Via Autoblog comes a statistic of shocking magnitude:
According to a recent study, nearly a third of American 19-year-olds haven’t bothered to get their driver’s licenses yet. Three decades ago, it was just one in eight who skipped that right of passage, according to Michael Sivak, of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, or UMTRI. Among those 20 to 24, meanwhile, only 81 percent had gotten their licenses in 2010, down from 92 percent in 1983.
I would have willingly given up my left arm for my drivers license when I was seventeen years old. Without hesititation. The ability to hop in a car and drive, to go where I wanted when I wanted, was more than just a right of passage, but the embodiment of freedom.
And cars were cool. Guys had pictures of cars on their bedroom walls, the second most dreamed about thing for a teenage boy.
Having seen advertisements for cars over the past decade, I fully understand why young people aren’t quite as juiced up about the current crop as I was in the 1970s, Detroit inertia, soccer moms and government regulation having sucked the fun out of cars. But still, even a minivan can get you far from your parents’ watchful eyes, and isn’t that what it’s all about?
The post, which is primarily concerned with the impact of Gen X’s indifference toward cars on the auto industry, makes a half-hearted effort to explain this phenomenon:
Why are young Americans losing their love affair with the automobile? There are any number of explanations. There’s the economy, of course, which has even driven millions of older buyers out of the car market. Young buyers, in particular, are more likely to have to settle for higher interest – meaning costlier – subprime loans. Compounding matters, they’re facing a market with higher unemployment and lower wages, and are leaving school saddled with massive loan debt.
Of course, that’s all meaningless, anyway, for those who don’t have a license and don’t want one.
Yeah, that doesn’t compute at all. We had no money, but that stopped no one from getting their license at the first opportunity.
The biggest reason behind this dwindling love affair might be a series of broad societal shifts. A recent analysis of census data found that for the first time since the launch of the Model T, America’s urban population is growing faster than in the suburbs. Even Detroit, with its crumbling neighborhoods, has seen a revival in its downtown core.
Nope, that doesn’t explain it either. Young people may be moving to the cities (because they can’t afford a house and need a job), but that happens later, and explains nothing about their not getting a license.
Have you ever tried to take a cellphone or iPad away from a teenager? For a large percentage of Millennials, texting has become the preferred form of communication, and “Virtual contact reduces the need for actual contact,” suggests UMTRI’s Sivak. “We found that the percentage of young drivers was inversely related to the availability of the Internet.”
This may be onto something. A generation ago, the only way to get away was to physically leave, to create separation of your bedroom with cowboy sheets and let the wind blow through your long hair. If your eyes are focused on a screen that provides a substitute for the world outside, you don’t need to leave your bedroom to be anywhere. You match wits with a thousand disembodied screen names belonging to people you will never meet, never know, and it satisfies the primal need to connect with others. You find a website somewhere with people who validate you, and get your heroin right through the touchpad.
How did virtual existence replace the real thing? You can have virtual sex. Be a virtual hero fighting virtual aliens. Drive a virtual Healey. It’s nothing like the real thing.
The idea of being 19 years old and unable to get any further away from home than you can walk or your mommy will drive you in the minivan is astounding. Is this really all you want out of life? Are you satisfied with a world that consists of a chatroom?
In a few hours, I plan to jump into this Healey and drive it as fast as the speed limit will allow. I plan to drive along the water, and stop along the way to meet up with some friends of mine, who will be there in person, one in a Healey BN4 and the other in Jaguar XK 120 drophead coupe.
Is the best you can ever hope for a video of someone doing this? That’s not life. That’s not freedom. And you can’t even think of doing it because you don’t have a drivers license.
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When you’re in the city you don’t need to drive to get where you want. You take the bus or the subway, or when time is really tight a cab. And you’ve likely been doing that since well before you hit 16, so there’s no promise of new freedom. Plus it’s what the adults do anyway, so there isn’t even a parent’s car to borrow after you get your license.
(For my part, I didn’t want to get a license until I knew I’d be able to get a car because borrowing the family vehicle was out of the question, meaning I could get around better with a bus. I planned to get a car eventually but I was afraid of being so rusty if I got a license at 16 but didn’t drive until 18 or 20 that I’d wreck immediately.)
The reference to people moving into urban areas isn’t about kids who grew up there, but moved there after they left home. This doesn’t explain why they didn’t get a license before they moved into the city. If I understand you correctly, you grew up in the city, and your parents didn’t have a car, which means you aren’t the person who would have gotten a license 20 years ago either.
I read it as their parents moving to the cities with kids in tow, or the urban areas out-reproducing rural and suburban towns. If the population growth isn’t bringing in more teenagers, why bring it up?
As for me, I got a license when we could afford a car for me to drive-I didn’t see the point without one. A better economy would help with that.
I’m of the age group where one got a license as soon as legally possible. I had to wait until I was 18 because I’d been living overseas, in a country that didn’t grant licenses to under-20s at the time.
But living in London in the 1990s, I discovered that fewer than 50% of Brits had drivers licenses. Part of it was the cost: study for the driving test could cost over a thousand dollars. The major factor, though, was urbanization coupled with a decent public transportation system. They just didn’t need a car and, had they one, there was no place to cheaply park it. Now that London charges $8.00/day just to enter the core of the city, it makes it even less appealing or affordable.
My son, who went to boarding school in the UK, didn’t get his license until 18, when he returned to the US. He didn’t need a car at college–Amtrak actually worked perfectly and he was at an urban campus. When he moved out to LA to find work, however, it was never a question but that he needed a car.
I learned to drive at 13, during summers on my dad’s ranch, which would surely be considered child abuse today. I couldn’t wait toget my driver’s license. But by the time I was 16, the state of California had decided that I couldn’t be trusted driving at night or with my friends I the car. My best friend, eight months older then me, had no such restriction. So that took a good bit of the urgency out of it.
Now, I see plenty of kids come in, looking at losing their license for any of the myriad “Abuse and Lose” laws. At the same time, their parents are hovering on their shoulder, offering to ferry them anywhere they feel like going.
So it’s no surprise to me that the man-children were producing lack the basic motivation to get of their butts and go claim a smidgen of independence. I’m saddened, but not surprised.
Driver’s licenses today do not offer the same freedom.
I grew up in L.A. where driving is not optional. Looking back now at how we used our car-freedom, it’s not possible for 16 year olds to have the same experiences today. Under today’s “graduated license” laws, in California, being 16 means you can drive with no passengers and not after 11pm.
Forget going on a date in a car, or riding with friends to the beach/ball game/party/concert whatever. Forget going by yourself to many of these events unless you’re home by 11pm.
so I wouldn’t beat up the kids for e-socializing where car-socializing is now illegal. And if they don’t get licenses in high school, they are less likely to get them in college as many colleges prohibit or make impossible having a car on campus if you’re a freshman/sophmore living in a dorm.
I wonder if we’re going to see more first time licenses issued to people in their mid-20s, as having a driver’s license is really not optional to live a normal life outside Manhattan perhaps. And if you like to travel overseas, gotta learn manual transmission.
But some people will be lost to driving forever. Hope the auto insurance industry, which pushes a lot of these draconian restrictions, enjoys the savings from fewer lifetime customers. Car makers need to realize they’ve got a stake in this as well. Sure young people don’t vote and nobody cares if they are inconvenienced, but let’s not be surprised when they’re not sold on driving.
I get the limitations, but there isn’t a restriction in the world that would have stopped me from getting a license. They can still drive to a friend’s house. They can still drive to the beach. They may not be able to do everything they want, but with no license they go no place.
I fail to see why no place is better than someplace. And I fail to see why they wouldn’t grab as much freedom as they possibly can.
There are always kids with peculiar situations that explain something, but that doesn’t account for a third of 19 year olds (not 16, but 19) not having licenses.
I think you’ve hit it on the head with “man-child.” Don’t they want to grow up? Don’t they want to have some independence? Some do, but an awful lot are happy enough sitting on the couch in mommy’s basement munching on Cheetos and playing Mortal Kombat.
You mention that “we all had no money” but it really is different this time. Heck, I’m barely 30 and kind of a millie myself, but when I was 16 you could still get a gallon of gas for 79 cents. Also, the Cash for Clunkers program had a significant effect – on used car prices. Now, if you want a used-up Toyota, you’ll have to pony up $5,000 or $6,000 up front and another $4 for every gallon of gas.
At some point the cost and hassle aren’t worth the very minimal freedom. Take the beach example. Parking can be expensive and difficult to find, it’s a natural car-pooling destination. If you want to go with three friends, that’s four cars circling around, feeding maybe four meters, and don’t stretch the plans and have dinner too late.
I’m with you as far as freedom, but some people will find other use for their $ if their ability to drive is curtailed — and these are very serious restrictions designed to eliminate recreational/social driving by teens. I don’t fault kids who may be less able to afford the cost, given the reduced value of a license and, yes, modern social options. It’s a different world, and not one they made.
we are constantly raising the age of majority in this country in many ways, and it has consequences — uniformly negative IMHO.
But you don’t need to have a car to have a license. My first car was a ’69 VW Beetle, and I had a license for 4 years before I bought it.
I hear you. I just can’t believe they’re put off that easily. And if they can afford an iPhone, can’t they afford a few galons of gas every once in a while?
One of the problems with freedom is how easily you let someone else take it away. So MADD and SADD and the nannies and the gas and insurance companies made freedom harder than it used to be? So give up and play video games? Wimps.
The risks keep getting ratcheted up, and the reward keeps getting cranked down. I think that we’re teaching a large portion of them that independence isn’t worth it.
That brings some new slogans for the Slackoisie to mind:
Give me
libertyiPad or give me death.Give me liberty or
give me death, never mind, it’s too much effort.Give me liberty
orgive me deathas long as I don’t have get off the couch.Yeah, independence isn’t worth it. It’s way too much effort as long as there are Cheetos left to be eaten.
As a Gen-X’er, I think you’re being too hard on Gen Y. The job market is crap, insurance is expensive and car payments are expensive. If you can’t get a job, a car is a luxury. Maybe they don’t want to be debt slaves like the rest of America? Smart move if you ask me.
What part of “you don’t need to own a car to get a license” is confusing?
What a total crock of BS. These are all ridiculous excuses for not getting a license. If true, then the millenials are wimps and don’t deserve a licence.
But I don’t think it’s true. I think they got called out by SHG and are now making up excuses for being frightened little man-children. The reason they have no independence is they don’t deserve any indenpendence, bunhc of whiny babies.
The main reason to get a license is so that you can drive. If I’m not mistaken, one can get an ID card that is not a license.
You should be more polite when replying to people.
I’m not buying either. I’ve yet to hear one thing that would have stopped someone from getting a license 20 years ago.
Yes, the main reason to get a license is so you can drive. That has nothing to do with owning a car. And if you don’t like my impolite reply, then go away, but don’t come to my house and tell me how I should treat you.
It probably didn’t occur to you, but maybe the reason SHG’s reply was so snarky is that your comment is incredibly stupid?
Think about it.
As a young kid, my friends and I ranged far and wide on our bikes. We explored the town, parks, forests, and beaches. We left home in the morning, and returned home in time for dinner. We had no cell phones to check in with our parents. This was normal. As soon as we were old enough to drive, cars replaced the bikes, but the only thing that changed was that we could now explore further.
In contrast, I suspect that the phenomenon of more kids not immediately seizing the opportunity to get their drivers license today is directly correlated to how little freedom these same kids were given at younger ages to explore the world on foot or on bicycles. Media induced parental paranoia about pedophiles and other bad stuff has resulted in a world in which many kids aren’t allowed to explore farther than the boundaries of their yards or cul de sac without parental accompaniment. The fears of the parents have likely been incorporated into the fears of many of their children, and since they never really knew freedom anyway, they don’t even have a sense that they are missing out.
Check out Lenore Skenazy’s excellent blog, “Free Range Kids” for an examination of this overprotective culture of parenting and its consequences.
I
While I believe your premise about the treatment of kids is true, I see nothing to relate this to getting a drivers license. It certainly doesn’t impair their internet use.
As for Lenore, while I agree with her thrust as well, I find her posts hysterical and frequently straining reason well beyond its breaking point, which I think is a product of her not having enough to write about and consequently having to take insignificant matters and try to make them appear earth-shattering.
Lmao so deep within the weird American fetishization of cars as Freedom and Truth and Mobility that you literally can’t conceive of someone being unable to, or not wanting to, own a vehicle.
Lots of people can’t afford a vehicle. Lots of people just take the bus and don’t need one. Lots of people bike or use alternative methods of getting around because they think owning a car is wasteful and counter-productive.
There are a number of broader trends and social developments that would explain why people aren’t getting drivers licenses until later / ever. Becoming more common for people to live and work downtown and not really need to go anywhere that isn’t within biking / bussing distance? Nope, must be because everyone but me is lazy. Old man SHG mode, activate, shake cane out the driver’s side window of whatever fancy car you’re bragging about at the end of this post
While all of you are dwelling on the glass-half-empty of “younger generations are coddled and unambitious,” I’ll be over here enjoying a glass-half-full of “that means a third of all teenagers are unlikely to kill me because they were texting while driving.” Frankly, I don’t want kids who are so obsessed with their virtual lives that they can’t be bothered to get their license out on the road, so it’s a win-win, the way I look at it.
If one were to be extremely charitable, it’d be generous to surmise that perhaps some of the language of how we talk about cars has had an impact, too. I do know that teenagers these days are considerably more environmentally conscious — at least, that is, that they’ve accepted that fossil fuels are bad for the environment (rassum-frassum litterbugs) — and it’s possible that driving around aimlessly on a Friday night is less socially acceptable now than in the past. The urge to leave your parents’ house as a teenager is powerful, but it’s nothing compared to peer pressure…
Anyway, it does lead me to wonder, regarding texting-while-driving, if we’ve made the wrong assumption: in that debate, we tend to start from the position that driving is the essential activity, and the texting can wait. Apparently, though, the texting is vital, while the driving is in second place. What a strange world.
I wonder how much the rise of cell phones has contributed to a decrease in licensing driving. I got my license before cell phones became ubiquitous and there was a thrill of freedom associated with being anywhere (even a 7-11 in suburban Dallas) that I couldn’t be reached by my parents.
Now with cell phones turned into glorified GPS leashes, a bit of the thrill is probably gone. There’s something sad about that.
Another that went unmentioned is the belief by some parents that children diagnosed as ADD may not be capable of driving. Sounds like a recipe for learned helplessness to me, but I’ve heard that one fairly often.
Full disclosure, I’m among the oldest of Gen Y (raised by Silent Generation folks), and there was no doubt about me getting a license at 16. My dad actually liked the idea of a hardship license at 14 (half hour drive to school with traffic). I’m fairly surprised by the drop versus gen X in the aggregate, but I wouldn’t be surprised if each factor mentioned in these threads was the deciding factor for a small percentage of the population. The possibility that the cumulative impact might be so high is shocking.
Commie slacker. Since you’re obviously only twelve (the “Lmao” is a dead giveaway), I’ll try to explain it to you, but this time using smaller words. Even if people move to the city to work and don’t need cars, this happens after the initial age licensure has come and gone. In other words, by the time they move, they are already well past the third who never got a license. As a general rule, after-occurrence cannot explain what came before because it didn’t happen yet. Let me know if the words are too big.
Too bad you don’t like my Healey. I do, and (to be honest) will take it any day over your iPhone. And does you mother know you’re cruising big boy blogs on the internet? Never mind, she’s probably happy you’re not spending all day reading FunnyJunk.
Good point.
I have two vehicles, and my daily driver would blow the doors off whatever weird geezermobile you’re so proud of. I got my license well after I was 16, because a vehicle was a luxury and I got a license when I could afford it, and made due with bikes, buses, and trains when I couldn’t
Glad your mommy and daddy let you drive their vehicle to get your licensee, less glad you think that it would reflect negatively on someone else that they weren’t similarly fortunate
Matchbox/Barbie cars don’t count. And oddly enough, your assumption that I drove my parents’ care is wrong as well (though that’s how most of my friends got their license back in geezer days). Don’t assume unless your trying to look foolish.
I do, however, like your characterization of “weird geezermobile.”
So if you didn’t have a car and didn’t borrow your parents car, whose car did you use to take your road test?
I borrowed a car from one of my teachers. Nice guy. Nuts to let me borrow it, but I appreciated it.
I bet you are pretty active on Healey message boards and forums .. not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Yeah, me and all the old geezer braggard fetishists.
I’m still dying to get my hands on a 1969 GTO. One of these days…..
Ah, fine old weird geezermobile. Excellent choice.
My generation is more recent than Steve’s, but I and every single one of my friends all got our licenses at the earliest opportunity (I was 16 in 1992.)
These days I have volunteered with high school students at church and I do notice that getting one’s license is seen as much more optional, although to be fair, this is less common among young males.
I agree that it’s mainly the internet and text messaging that has become the substitution (and especially for girls, since they are much heavier users of texts/facebook/etc.) Before the internet and cell phones became ubiquitous, if I wanted to have contact with my friends, I could either sit tethered to an old-fashioned phone in my house or I had to go see them. It was also before the days of helicopter parenting where folks feel the need to hover over their children and be appraised of their every word and deed 24/7. Young adults were assumed to have more freedom back then.
My son (who got his permit on his 17th birthday, the first possible opportunity) used to IM with his girlfriend for hours on end. I would yell at him to get out of the house and do something with her or he would never get to second base. (Only kidding about the second base part)