Why aren't younger Americans driving anymore?
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This is a great development, considering the recklessness of many young drivers and their relatively high accident rates.
I always thought that the roads would be much safer if our legal drinking age and legal driving ages were switched, so that we'd have years of experience dealing with the effects of alcohol before we hit the roads, which would hopefully decrease incidents of driving under the influence of alcohol.
I agree with your sentiment but not your tone. There is a lot of anti-suburban, anti-car elitism on HN that is apparently ignorant of the very real need for personal transportation for the vast majority of people, even in many major cities. I would support increased driver training requirements (especially specific training and experience with loss of control on various surfaces), but not without a way of ensuring that the transportation and employment needs of everyone, including youth, are still met.
Also, you're probably aware, but your account has been dead for a long time, apparently due to excessively harsh and/or personal negative comments.
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But a pervasive public transit system, combined with cycling and walking, achieves that. What it doesn't achieve is the capacity to ship large items between arbitrary points, and a distinct comparative slowness when traveling long distances (vaguely defined).
And you could just as easily argue that the health of a society is degraded by the over-usage of what amounts to an isolating coffin on wheels. There are no opportunities to casually chat with a stranger (unless you carpool with different people, or yell out the window at stopped traffic lights) while in transit: only the endpoints of your trip matter for the cross-pollination you speak of. I would expect this results in zones of high quality surrounded by the mortar of low quality areas.
Incidentally, I picked up this book today: http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp... I haven't read it yet and thus cannot recommend it.
I'm not sure what it means for my account to be dead, it seems I can comment as normal? is there any way to make it undead, without making a whole new account? I'd be willing to change my tone, I'm trying to become more positive this year ^_^
It means that your comments are only visible to people who turn on "showdead" in their profile settings, and it's impossible to respond to you directly.
In theory you can try to contact one of the YC or HN site admins, or PG himself, if you want your account restored. I don't know what's involved or what sort of argument you should make. It might be easier to begin your new tone and new resolve with a new account.
It's just like in those all-american teen high-school shows where the bully sticks an insulting label on someone and they go about their day not knowing that there is something nasty stuck to the back of their shirts... meanwhile everyone else quietly sniggers until some kind soul lets them know what's up.
As someone who was socioeconomically prevented from getting a license until his mid-20s, no, it's not. A license in many cases is a ticket out of poverty and a chance to break the cycle of poverty. This is especially true in rural or far-flung suburban areas.
That said, the poor behavior of young drivers is a legitimate concern. I'm all for addressing it. Just not a fan of economically disenfranchising people.
That said, youth need experience, we are not ready made adults and have to suffer the consequence of our mistakes to learn much of the time. Studies showing that adults make fewer poor decisions should realize a lot of that is because of the previous poor decisions that person had already made.
I wonder if an argument could be made that the observed phenomenon of extended adolescence is a direct result of the excessive sheltering of youth.
Which means that apparently by the time my brain actually matures next year, I'll have been able to vote for 7 years, hold all legal responsibilities for 7 years, drink legally for 7 years (outside the USA) and 4 years (inside the USA), and apply for a driver's license for 9 years. I'll have actually lived outside my parents' home for 7 years, been in a single steady relationship for 6 years, supported myself financially for 3 years and held a driver's license for 2 years.
Apparently my legal qualification and actual, demonstrated ability to behave like an adult - all of which is actually pretty normal for someone my age whom I know - either demonstrates unusually precocious brain maturity, or doesn't actually require brain maturity, or these "studies" are showing the effects of society's treatment of young people as barely-functional retards for ever-more-extended periods.
There are ways of addressing this that do not involve increasing the likelihood that you kill yourself, though. Better police in the neighborhood, better public transportation in the exurbs, better access to educational materials, better communication infrastructure, and so on.
These are, of course, harder solutions. It is certainly easier in terms of policy to simply roll the dice and acknowledge that those who survive the commute are more fit for society by virtue of not being dead.
Is it? Is it working? I just spent five minutes on Google trying to answer that question, but if it's out there it's buried under megabytes of high-Google-juice warnings about teenaged driving.
It's only a positive development if it's working. If it isn't working, then it's just an expensive imposition sucking away time and funds that could have been spent on something more productive. But I honestly don't know which is the case. Anyone have a better bead on analysis than I do? I think it's an interesting question. Many of these programs have been going on for long enough that there ought to be an answer out there somewhere.
YEAR DEATHS POPULATION
1999 5,508 24,099,614
2000 5,561 24,272,121
2001 5,513 24,515,654
2002 5,943 24,742,879
2003 5,582 25,019,050
2004 5,564 25,510,811
2005 5,234 25,839,430
2006 5,186 26,116,159
2007 4,986 26,327,320
2008 4,067 26,408,974
2009 3,514 26,378,690
2010 3,159 26,206,325
From 2000 to 2009, the # of traffic-related deaths per 100,000 resident population dropped by 26%. Assuming the decay is exponential, that's about 3% per year. In contrast, the # of teen deaths dropped by about 4.5% per year.
So we can reasonably conclude that teenage auto-related deaths are falling at a faster rate than overall auto-related deaths.
Is the fatality rate for all inexperienced drivers dropping the way it is for teenagers? If not, that suggests that the apparent improvements aren't so significant as they seem. In particular, social and regulatory changes that make it more difficult for teenagers to drive, but not for young adults may only shift what age group the problem affects.
If you reduce the driving privileges of people with blue eyes, I'm sure that the auto-related fatalities of blue-eyed people would decrease.
I'm not sure of the correct way to measure the success of driving restrictions, but I would suggest that it is something other than this type of statistic.
If there exists a mushroom that tends to be lethal in even small quantities and its usage in recipes is restricted, then the fatalities caused by it will go down.
You might disagree with the method on deontological grounds, but you can't really deny that it is functioning well on consequentialist grounds.
A lot of people think that if obtaining a license is harder, the roads will be safer, but it's more an urban wisdom than science. If you take various numbers from around the world, you will notice there is no linear correlation between those two, especially when harder is pay more than you should and sit in class harder, instead of learn how to run a special stage on snow and ice harder. Also, in places where driving is a privilege, drivers tend to feel privileged. The sad truth is just that almost everywhere driving training simply sucks, with the well-known exception of Finland.
I've heard Austria also cares about training for winter conditions.
Wow, restricting people's freedom, a great development? Seriously ? Why not restrict access to computers considering the recklessness of "hackers" ? And so on.
You are going to build a bleak future if people do not drive as much.
Imagine that Google's self-driving car efforts come to fruition. That self-driving cars are common, legal, and trusted.
Who needs to drive in that future?
More: Imagine a successor to Zipcar with a fleet of self-driving cars. Who needs to even own a car? You just log in and summon a car from a nearby lot. It's there in a few minutes, and it takes you where you need to go; when you need to go back home, you summon another one.
In the future, owning a car and knowing how to drive it yourself may well be considered eccentric.
GPS-driven cars are not going to be any good for that kind of usage.
Last I checked robots still can't vote. And if it came down to voting between Google cars and human cars. Well, fuck Google. Roads are built by taxes, which are paid by people. As long as everyone pays those taxes everyone is entitled to use them.
The self-driving car has been solved for over decades. They behave well on closed tracks and that has never been in dispute. The real development is making them work in an environment with cars, people, bikes, pets, etc.
What if computer-controlled cars were 10X more efficient than human controlled cars? That means 10 times more traffic for the same amount of roads (or the same traffic on 1/10th of the roads). The economic case then becomes tremendous.
I pay taxes. I would like my taxes to be used more efficiently. I don't care for any idiot who wants the freedom to drive their own cars.
> The self-driving car has been solved for over decades.
This is not true at all. Its only recently where autonomous self driving cars in real environments have become viable.
> The real development is making them work in an environment with cars, people, bikes, pets, etc.
I'm sure they would be able to do that, but then we aren't getting the 10x improvement in traffic capacity if a few humans are still allowed to drive (i.e. the safety margins will have to remain human). The allure of self driving cars is not really "we don't have to drive anymore" but "we can utilize our infrastructure and resources way more efficiently."
Democracy isn't about efficiency. It is about effective representation. That means the guy with the 50 year old manual antique has the same say as the guy with the computer-driven Jaguar.
> I don't care for any idiot who wants the freedom to drive their own cars.
Well nothing I say now will really matter. Guys, one guy has the only correct opinion on this matter so skip the debate and proceed straight to tyranny.
> Its only recently where autonomous self driving cars in real environments have become viable.
When I was a kid the local newspaper converted to automated forklifts that loaded and unloaded paper rolls to the presses. And they managed to do this with humans (pressmen, school kids) walking amongst them. Even with 2-ton spools they could stop on a dime. But the warehouse was built for them, embedded sensors, special handling tools, etc. The automation part has been done, it's solved.
And logistically, how do you ensure everyone has one of your cars? Do you give them away for free? You can't force everyone to buy one. And you certainly can't build a road exclusively for it, the public
Now say Beijing implements the change: within the 5th ring road, autonomous cars only. Most people don't own one of these cars, but its fine...the city and various private companies have a fleet of 100k or so that they treat basically as taxies. Because no humans are involved in the system, they can achieve 10x densities, basically solving traffic, parking, and pollution problems overnight.
Could your average human being handle tailgating and slack-free synchronous movement of a bunch of cars? Of course not! That's why they aren't driving anymore. Could we disable the system outside of cities without traffic? Ya, but in China, the traffic and infrastructure problems are everywhere, it will catch on.
Now your western cities, they don't have traffic problems mostly, not on this scale. But these cities will then have to compete economically with other cities with the system. Its a world market, if it the new system is 10x better, the other cities will have to follow to remain competitive; perhaps some Disney like places will exist where people can drive cars, but that is how the future works!
Well and I don't care for any idiot that calls other people idiots because he does not agree with their opinions.
Imagine how out of place/disruptive a horse buggy/donkey cart would be on a motorcar street (I don't have to imagine, unfortunately). Now, they pay taxes too, don't they have a right to be there no matter how disruptive that is?
However, all European motorways ban vehicles that cannot go faster than 30mph(50kmh) from them, because they are supposed to be used for fast travel only, so there is a certain amount of people banned from using them,purely because they don't have a car and can't use motorways on a moped or a bicycle - even thought they pay taxes so their "rights" are somehow violated for the good of others. So I imagine that major motorways and maybe town centers could be made automatic-only. But, in the countryside, if somebody wants to drive in manual,why not? There is little joy in driving in the city,with all the tragic jams and such,but driving on the empty, countryside roads is a different matter entirely.
An improperly driven car can harm other people, even with the best intentions of the inexperienced driver.
An improperly used computer by a well-intentioned user -- not so much.
It is the faults of the designers they make them visible like that, but they do it, and it is an issue.
They are switched in many Western European countries, and imho that works fine. Also because there generally is more public transportation and/or neighbourhood pubs/clubs.
(though some countries have raised the drinking age, making them come about at the same time, which is even worse)
A 16 drinking age, 18 driving age does create quite a different youth culture though. Less fuss about alcohol (though it differing more with parents permissiveness), more about cars, and early networks and contacts being more local.
Not to mention it's easier to illegally gain access to alcohol than it is to illegally get access to a car, so the probability that the higher driving age law would be flouted would be lower than the rate at which the drinking age law is flouted right now.
This is not true at all. I do not know where he is getting his information. And there are literally no requirements for the permit. All you do is take a vision test and a knowledge multiple choice on the computer which anyone can pass if they know the simple basics.
>and once they are allowed to drive, they are often restricted to driving in the daytime without passengers.
This only applies to people with a provisional license (if you are under 18), and you can have passengers as long as they are in your family (brothers or sisters), and this only lasts for the first 6 months.
Talk about permissive.
(This was in 2006)
This would be a great development indeed, if alternate forms of transportation like buses, light-rail and train services were vastly improved.
While I champion the idea of bike commuting (ie live close to where you work), carpooling and vanpooling (have done all three for years sequentially), the goal of getting more dangerous drivers (ie, inexperienced teens) off the road shouldn't disenfranchise them. Non-drivers need transport as well, and most US cities are abhorrent for this compared to other developed countries (HK, France, UK, Brazil, Russia all have amazing transport systems).
What I missed most in not having wheels was convenience in shopping and so on. Groceries aside, that's now largely obviated by e-commerce. And grocery shopping alone is hardly a reason to have a car ...
Now easier rentals -- Zipcar! -- raise a whole other reason not to own one's own car.
Further, there was an era when cars provided teenagers with private space, a bit of a chance for sexual exploration, and so on. When both their parents have jobs, however, that's less needed. That's reason #1 much of the "romance" of cars is gone.
Reason #2 is that electronic items have supplanted cars as major aspirations. Phones, computers, etc. are gateways to the world the way automobiles used to be.
Reason #3 (small but still worth mentioning) that cars lost their romance is their boring, aerodynamically-wise designs. Reason #4, related, is the environmentalist pushback against cars.
How's the hygiene at your destination?
That said, I frequently train myself to drive just a little bit better in just a little bit harsher conditions. Learn where my car's tires limits for sliding are, and learn how they gradually change over time as the tires wear down. Learn how much I can accelerate at a given moment at a given speed, so that I can use that for avoiding an obstacle. Learn how efficiently I can brake and turn under braking, so I know how well I can avoid other kinds of obstacles.
It's an experience, to me, to drive a car, and control it and tell it where to go; and the only way I've ever gotten better at it was to actually drive and drive quite a lot, in many unique situations. Rain, snow, heavy traffic, low traffic, light, dark, fog, low visibility, high visibility, and so on.
But meh, to each their own.
Back on topic. I think we need proper drivers education that has a physical foot-to-pedal, hand-to-wheel sort of education for our drivers :/
Oh, and it's 120 degrees outside in the summer.
That being said, parking is abundant, gas is relatively cheap, and traffic is very nice. So it's not too bad. I would never want to have a car in the city, though.
Nor does city residence make you immune to death by auto. You could be run over by a Metrobus (happened to two women on Pennsylvania Avenue a couple of years ago), or be in a nice hot car that you decide to drive at 90 mph across Key Bridge (young guy this spring).
Let me add that I can go a week without getting into a car, though if my wife didn't do the grocery shopping (her commute more or less demands one--20 minutes with, 50+ without), things would be different. I just happen to think that the young, urban (and commonly single) crowd should not imagine that they are certainly always going to be living in Hoboken or the Mission and taking public or employer-provided transportation, or that those who have made other choices are somehow inferior.
often a waste of time (though I see a lot of traffic on HN about computer games...)
This makes me wonder what the future of driving and personal transportation will look like.
Regarding the sharing economy, pg recently Tweeted "Will ownership turn out to be largely a hack people resorted to before they had the infrastructure to manage sharing properly?"
I'm originally from New Jersey and I'm currently living in Seoul, Korea. Back home in NJ, you literally couldn't get anywhere without a car. Besides getting to NYC, public transportation (buses) was basically useless or nonexistant. Now I live in Seoul which is super densely populated and has arguably the best, most advanced public transportation infrastructure in the world. I've never driven a car in Seoul simply because I've never had to - Subways and buses are faster, cheaper, cognitively easier to use, and I never have to worry about finding a parking spot.
There have been a lot of new startups entering or looking to enter this space - Ridesharing services, parking spot finder apps, Google driverless car, etc. - But which will become the dominant form of transportation in the next 5~10 years and why? I'm fascinated to see what people "in the know" and involved in this space think.
I think thankfully computer graphics has gotten good enough in our lifetime that CGI animation in movies & TV will soon become perfectly indistinguishable from real life. No more uncanny valley.
I think steroids will become a non-issue in sports in the near future, where the line between what's "natural" enhancement and what's "artificial" enhancement becomes impossible to enforce or legislate.
Plastic surgery has gotten better over the years but it's still pretty easy to identify who's gotten it and who hasn't. I shudder to imagine a world where anyone can become as beautiful as they want without others realizing that they've had work done. The societal implications are beyond what my brain can handle.
Sounds like a William Gibson novel.
Apart from false genetic signaling, I'm curious: What do you think will be the most significant effect of widespread plastic surgery?
There's something to be said for "democratizing" looks and I have nothing against people (adults) who choose to get plastic surgery as a way of leveling the playing field in jobs, dating, etc.
But the way it's playing out in Korea is that young girls grow up not liking the way they look, and many parents actually encourage their kids to get surgery as soon as they're old enough, which morally rubs me the wrong way. Also, despite how common it is in Korea it's still not that cheap, so the people who get a lot of surgery tend to be wealthier which ironically causes more inequality and look-ism.
I think "not having something" is a big part of what pushes the human race forward. For example, if hacking was somehow made super easy in the future, then anyone could do it and the intrinsic reward of making something great would be greatly reduced. If everyone were rich, then no one would be motivated to work. If everyone could eat delicious food all the time then it would become less special. If anyone could become athletic enough to play in the NFL or NBA, both leagues would become less interesting and less special.
I've always believed that, in general, being extremely good-looking from an early age is more of a curse than a blessing and causes people to become relatively self-satisfied and complacent, and less skilled in the long run. On the other hand, people who are less good-looking who accept this fact early on will bust their ass to get better in other respects, and will ultimately contribute more to our society.
I've always believed that, in general, being extremely good-looking from an early age is more of a curse than a blessing
And I thought of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHHEcmZtJvY
1) A few weeks ago, a 15 year old girl in my neighborhood, learning to drive on a slow side road with her parent in the car, mistook the gas for the break while practicing backing up and ran over three young children putting them in critical condition.
2) A relative of mine was given a new big "safe" vehicle for her 16th birthday. The photos from the event were full of incredible excited smiles.
Three months later, while leaving her part-time "earn your own gas money" job, she met a "cute guy" friend of hers from school who wanted to bum a ride. Foolishly she agreed, on the way to her vehicle, two of her "cute guy"'s friends suddenly showed up asking if they too could bum a ride.
Peer pressure and hormones fully kicked in, they all loaded into the vehicle and started on their way.
On a clear evening, doing about 40 on a paved road with no other traffic, she veered off the road surface, over-corrected getting back on, cut sideways across the road into a field and hit a tree straight on.
She was killed instantly, one of the boys is paralyzed from the neck down and the other two spent a bit of time in critical condition in the hospital.
3) After that happened I thought back to when I was a 16 year old, with a used beater car and what kind of stupid stupid driving I did back then. It was a miracle I survived almost any time I got behind the wheel.
This was even considering that, growing up in a rural area, my parents taught me to drive on the back roads when I was about 11 (in case of an emergency). They had me practice regular driving up until I got my actual license. Even after almost 5 years of sporadic driving lessons, including a minor fender bender in my parent's driveway. Despite passing the driving exam on my first shot with no practice and no studying, I still drove like a damn fool. (and in my state at the time we had to have something like 20 hours of professionally supervised behind the wheel instruction and 20 hours of classroom before being allowed to take the test).
It wasn't until I hit about 20 that I started to drive like a person concerned at all with preserving my lifespan.
Younger American's shouldn't drive. We should get a learners at 18, be required to have a fully licensed person over 25 (or better yet a parental unit) in the car with us until 19, then no passengers at all till we get a real license at 21. It's not just familiarity with alcohol or any of that, young people are just simply not yet fully wired to deal with complex social pressures, impulse control or any of the other kinds of "maturity issues" needed to operate a 2 ton block of iron that can be coaxed to 100mph in under 30 seconds.
Aside from that, all of your anecdotes could happen to anyone at any age if they don't have any experience driving, hell your first anecdote could have happened to a 40 year old if they didn't know how to drive. I disagree that age makes that much of a difference in driving, inexperience is the problem and you can't avoid that.
That said, city dwellers can get by for most of their trips with public transit, bicycle, or on foot, and by the time I have kids and am teaching them to drive I fully expect autonomous cars - the current generation may be the last one that learns how to drive themselves.
Also, there are solutions for covering 40 km without having a car driver licence. If a few hours of biking is too much of an effort, there are small-capacity cylinder motor-bikes like scooters or mopeds that have either low-requirement licence or require no driving licence at all.
Taking his side in this, very few people at 21 have chosen where to live. Their parents picked that location for them.
I'm just trying to fix dead young drivers, but I totally agree that it screws up the world for people under 25.
all of your anecdotes could happen to anyone at any age if they don't have any experience driving
Actually, I'll go one further, I know of quite a few drivers with plenty of experience, decades even, who struggle to control their vehicle on a day-to-day basis. It's like they're just incapable of learning the skill. My father-in-law, for example, has probably 40 years of experience behind the wheel and drives so poorly that I pretty much refuse to ride in or near a vehicle he's driving. One of my wife's former bosses drives perpetually 15 miles under the speed limit and goes into a near panic attack if she has to drive slowly and look at house numbers at the same time when trying to find a new place.
I honestly don't know how to solve that outside of autonomous vehicles and significantly harder licensing.
Anyway, I think maturity is something you gain by being in situations that require it. I'm not sure that keeping everyone in a padded room until they're 25 will result in fully mature adults walking out.
For example, we could provide training areas/streets (paid, hopefully) where people can drive without big obstacles or crossing children.
> doing about 40
> She was killed instantly, one of the boys is paralyzed from the neck down
that's what happens when you don't fasten your seatbelts. or your passengers don't fasten their seatbelts and kill you on their way to the windshield.
We should be able to mathematically model the optimal age to allow driver licenses. All of the data is out there. In favor of waiting longer we save quality-adjusted life years and reduce property damage from fewer collisions. But there are costs to waiting longer by reducing earning potential and forcing other drivers to waste time ferrying youth around.
1 - There's lots and lots and lots of this research on the internet. I won't bother to start linking, a couple seconds of googling will give you more than you'd ever possibly want to know
An important question - currently 17 year olds are bad drivers, due primarily to being unskilled (only 1 year of driving experience). Suppose we adopt your plan and limit driving to 18+. Why do you feel that unskilled 19 year olds (with 1 year driving experience) won't get into accidents at a similar rate?
Remember, while a collection of anecdotes don't make statistical data, each statistical datum has an anecdote.
Mechagodzilla linked to statistics for auto-fatalities 14-19 from the CDC here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5592730 each and every one of those teens died with an associated tragic anecdote.
An important question
There's lots of research out that shows that teenagers show poor impulse control and practice reckless behavior. It's unclear from the research if that's due to only having slightly less than two decades of life experience rather than slightly more, or if it's some fundamental difference in the development of their brains, combined with surges of hormones that leads to this. It's particularly noticeable among male teenagers. [1]
My assertion is that an unskilled 20+ year old, just starting to drive would be fundamentally safer on the road than an unskilled 16 year old with equivalent driving experience (or lack thereof). [2]
I set 18 as the age since at 18 you are legally recognized as an adult and full citizen, but we as a society have no problem limiting some legal rights and/or discriminating against people between 18 and 21 and 25 (drinking age, car insurance rates and rental car availability). Note: I don't fundamentally agree with this, just observing it when recommending a driving age. The reason insurance rates and rental car availability is problematic for those under 25, particularly males, is largely a reflection of statistical fact. Young guys, regardless of experience, tend to be involved in more accidents until about 25. It's been a while since I looked into it, but I believe this roughly coincides with changes in male hormone levels at around that age. Some more statistics [3].
1- http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/02/why-the-teen-brain-is-...
2 - http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/8/suppl_2/ii17.full
Their communications are more efficient.
That said, as a general rule of thumb, teenagers do suffer from various other pressures that might make them bad drivers too (although I certainly have seen people in their thirties goaded into driving badly by other people in the car).
Having a car is not that much of a status symbol anymore as it used to be, being ecological is "in" and saves a ton of money if you have good public transport or like biking.
I'm 29 and never owned a car.. I use Carsharing from time to time.. if I need a car I check https://www.car2go.com/de/berlin/ and https://de.drive-now.com/php/metropolis/city_berlin?cit=6099...
Of course it's only possible because I live in a city with excellent public transportation (Munich).
On the one hand, you have the public safety and efficiency argument of the pro-Google self-driving cars group. On the other hand, you have the freedom-loving, it's my right to operate this dangerous but fun piece of machinery group.
Before this realization, I probably would have been anti-person-driven-car and pro-let-them-have-their-guns, but that seems inconsistent now. Hm.
Want to go get a drink with friends in the park and who knows where you'll end up? Have fun getting back to your car tomorrow morning.
Of all the things that I'd consider a ball and chain, my car is hardly among them.
Other things made easier with a car:
* getting to a mountain to hike
* getting to the mountain for extreme sports
* long distance travel on a whim
* going /anywhere/ on a whim that's further than a walk away, especially when
time tables are involved (see: movies)
* getting to a location where your fun activity is located.
Example: owning a horse and getting to their stable.As the parent of two teenagers, it is my opinion that at least in VA, it is still way too easy to get a license.
Although neither of mine had that desire to get a license as soon as possible, like we did as kids. My son didn't get his until weeks before his 18th birthday. My 17 year old daughter still just has a permit and doesn't seem to be in any hurry either, which is fine with me.
I can drive to the store by bike or even walk there if I want.
I work in a different city than I live and travel to my workplace by train in 30min.
The only things I need a car for are travels to are tiny town which doesn't have good public transports or when I need to transport something thats to heavy to carry.
1) Youth income is low given low employment and a stagnant economy which some would call a recession.
2) High gas prices means less cars and more public transit.
- spending money spent on smartphones and online goods
- time spent online, playing computer or console games
- less necessity to travel to have fun
- disinterest in dealing with government/insurance regime
- more interest in recreational drugs (booze and other)
- the increasing intrusiveness, heavy fines, and penalties imposed by a police state with particular regard to vehicular travelOn a possibly related note: nobody I've voted for for Federal office has ever won that office. I don't know enough about the relevant theory to say what effect that might have on how hard a politician should go after my vote, but it seems noteworthy.
Even headset / speaker phones? Lots of current cars seem to have bluetooth built in or speaker phones that integrate with the car audio system.
I think that factors are coliding - the car is deromanticized, it is expensive and it is a drain on the free time. I feel that rent-a-car is a industry in grave need of disrupting.
There are a lot of owned vehicles that do less than 2K miles per year. A Uber/Air bnb type startup that allows to rent a car from a person for the weekend may have potential.
The test was $50 when I took it. The learners permit is written only. A few weeks/months later you can drive back to the licensing office to take the driving exam. You'll need a car, any car from a licensed driver will do.
Insurance will be about $180 or £1400. I paid less than that because I had high grades (responsible student discount), no loan on the car, and I took the state minimum with the sketchiest insurance company I could find.
I paid about $100/mo for petrol. Until 17 you can only go to school and work during the week, weekends affords you more freedoms.
Working 20hrs/week part-time it's feasible to operate a car. While everyone goes on about how public transport is great. I don't see anyone bringing SCUBA gear on a bus, or moving apartments. Having a car meant freedom. Freedom to date, go places, and do things.
Increasingly, taking some kind of formalized classes is becoming a requirement to get a license. When I got my license in Virginia in 2005, anyone under 18 was required to take something like 5 hours of driving classes in lieu of the normal driving exam. I believe the requirement has increased since then.
Speeding tickets were the main way to lose your license. Most families can tolerate the bump in adding a teenage driver, almost none will be as forgiving when the rates go up even after 1 ticket.
2) A hot bike is more likely to get you laid than a hot car
CASE CLOSED. Now can we please stop talking about reduced driving like its a problem?
Plenty of areas in the US where that's the case as well.
I took an 8,137-mile road trip when I was 22 and it was a blast. I'd love to do something like that again. It cost me a few hundred bucks in gas, but it was worth it.
However, racking up 20,000 miles in a year just to get from one point to another, while a million people are (being forced into it by social convention) trying to travel the exact same routes at the exact same time, is just horrible. It's a total waste of life. I'd prefer to take public transportation or to bike if at all possible. There is simply no good in a high-traffic, stop-and-go, morning car commute.
Automotive traffic is a perfect example of failure-to-scale. Cars are amazing (I'm ignoring the environmental issues, which I imagine electric cars will solve in ~20 years) when traffic is sparse, but become prisons in the typical commute.
Also, in most cities, it's actually worth it to live in the city if your time is worth more than about $30 per hour, and when you include career-building effects that applies to most educated young people who have jobs, even if their nominal wages are lower.