The very comfortable and sturdy shoes I have used for driving fairly long distances
Not too much shoe for that. Bearing in mind what else you're using it for you may not want to go too light, but honestly
most shoes are too heavy and clumsy and badly engineered to boot. Researchers in the area are now saying people's footwear is the major cause of foot problems and the people with the healthiest feet are tribespeople who've never worn them.
Most shoes have heels, which interfere with gait when walking -- really a heel-less shoe like an old-time Redskin moccasin is better for the foot. Most are also too narrow, too heavy, too inflexible, have too much "toe spring" (to compensate for the inflexibility), and, incredibly, are made on misshapen lasts.
Here's why they're bad in detail:
http://nwfootankle.com/files/rossiWhyShoesMakeNormalGaitImpossible.pdf
People are becoming aware of the problems and there's a kind of movement towards "minimalist" shoes, particularly for kids. A few companies offer something of the sort. About the easiest to get hold of in the UK are Terra Plana Vivo Barefoot:
http://www.vivobarefoot.com/uk/mens.html/
You sometimes get end-of-line ones knocked down to about half-price on Amazon. The sizing is done in Continental, which is a piece of foolishness, but I guess in line with the company's podiatric seriousness, since the international Podiatry Association demands that for it to approve a range of shoes. The conversions seem a bit off to me, and I always buy one size bigger than what they say the British size is.
But for me this is probably about the best you'd get for driving -- or walking. And that's simply because they don't interfere with your feet or your natural gait as much as "conventional" shoes do. I throw away the insoles as well, so that I can really feel the ground. The soles are an extremely flexible thin 3mm but pretty much puncture-proof -- and staggeringly wear-resistent -- as they're made from kevlar.
