For generations, driver’s licenses have been tickets to freedom for America’s 16-year-olds, prompting many to line up at motor vehicle offices the day they were eligible to apply.
No longer. In the last decade, the proportion of 16-year-olds nationwide who hold driver’s licenses has dropped from nearly half to less than one-third, according to statistics from the Federal Highway Administration.
Reasons vary, including tighter state laws governing when teenagers can drive, higher insurance costs and a shift from school-run driver education to expensive private driving academies.
To that mix, experts also add parents who are willing to chauffeur their children to activities, and pastimes like surfing the Web that keep them indoors and glued to computers.
Source: New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/business/25drive.html?ex=1204693200&en=33e95021f17bfc33&ei=5070&emc=eta1
I saw the beginning of this trend firsthand as a youth pastor in the mid/late 1990s. It took me by surprise initially as teens scurrying to get their driver's license as soon as eligible had always been a key rite of passage. I think this is a positive trend, although it really extends the burden of parents-as-chauffeurs. But, as long as parents are willing to manage the transportation needs of their teens, the lower the overall risk will be of teen driver-related accidents. (If you aren't aware, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for persons aged 15 to 19 years old, and on average, a teenager is injured every 15 minutes in a motor vehicle crash in the United States.)
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