating that she has never used one.

For more on J. K. Rowling’s lack of a driver’s license and how it likely doesn’t significantly affect her daily life, read on.

Rowling and Driving

J. K. Rowling has publicly stated that she doesn’t drive, responding to a since-deleted tweet that was presumably asking why she doesn’t have a driver’s license.

Rowling replied in semi-joking fashion, dryly explaining that her lack of a license is the result of her having “no spatial awareness”, an inability to operate, and “a tenuous grip on reality”. She shared her belief that it’s “really best for everyone” if she doesn’t drive.

The tweets were likely prompted by another exchange on the same day, October 6, 2017, regarding the same subject. A Twitter user shared that he had apparently overheard a Harry Potter tour in Edinburgh, where Rowling has lived for much of her adult life.

The supposed tour had pointed out a parking meter that Rowling had used during the writing of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, the final novel in the series. It is unclear whether Rowling allegedly used the meter repeatedly or just once, or what the supposed significance of this particular meter held for her.

Rowling was quick to dispel the myth by pointing out that she can’t drive and has thus never used a parking meter.

Life WIthout Driving

Rowling’s inability to drive has likely been less of a hindrance than it might have been due to the fact that she has lived in cities for most of her adult life. Though she was born and grew up in rural England, she attended the University of Exeter to earn her degree in French.

Her time at university also included a year in Paris, a city renowned for being a world leader in public transport, as part of a student exchange program. Following her graduation, she lived in London, then Manchester, both in England, before moving to Porto, Portugal, to teach English as a foreign language.

Following an unhappy marriage to Jorge Arantes, a Portuguese journalist, she moved to Edinburgh, Scotland in December 1993, where she has lived ever since. All of Rowling’s adult residences have something in common: they are situated in large cities with extensive public transport.

There’s no reason to think that Rowling couldn’t have completed her daily business perfectly well without needing to drive herself.

Of course, any concerns Rowling might have had regarding moving from place to place are probably long since forgotten. The author is estimated to be worth somewhere in the region of $1 billion, enough to employ a personal driver and to purchase a different supercar for every day of the year if she were so inclined.

Even though the parking meter that supposedly played a role in the writing of “Deathly Hallows” was just a bizarre urban myth, Rowling’s distrust of technology and her inability to use it might go some way to explaining her “Wizarding World”.

Muggle technology, the sort that we use in our daily lives, is shown to be ineffective in particular areas populated by magic users, such as Hogwarts, and maybe this is the kind of world that Rowling would prefer to inhabit. After all, magic seems as though it would be far more fun to use than that parking meter.

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