Kids On Driver’s Licenses: Meh!

Well this is really odd: according to statistics from the Federal Highway Administration, there are less teens with driver’s licenses then a decade ago.

It used to be one half of 16 year olds had them, now it’s a third. Demographically speaking, that’s a HUGE drop.

I guess what I want to know is, what’s the driver… why aren’t kids interested in getting a driver’s license? The article says increasing costs of being a driver. Fair enough … the average kid job makes getting even a Yaris a daunting proposition, but kids still got to get around.

More than anything, a car means getting away from mom & dad.

Ask any social scientist worth his multiple doctorates, and they’ll tel you that “there was a sexual revolution in the 60s” is a load of horse manure. Sure, there was a sexual revolution all right, but it happened in the 1920s. Why? The automobile.

For the first time in history, teens could easily get away from being chaperoned by adult authority figures … and you know what that means. Look at the figures for things such as unwanted pregnancies, rates of STDs, alcohol & drug intake. They all went up, and have stayed more or less constant for the last 90 years. Why? The automobile.

Now, I don’t know, maybe things have changed since I was 16. Maybe today’s kids don’t think the same way that literally 99% of the kids in suburban America circa mid-1970s were thinking, but back then the deal was real simple: Get out of the house, get away form mom & dad, get to where some more kids are hanging out at, get drunk (or something), and hopefully (please dear God, please) get laid.

In. That. Order.

The number one thing was: Get out of the house.

So if there’s that fewer kids with licenses today, how are they doing it?

Great post Tony. To be honest, I don’t think kids today have as much of a problem getting out of the house as we did. When I was a kid: I did something wrong, I got spanked, I got grounded - and it worked! Try spanking a kid now and you’re getting flagged with child abuse.

That point aside, it seems like kids today are way too coddled and allowed to do whatever they want. So I just think it’s a matter of them not having a problem getting away from mommy & daddy.

I wouldn’t even know what to do if I didn’t have my car. Then again, I need it for work and school, so there’s no way I could live without it. A lot of teens these days just don’t care enough to get a license. They can bum a ride with their family and friends, take a bus, or maybe even walk! With the growing cities I can see why less teens are driving. There are more bus routes available.. malls and stores and everything else are in a closer proximity since tons seem to keep popping up everywhere, over here at least.

Maybe it’s a good thing though less teens are driving? That’s less idiots I have to worry about on the road!