I think driving is a necessary skill for the vast majority of Americans to possess. As such, I think parents have a responsibility to make sure their kids know how to drive. I understand that there are plenty of exceptions to the rule though. However, if your child is raised in a suburban area then odds are he or she needs to know how to drive.
I am not trying to rain on your day but, you have thrown away a few thousand dollars by skipping drivers ed.
Drivers ed cost for teens is about 3-500$, but if you wait til 18 and skip driver training you don’t get the discounted insurance. so the first year you save around 500$, and the next, and the next…yeah people who do this to save money irritate me, (not on a personal level) one you are losing a pile of money, two you are an untrained driver on the road, making it more hazardous for everyone else.
re the op I do see this, many kids are only in training because their parents are making them.
I got my learner’s permit a week after I turned 15. I’m 33 now and I still haven’t got my license. I couldn’t afford Driver’s Ed. and no one in my family wanted to teach me. When I did get behind the wheel, I discovered I’m not a very good driver. I’m so used to not driving, I don’t feel a need to change. I always plan to live in cities with good public transportation. It works for me.
I’m 28, so my perspective may be slightly outdated, but I didn’t get licensed until I was 20. I and my sister were actively prevented from getting our driver’s licenses while living at home, because my mom had phobias and control issues. I didn’t need a license until my sophomore year of college, which is when I got one (freshmen weren’t allowed to have cars on campus). When I lived in a dorm, I walked/biked/used public transportation to get around.
It’s possible that, given the economy now, people can’t afford the insurance increase from adding a 16-year-old as a driver in the household (even if they don’t have their own car).
I’ve met some teens who don’t drive because there are so many restrictions involved with a junior license that it’s just not worth it to them, especially in light of the cost of driving and maintaining a car in the first place. Some of these kids live in communities where police use these restrictions to legally harass them, which doesn’t help.
Seems weird to me too. Regardless of cost, it just seems like a skill that everyone should have. You never know when you may need it.
I was fortunate to have parents that started teaching me how to drive at a very young age. Around 10 years old. By the time I was 16, driving was second nature and getting a license was a breeze.
I thought I was the only teenager in the eighties who couldn’t drive. I was really nervous about it, and I remember the way one driving lesson started:
Mom: “Okay Julie, here’s the keys. Now the first thing you have to know is that you’re holding both of our lives in your hands, not to mention the lives of everyone around us. Start the car.”
Me: “Um, hell no!”
For the rest of my teen years, friends and boyfriends chauffeured me around. I took Driver’s Ed in school; passed it with a B because I stayed awake during the films, but still couldn’t drive. When I was 21, I got a professional driving teacher and passed the test (after flunking it the first two times).
When my daughter got old enough, she was likewise filled with trepidation, but I was determined that she would learn. I gave her my old car and took her out driving all the time, and she finally passed the test (after flunking it several times). She now drives that car to school, and to her Mcjob, which barely covers gas and insurance. She still hates to drive, but I’m so glad she has the knowhow and the independence.
My daughter’s boyfriend is early 20s and doesn’t have a license because apparently he’s afraid. She claims he’s taken the driver training course and a friend or relative will be giving him an old beater, but he can’t seem to make himself take the driving test. So my daughter is his chauffeur. Sweet deal for him, especially since I know my kid would never ask for gas money… :rolleyes:
I was 17 when I got my license because of my parents’ rule - you pay for your own insurance and gas. Even tho gas was under 50 cents a gallon in those days, I was making a whopping 2 dollars an hour, so fuel would be a big chunk of my earnings, even if I could get use of the family car. It was tough being 1 of four drivers in a single vehicle household. I was in my 20s and in the Navy when I got my first car.
I’m 52 so I too learned to drive in the 70s. At that time one had to be 16 yrs old to get a learner’s permit. At that time (I was a bit of a nerd) I had no great desire to get a license because of an anti-car principle I adhered to at the time. My dad, however, felt that it was important to have more than one licensed driver in the house (for some reason my mom didn’t drive). So I took driver’s ed a year later. I’m more pragmatic about things now, however, and though I generally bike, bus or walk to work my wife and I have had a car for the last 20 years.
I don’t believe that it’s necessary to have a car but I do think that having a license, and some driving experience, isn’t a bad idea in case a situation arises in which you may have to rent a vehicle for some reason
My niece just turned 17 and hasn’t done a damned thing with that learner’s permit - I have no idea why. I don’t get it. She doesn’t even want to practice!
Graduated licensing programs have had a huge deterrent effect on people getting licenses. Surprise, surprise, huh? They made it harder to get a driver’s license, and fewer people are getting them. I don’t know how this can possibly come as a shock.
When I got my driver’s license in Ontario it was a one-step process; you booked an appointment to have a test and if you passed it would walked out with a G-class license. You could, prior to that, have also gotten a learner’s permit to enable you to drive with a licensed driver (and of course everyone did) but even that was not technically necessary. When I walked out of the MTO office my license was exactly the same as anyone else’s. That was it. I’ve just renewed it every five years since for whatever paltry sum it costs.
Today it’s a bizarre three-step process that, to be honest, I do not fully understand and I don’t think everyone else does either. I know of two people who lost their licenses because they had the second-level license, called a G2 I believe, and then could not get tests scheduled in time because the testing centers were too busy and so had their licenses cancelled and now have to start from the beginning; both said “fuck it” and are just taking the bus.
When I turned 16, a driver’s license was, in theory, a few weeks away. (In practice it took five months; I was happy to spend some time learning.) I went to the trouble of getting one because I could practically feel it in my hands; all it took was two visits to the MTO office. Now a kid who turns 16 is years away and all kinds of hoop-jumping from having a real driver’s license.
I agree with velomont in that driving is a basic life skill people really should have, but that’s IMHO. If someone living in a big city takes an honest look at the pros and cons of the situation and says it isn’t worth it, that might be a pretty logical decision.
Yeah, but nobody ever got laid in the backseat of a gaming rig.
-VT, who got his learner’s permit on his 15th birthday and counted down every minute until he could get his full license on his 16th, and is also completely baffled by this bizarre trend
55yrs old, never held a drivers permit.
I’ve always lived in the urban core so public transit, cabs are pretty good to me. I avoided it at the traditional time because I actively wanted to avoid falling into car culture.
Getting a car, insurance, gas, maintenance all cost. Get an old beater and living at home still, not so bad. But there is a lot of peer pressure to step up to car loans and jobs. Lots of young people get more car than they can afford and so begin life truly living beyond their means. It rarely improves from there.
I guess I just saw a lot of that and really did not want that for myself. I wanted to travel, which I did, by saving money I wasn’t using to pay for a car.
I first started taking the city bus (as in, not a school bus) by myself when I was nine, and moved to a gifted students class in an out-of-district elementary school.
So I was very comfortable with public transit by the time I was in my teens. I did get my learner’s permit when I was fifteen or sixteen, took the ‘Young Drivers of Canada’ course, practiced a lot, even did most of the driving on a family road trip up to New Liskeard area and back, which is 550km from Hamilton.
But I wasn’t that comfortable behind the wheel. I nearly got into a collision in my first road test, flunked my second too, and wouldn’t be able to get a third test appointment before the ‘Graduated Licencing’ program rolled into Ontario. At that time, it sounded like a probationary licence really wouldn’t give you much more independence than a learner’s permit.
So I gave up on driving and let my one-year learner’s permit lapse. I didn’t drive for perhaps fifteen years after that - all through university I got around on public transit, including commuting home to Hamilton on the GO bus every other weekend, and when I went to Herzing college I lived at my parent’s house in Hamilton and commuted to Toronto every day on public transit. For eleven years now I have relied mainly on public transit to get to work and back home, as well as getting anywhere else I need to go as an independent adult.
Of course, I’m grateful that Hamilton has a good bus system, (and Burlington a mostly decent one,) and know that I wouldn’t have been able to manage as well without a car if these communities hadn’t invested in public transit.
About two years ago, I finally let my brother convince me that driving was a useful life skill if nothing else, and as of February 17th I finally have my probationary licence - which has far fewer conditions than it did when it was first introduced. And this weekend I’ll be going back to the used car lot to look for my wheels.
But I don’t think that I’ll ever be an everyday driver. For one thing, I have problems with the ‘one driver one car’ mindset in terms of it environmental impact. And I still enjoy taking the bus. It may stretch over more time than driving myself, but that time is something that I can use to another purpose, writing a story or watching a video.
I hope that this ramble has been somewhat enlightening. 
I think this is the main reason. No cite, just MHO.
I was highly motivated, as was my sister, because A) we both wanted jobs, and B) our parents wouldn’t drive us anywhere except to church, and C) public transportation in our city sucked. Public transportation in this city sucks.
Currently, I live about a half a mile from work. I used to be able to take the bus, although it would take about 20 minutes – twice to four times as long if I drove my own car. Recently, the bus service in this city changed all the routing so now it would be a 45 minute commute with a transfer. Walking would be faster and more convenient (although much, much sweatier).
I suspect that today’s Snowflake Generation is so used to being driven everywhere, and all their friends are driven everywhere, that there’s no sense in incurring the costs for repairs, insurance, gas and so forth. Why bother, when you can catch a ride with mommy or daddy? There’s no incentive for independence anymore.
I don’t know, are you?
When I wasn’t ready to drive myself, my dad pointed to my ten-speed every time I asked for a ride somewhere.
And you are going to continue to think that, despite example after example to the contrary.
The solution to the “the bus takes 40 minutes to go half a mile” is to walk the half miles. That’s literally a 7 minute walk. As much as I baffle you, you baffle me. Walking for seven minutes shouldn’t even be something that a non-disabled person gives any thought to. It’s a non distance. It probably takes longer than that to find a parking spot. What’s wrong with us that we are so lazy and pampered that less than 10 minutes of the lightest form of physical activity in the world strikes us as too much work, lets just burn a dinosaur and drag a ton of steel with us instead.
It’s not that it’s too much work, it’s too dang hot. For much of the year, it’s already 90º by 7:30 a.m. here. There’s no shower at work. I don’t want to sit here all stinky and sweaty all day. I’ve thought of riding my bike for the saving$ and exercise, but the stinky/sweaty issue presents a problem. That and the monsoon rains in the afternoons here. Who wants to walk/ride home in a hurricane? In winter, that would be a great time to do it. I generally run errands on my lunch hour, however, and can get much more done in a short amount of time if I use my car. I see it as a matter of efficiency rather than laziness. That and the monsoon rains…
I walk the dog the old-fashioned way, though. 
Not like I put her on a treadmill because I can’t be bothered to walk for 30 minutes a day. It’s just that, after the dog walk, I can go take a shower if I have to be somewhere after that. Also, I work in a very small office and get to park right next to the door. Finding a space isn’t an issue for me.
FTR, you don’t baffle me at all. An urban dweller with access to good public transportation is not baffling to me. In fact, that makes a lot of sense, given the costs to own and operate a car. Suburban and rural teenagers who have no access to even crappy public transportation, and who do not even want a driver’s license… that baffles me. Well, it doesn’t really baffle me because I think we coddle kids a lot more than we used in in previous generations, so the incentive to be more independent is minimized. I might add, that obviously isn’t universal.
As someone not too far off from today’s teens: you just don’t need to drive as much. You’re in contact with your friends 24/7. Every teen has, in essence, their own ‘teen’s line’ (remember those?) through cell phones. We have skype if you need to try on outfits with your friends. We have Xbox Live if you want to multiplayer game with your friends. Plus with larger houses, more kids have their own bedrooms, so they don’t need to leave the house to get away from their family.
So I figure there’s less spontaneous travel and more, ‘Mom, we’re going to a movie on Friday, can you give us a ride?’ going on.
I only learned to drive as a kid because I lived in New Hampshire, which was sorely lacking in public transit. Once I left, I never drove if I could avoid it - I went to college in Rhode Island, which has a very good bus system, and now I’m in DC. It’s been nearly four years since I last drove myself anywhere; I’ve never owned a car, and I don’t want one. Nor do I feel the need for one; I can go anywhere I want via public transit, taxis and so on.