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U.S. Teenagers Are Driving Much Less: 4 Theories About Why
Paul Fernhout writes "U.S. teenagers just aren't as into driving as they used to be, U.S. government forecasters acknowledged in dramatically altered projections for transportation energy use over the next 25 years." Online presence is one of the reasons mentioned, which makes a lot of sense to me as a factor, no matter the age of the drivers involved. Whatever your age, do you drive less than you did 10 years ago?
Before, teens needed to have a car to impress the girls ...
Now, they just need an internet connection and some hand-cream.
Celebrating how America is more energy efficient because its people can no longer afford to drive.
I lived 20 miles from my high school. Today I work remotely from home. I would imagine the remote work will have an impact on driving in the future as it catches on.
Yes I drive a lot less than I used to 10 years ago, but it less to do with the Internet and more to do with the price of gas....
http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/23/news/economy/gas_aaa/
I don't live in the US though, but I drive less than I did ten years ago. Back then I had a car, now I don't. I don't really miss having a car much, because I don't need to travel long distances.
Don't got a job because I don't have a car.
Don't have a car cause I don't have a job.
Don't have a girl cause I don't have a car.
So I'm looking for a girl with a job and a car.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yes, because I'm retired now. Used to be 15K miles per year, now it's 4K.
However that doesn't mean I use less fuel. Nowadays I fly to Hawaii and Europe at least once each per year.
I drive a lot more than I used to. Granted, I'm not your typical American, but I spend most of my adult life with no car. I failed my driver's license road test when I was 17 and didn't get a license until I was 22. From the age of 16 to 28, I had a car for a total of 9 months. I live in a major city, so I took the bus everywhere. It wasn't much fun (especially in winter), but it was certainly doable.
I spent much of my working life underemployed, and I didn't want to waste money on some piece of shit junker just to get around (my 11-year-old Toyota died on me in the dead of winter - broken timing belt, wrecked cylinder head, not worth the money to fix even if I had it). So I bided my time until I could get the car I wanted, and 5 years ago, I did. Now, I live in the inner city but drive to work in the suburbs every day (40 mi. round trip). I drive more than I ever did before, and I've put more miles on my car in the past year than I did in the 4 prior.
I love driving. It's traffic I hate!
Thanks to the Great Recession, teens are having to take a backseat when applying for minimum wage jobs to those with either experience or a degree. So it comes to no surprise to me they have little to know extra gas money to be spending on social outings that involve driving around town.
File this under 'Duh!'
Life is not for the lazy.
I check a store's inventory and maybe make a call before I drive off. Olden days I would need to travel around to different stores to find a special item. More often than not I also mail order supplies I would have bought locally. Sorry Radio Shack. Well, not really.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Since the jobs that used to be filled by teens are now largely filled by immigrants (legal and undocumented) the teens simply don't have the MONEY to drive as much. And for the scholastically inclined they are so busy with schoolwork and activities they dont have the time or money for a car.
I drive about the same, but live in the UK where "gas" costs have always been high. Thing is though, it's still cheaper (and twice as fast) as taking the train. So I'll carry on.
At least in CT, the age at which you can practically operate a vehicle on your own keeps creeping up, and there are always new rules restricting the privilege (only during the day, no passengers, etc). Assuming that the rest of the nation passes similar policies (given that we never repeal such things it has to be a purely additive effect anyway), I would think it obvious that teens drive less on average, as teens can't drive as much.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Why drive to a mall for less selection and higher prices?
This kind of falls under 'times are too tough', but it's not the individual student's financial state that affects it: High schools are cutting driver's ed classes to shore up the budget. Driver's ed was an easy and accessible path to getting a license (or permit), especially for students who didn't have access to practicing with a parent and/or family car.
I drive significantly less than I did 10 years ago. I moved into the city, and am now able to take public transit to work, which was, previously, the lion's share of my driving.
As for the why... the price of fuel is a pretty big factor. Between that, and the fact that I'm now living in an area where public transit is a viable option, I don't really see the point in driving the car for anything other than shopping trips, and I can do most of those on the weekend. The very few things I may need during the week can be had at the grocery store, deli, or drug store across the street from my apartment building.
I still own a car, and I can't see myself ever giving it up, but I don't *need* to drive everywhere like I did when I lived in the country.
Have you been out on the roads lately? It's rather fucked these days.
Don't even get me started on unending stretches of fucking orange barrels defending some sort of pretend work zone.
I drive a lot less than I did 10 years ago, even 4 or 5 years ago. I'm middle-aged, but the reason is related to the internet: I am a freelance designer and can work from anywhere.
So I drive about 40% as much now as in the previous 20 years.
But I also drive less recreationally than 30 years ago, and I think that's partly due to Internet access.
When I was a teenager in the late 70s, there was nothing to do except jump in the car and drive down Main Street and yell out the window to friends loitering in front of the bars, get to the end, come back and do it again, over and over. ("Cruising") or just go on a lot of joyrides.
If I had an xbox or ps4 back then, I'd have probably been on that instead.
Busing used to be the domain of the middle-to-poor classes for much of urban America - not anymore.
In winter I drive more now than I did ten years ago, simply because I live further away from my jobs. But in summer I hardly drive at all, preferring to take my bicycle. Even if I know I can find cheap (or free) parking instantly, I prefer cycling 15-20 kms to taking the car. And as I get better and better bicycles, the distance I an willing to cycle instead of driving increases.
If my son is any gauge, the reason they don't drive is because it would require them to leave the house. Whenever we go anywhere, he is always concerned with how far he will be from his computer. The iPad and 3DS will only hold off the DTs for so long...
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Amazon is like public transportation for "incidentals" In my household and those of my peers, there is no more "run to the store for these few items," it has been replaced with "is it prime?"
DWY is only slightly better than DWI, because it's not a choice.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
THIS. THIS! I fucking HATE those false work zones. If there is no work, there should be no work zone. Take the goddamned barrels and cones out of the road and get out of our way.
Ten years ago I lived in Brooklyn, without a car. So I drive more now, but not a lot. Now I live in Cambridge and ride my bike to work and the car only gets used on weekends. Less than 1000 miles on the car last year. I lived in upstate New York for a few years, and drove a lot then, but I had a little car and gas was cheap (remember the mid-80s glut?). High gas prices and unending traffic congestion everywhere has really taken the fun out driving. In a lot of places it seems like the highway infrastructure has reachd maximum carrying capacity.
When I was a kid, most of us had a trip scheduled to the DMV on our 16th birthday, or a couple days after. Not so now days. Both my kids got their drivers license pretty much as soon as they could, but that certainly was not the norm among their friends. Many waited until they "needed" to drive, and relied on mom and dad to driver them around.
And I think that says it. Going from the "be home by dark" generation, getting the keys to the car was a huge jump in freedom, which you were allowed to have. For the kids today, they don't have the freedom before, and don't want it. Sad really.
Thanks to Bushobama outsourcing it is much harder to get a job these days for young people.
The answer is pretty obvious: Gasoline prices have skyrocketed. Not a teenager anymore by far, I don't ever buy more than 5 gallons at a time, unless I know I'm going somewhere far enough away that I know I'll need more. I'll ride my motorcycle as much as I can because it's less expensive to operate overall, but for the most part I'll stay at home as much as I can.
Additionally, there didn't used to be such an abbreviation as "NEET", but now I hear it all the time. More kids are staying home longer (even into their late twenties, much to the dismay of their parents) or even coming back home (much more to the dismay of their parents) because they're just not making it out in the world. Unless supplied with a vehicle and money for fuel by their cash-strapped parents, they're not driving anywhere.
It seems to me that the Age of the Automobile, as a lifestyle, is coming to an end. Gasoline is never going to be under a dollar a gallon ever again. Will it be resurrected as the Age of the Electric Automobile (or some other alternative fuel source? Mr. Fusion, anyone?) or will we all be riding bicycles or using public transportation or some other non-personal transportation option? Are we all destined to become herd animals? Sad.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
and stuff.
Teenage HATE thread!
For me personally, we'd have to determine what criteria the "drive less" determination is asking about; driving less often, or driving fewer miles.
If we're talking less often, then indeed I do drive less than I did ten years ago. However, this is primarily because I now live in a different place than I did back then. My current residence is within walking distance of all of my basic necessities such as work, grocery store, laundromat, bank and so forth. Ten years ago, I used to have to drive my car daily. Now I really only use it a couple times a week at most.
If we're talking fewer miles, then the answer is different. Although I do drive less often, I find that I'm driving farther many of the times I do drive. Ten years ago, it used to be rare for me to drive farther than 50 miles from home. Now, it's a semi-regular occurrence (About 3-4 times per year) to go visit friends or attend a conference several hundred miles away. There's also a bi-weekly drive to a friend's house ~70mi away for poker night, and every few months ~120mi to my cardiologist or the dentist (university hospital, long drive). These, combined with the general-purpose driving I do infrequently means I'm averaging about 15,000 miles per year on my car, which is at least triple what I was putting in ten years ago.
So, am I driving less? Yes, and no. It depends on how you look at it.
In 1970, gasoline cost 35Â/gallon($1.65 in 2011 dollars). The OPEC crisis caused prices to more than double by 1980, but accelerated inflation meant that the cost rose to $2.03 in 2011 dollars. By 1990, gasoline hit $1 ($1.57 in 2011 dollars). Fast forward to today, and the average US price is $3.27. In other words, after adjusting for inflation gasoline is roughly twice as expensive as it has been historically. When you factor in the increased cost of high-tech cars and a sluggish economy, it's not surprising to see reduced demand.
Another factor - most driving is no longer 'fun' - It's fighting traffic. it's a job.
The only place you don't see traffic these days is car commercials.
How does the hand-cream help them impress girls?
The whole shift in thinking about burning fuel and the problems that it leads to, however small my contribution, has certainly impacted my lifestyle.
My decision to live in a place where I can depend on public transportation was influenced by that knowledge.
The lack of attachment to a physical place, knowing that I can continue to nurture my friendships from a distance, through the internet, also played a big part.
...parent. Cars are for independence, the world of helicopter parenting doesn't allow for that.
Now, this is over 15 years, not 10.
Internet
Sure, let's get that out of the way. I don't have to go out as much to buy things, so I'd say that lowered my annual driving average by about 5%-10%
Gasoline/Petrol prices
Absolutely. When the price of gasoline went over $2.50/gal (that was 2005-ish) my leisure driving went to almost none. That was easily 25%-30% of my annual driving.
More environmentally conscious
Over the last 15 years I have definitely become more environmentally conscious and tried to drive less as well as use less electricity, etc.
Moved closer to work
I live in a medium-sized rural university town (about 50,000 without students, about 80,000 with them). I work for the university and moved to my present location in 1999. Before that I was living about three miles away and would drive to work daily. Now, I have a 15 minute walk apartment door to office door (my office, not the outer door). That cut my driving down by more than a third.
So my driving habits over the last 15 years have dropped by roughly 65%-75%. I only drive when I need to run errands or I am going to visit friends farther than I can comfortably walk. I might spend $120-$130 on gas in a "busy" month (about 1,000 miles worth), but on average I spend about $60-$65 (about 500 miles worth). I used to average between 2,000 - 3,000 miles per month when gas was under $2.50/gal. I did a lot more road trips for fun and drove back and forth to work (often multiple times a day), as well as shopping trips and other errands. People around where I live have also gotten worse driving habits over that time, so that's another reason I stay off the roads. Where I live half the population of drivers has less than eight years of driving experience, and it seems they never really learned the rules of the road, anyway. Hell, it's bad enough as a pedestrian!
It's mostly about the money, you think kids would rather be texting from home than texting from the mall? Shit.
When I was just out of highschool we'd drive around looking for a party. Spent half the night doing that... stopping by this house or that house... We couldn't call from the car as there were no cellphones and even if we did land line phones were often not picked up at a loud party. With modern texting/tweeting etc, teens know where the party's immediately. If it changes venue they know right away. It's just one more activity computers have made more efficient.
There should be Budget cuts Across the board!
If you think about the increase in cost of driving over the last 10 years, and compare that to the average wage of a typical teen, in their typical fast-food, restaurant, or retail job, this should fail to surprise ANYONE. Add into that more restrictions put on teens in many areas about when they can be out, who can be in the car, what they can and cannot be doing, and you can see all you need to see.
When I was a teenager, it's obvious that I would not get any chance for training - and placed a reliance on public transportation.
Eventually, I shelled out my own money for driver's instruction after getting a job, as there's no chance I would get training from my parent. (His idea of training is pointing out non-essential bits like AC or radio - which can be fiddled with while the car is stopped - and ignoring more important things like head lights or wipers. When it comes to driving, I get incorrect instructions.)
I also saw that issue very early, along with the general lack of actual training.
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Don't blame me, I endorsed Christie for Governor
My commute is now a 15 minute jaunt on the highway to work, this is not by design, nor is it because I moved closer. (In fact 8 years ago I moved farther away from my current place of employment) back then I had a 30 minute commute, and I suppose if I was still living in that one bedroom apartment (with two kids would be hell) I'd have a 10 minute commute as opposed to the 15...
I drive mostly to and from work, other times, not so much.
Gas prices actually around here gas prices have gone up slightly in the past 10 years, but really, when a look on the historical gas price list. in 2004 gas was roughly 70c/l it was 2005 when gas first peaked 100c/l, this morning it was a comfortable 99.7c/l on my drive in to work. So gas prices are slightly higher, but not as bad as they were 5 years ago, and my salary in the same time has more than doubled. It's settled down. hasn't hit 130 in a long time.
Shopping has become less of a hassle as well. It used to be that when I wanted to buy a new motherboard, it took driving around to about 3-4 different stores to get pricing because not every store had an up to date website. that's greatly improved in the past 10 years, same with shopping for furniture, TVs, etc. What used to be a 10 stop shopping trip is usually down to 1-2 now.
10 years ago I was also single, online dating wasn't really all that big yet, so if I wanted to meet someone I had to go out and cruise around. heck back when I was a teenager that was the primary way to meet girls. Now a lot of people meet people online. heck I met my wife of 8 years online. Also I no longer have to drive as much to go on dates with my wife, as we live together. so that's another.
Also entertainment. it used to be more entertaining to go to the mall, the theatre, whatever the kids of the area did to hang out and usually ended up driving there. now, it's more why drive to hang out, we can hangout online and chat online. so no need for physical contact anymore. (which is another study's results that there isn't enough person-person contact with teenagers anymore.
frankly. There has been a lot of societal changes in the last 10 years, and a lot of that results in less driving. plus the whole recession that hit in 2008, kinda put a damper on being able to afford a car in your teenage years.
I live in a border town and its common to get stopped outside my house for driving or walking or biking (have had it myself take up to 4 hours) getting in a car just makes u an easier target
I am 28. I drive more than I did 10 years ago but only because I live further from friends/family/job. The answer is the price of gas and the cost of maintaining a car in general. If you want to be able to afford a car you have to buy used and that usually means repair and upkeep. Tires are expensive. You have to register it. Those sorts of things. Where I live we are finally getting some decent public transportation and I envy kids now. Fuck owning a car they are a pain in the ass. Apart from the occasional road trip I would love to not have to worry about a car.
I put it down to these things:
1) A few dacades ago, cars had stylish, artful individual appearances. The car you drove was an extension and public declaration of your identity. Cars are now all identical-looking anonymous grey boxes who's shape is determined only by the most optimal windtunnel performance. You mostly can't even tell what brand they are any more without looking at the badge. Consequently cars have become white-good dispoable items like a dishwasher or microwave. Its why classic cars are reaching crazy values now. They are the only cars left with any character. Personally I'd rather pay the extra 0.8 cents a mile in gas lost from aerodynamic inefficiency in order to drive something that doesn't look and feel like an upside-down jelly-mould, but apprently I am in a very small minority.
2) Way too much ludicrously heavy-handed legislation such as ridiculously low speed limits everywhere in direct response to politicised pressure groups with hidden agendas like MADD, have taken a lot of the pleasure out of driving.
3) Driving is often unaffordable for younger adults now since drivers have always been seen as a fat and almost infinite source of tax revenue, so the government keep heaping more taxes on road users. Driving is at least triple-taxed compared to anything else. (vehicle 'luxury' tax + gas tax + road licence tax + toll roads + the purpose of low speed limits/traffic tickets/automatic cameras and that most cops are traffic cops rather than the type who actually solve crimes, is all to do with revenue generation rather than anything at all to do with road safety).
3b) As car insurance is compulsory, car insurance companies are making out like bandits especially from young people. (A very relvant message about obamacare here too somewhere).
4) Just the large increase in the amount of traffic (mostly commercial) on the road. You are far more likely to encounter heavy traffic especially large slow-moving vehicles wherever you drive now, compared to a few dacades ago. This makes it hardly fun to drive anywhere any more.
Ten years ago I had just finished my bachelor's degree, didn't own a car, and was working part time for minimum wage before starting grad school. Now I actually have a career, but wasn't fortunate enough to find affordable housing within close proximity, in an area with lousy mass transit.
Cost of gas, cost of insurance, a shift in culture from interacting with other teens in person to pounding an xbox controller, greater difficulty for teens to enter the workforce (a high minimum wage drying up entry level jobs), an "entitled" mindset and dying work ethic, and a down economy. There are probably other factors, but those are probably the major ones.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I live in what would be termed the city of cars - Los Angeles, Yet my son and 50% of his class don't drive. . He loves LA's limited train transportation and the buses - he and his friends reasons - Less stress, saves money - don't have to deal with the hassle of maintenance - If there is no mass transport he is more then happy to walk, or take his bicycle if its longer then 5 miles. The only time he regrets it is when in rains - and as the song says - it doesn't rain in southern California (at least not much recently). Prime candidates for as needed vehicle rentals.
When I was in high school, society looked at drinking and driving very differently than today. The drinking age was 18. We would often drive around with several friends drinking. Be it driving or parked somewhere, just sitting, talking , whatever. When the cops would come, if you weren’t a complete mess, all they would do is take your beer and tell you to go home. Additionally, many activities for teens centered around driving. We would go ‘cruising’. A local area where teens would all drive an congregate. Many cities have outlawed it. In addition to social and legal change in drinking attitudes, there are now automated speeding tickets, the cost of insurance, being harassed by law enforcement if just a few teens hangout somewhere. The change is more than the automobile. It’s a social political change that generally looks at young people congregating in public with negativity.
Why aren't the peaks and troughs for the 16-19 year olds reflected in the 20-24 year old curve 5 years later?
http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-content/photos/000/745/cache/74518_600x450-cb1387302373.jpg
There ought to be a lagged correlation between those statistics, but they're in almost perfect lock-step. Suspicious, to say the least.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Retired, bought a motorcycle and put many more miles on it than on my car. Those miles are put on in the 7 months of not winter when I can ride the bike too. As for the kids driving. Too much of a hassle to get a license, buy gas, buy insurance, follow the rules and any number of things that make it difficult to get in a car and go.
Passionately Indifferent
Gas is expensive
Insurance is expensive
Jobs are hard to come by, especially for teens
They grew up socializing on-line so r/l meets are not as important now
Did i mention jobs are hard to come by?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Driver education was a standard part of the (summer) high school curriculum when I was coming up so very long ago. I don't think that's the case anymore, and and as a result it's not as accessible as it once was. It's much less a thing you do automatically when you hit 16.
That, and kids are living more of their lives virtually now. More "tactile" skills like driving and fixing mechanical things aren't as cool as the ones involved in manipulating what you see on your screen.
Yes, I drive less than, say, 10 years ago. Ten years ago I had quite a large sedan. For meetings and seeing customers, I made it gobble sometimes as much as 2000 kilometers a week. And then ? Then came Skype, Dropbox et al.. Then came the cloud. Then came radically altered habits of working together. That's all.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Teens don't drive because cars today suck. They look like cockroaches and the driveline is a tangle of wires and sensors that makes affordable tinkering a thing of the past. You won't be bolting a spread bore Holly on or swapping the auto transmission for a 4 speed.
Cars and driving used to be fun. Now it's a necessary evil.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
My first car cost me $145.00 + $100 for a replacment engine in 1985 I spent christmas break in my dad's garage by had "refreshing" the engine by disassembling, hand lapping the valves, and cleaning things up and replacing seals and bearings. we then stuffed that engine into the car and I drove it for 4 years. Insurance was $59.00 a month for me for PL-PD and $5.00 in gas took me everywhere. Paid for all of it on my minimum wage Burger King job.
Today, a POS crap car ready to explode is $2500, a replacement junkyard engine is $550 that needs to be refreshed. Insurance is $225 a month for 18-21 for PL-PD and you will be lucky to go a week spending only $50.00 in gas. Kids cant make enough money to even buy a car or pay for insurance and gas.
It's because minimum wage is too low, Insurance companies are allowed to utterly gouge with insane high rates, and car values are horribly over inflated.
The world has steadily went backwards cince the 1980's as far as income goes. Cost of living and inflation has bee out of control fora long time, but hidden from people because of how they cherry pick data.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'm a bit different, I didn't bother gettin' a license 'til 2006 (I was 32). So naturally, I drive more than I did a decade ago. My situation changed since then and that meant I needed to learn to drive. I don't like to drive. Someday, I won't drive anymore.
Perhaps it's the area I live in, the geography, the military presence, the tourism... Not sure, but I see many more young drivers on the road here than I did when I was that age...
Shrug.
I volunteer for a teen street survival class and attendance has been going up, not down. Would seem to as many, if not more area teens driving.. or at least with parents wanting them to learn how to do so more safely... (If you are a parent of a teen driver, I strongly encourage you to find a teen driving course in your area that focuses on defensive driving/situational awareness. Many sherif's departments offer them, and Tirerack Street Survival offers many classes across the US as well.)
Perhaps the area I live in is just that odd..
As an adult, small business owner, I noticed that between driving to and from customers, my office, home, and Autocross events, I drove just under 10,000 miles in 2013.
I expect that number to be about the same, or a bit higher in 2014.
You can't own a car when you are making minimum wage unless you dedicate almost every cent to it. Functional used cars cost far more than they used to, as does gas, insurance and repairs.
In the past parents would often take up the slack, buying their kid a car and paying insurance. But parents are more and more tapped out these days, facing rising costs of their own with stagnant wages.
Finally, kids just don't value cars the same as they once did. Twenty years ago a young man's car was often the center of his entire existence, the most important object he owned. Now it's not. That role is filled by the xbox or the playstation or the cell phone.
Why? Not the gas prices. Yes, they are high. But mainly it's because travel costs time and is burdensome. Travel to me was never about being on the road, but always about getting somewhere. And if I don't have to get somewhere, I simply don't travel. And yes, the next supermarket is across the street from my home.
Ten years ago I was commuting to a job ten miles away. Then, after they outsourced all of our jobs, I worked from home for about four years. Now that gig's over and I only drive to job interviews and, being over fifty, those are few and far between.
Sure, there's the price of gas, staying home to internet, etc., but there's also the cost of getting a car in the first place. Cash for Clunkers reduced the number of available used vehicles, driving prices up. Also, some states have laws about the taxes for selling a car such that even if you sell for a dollar, the state will base the taxes on what they think the vehicle is worth. (Considering how they already can be with real estate tax appraisals, good luck with that.)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
It's too damned expensive. Gas costs a lot more, maintenance costs a lot more, parking costs a lot more, and insurance is still heinously expensive.
Even the kids who are lucky enough to get their parents to pay for the insurance still are facing a mountain of costs. And in those cases, the kid's car insurance is often the easiest cost to cut out of the family budget when things get tight.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I have a teenager and I can answer these questions from his perspective vs. when I was in high school 20 years ago.
1) Home entertainment is so much better. He can play his x-box, talk to friends on live, play on the internet. All of this is in lieu of personal contact or face-to-face conversation. When I was a kid, if I wanted to play with someone, I had to do it at their house. The only way to get there was driving or riding a bike.
2) Cell phones allow for faster communication. Relationships which were either face to face or on the phone when I was a kid. Now you can have face to face, Skype, video chat, etc. on your cell phone along with texting and other forms of media on your hand held which makes it much easier for them to maintain a relationship with much less effort.
3) Effort. When I wanted to do something, I had to leave the house or host people at my place. This was effort and sometimes was taxing. Most kids now days see the effort in hosting people at your house or going to someone else's house as a waste due to the reasons #1 and #2 being the way to get your human interaction.
4) Legal issues. Shit I used to do when I was a kid is now illegal. I am not talking drugs or anything like that, I mean like meeting up with friends at a jr. high and playing some ball, or 100 other things I used to do. We live in an extremely litigious society and as such things that were simple when I was a kid, you cannot do anything and kids are trained from a young age to rely on mommy and daddy to do things for them as they are the only ones who can take a risk.
5) Cost. While this is somewhat true, I don't think it is that much different than when I was a kid. While gas costs 3 times more, they also make double the amount of money at work due to minimum wage increases. Insurance is the same (dollar for dollar) as when I was driving and when my son is driving. Cars cost the same (a good $3k car is still there for people to get for kids). It all depends on the quantity of money and how much you make your kid responsible for their costs.
At the end of the day, there are many other things, but I remark #1 and #2 as the biggest differences between generations. If I didn't see a friend, I didn't talk to them. Now there is a dozen way to talk to a friend, and never leave the couch. Thus driving was the only way for me to see them.
The NES was released the same year driving began to decline. Coincidence?
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
So it's a take your pick from...
* Lack of low paying jobs because over qualified people flooded the market.
* Lack of low paying jobs because of immigrants.
* Lack of interest in going out because of gadget X, Y, or Z.
* Price of gas.
* Price of cars.
* More space at home to avoid other family members.
* City life.
* Online life replacing offline one. (Friends)
* Online shopping replacing brick and motor stores.
Sounds like a large combination of things really and no one specific thing.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
have anyone else noticed the media have as a core concern the ideas of growth and corporate profits and revenues? And that the media lives off of advertising buys by corporations? And that if corporations make less revenues and profits the media makes less money? The corporate media tries to portray itself as liberal, but really it is all about money and growth (which is why the media backs multiculturalism and mass immigration--those ideas put more workers and consumers into america and into american workplaces and, ultimately into american stores, which boosts corporate advertising purchases in....wait for it...the corporate media....
I sold my car to get some money to help my education.
Realised that 99% of the time I didn't need it anyway as I lived in the city.
Public transport is awesome, I also love my bike.. Occasionally I will catch a cab home, but I am usually drunk so it makes sense.
The only time I need a car is when I travel somewhere where the public transport is not so great. Then I hire a car.
The amount of money I have saved by not owning a car in gas/maintenence/insurance allows me to take more holidays to exotic places.
Cars are liabilties not assets, so ditch it if you can. Live a better life.
I also take public transit now, bus and train. It's not because of energy though. It's because of time and because driving in my car has become too dangerous. Since city planners were on cocaine back in the 1970s the roads and rail are inadequately placed, so it takes 2 hours to go 30 miles in traffic. I don't have four hours a day to pilot a car when I need to be studying. I actually got a mount for my phone to record when actually do drive because I have too many close calls with people who run four way stops at 40mph, people who turn left though a blinding wall of traffic, people who just can't seem to stay in their lane, and people who corkscrew their way though traffic. Oh yea, there's the two geniuses who ran their trucks into my mailbox and left their shattered grill and headlight in my driveway.
Perhaps they've finally cottoned on to how incredibly bad at it they are?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Four Reasons: A) Access to jobs, my rules are if you drive you at least put gas in the car; I'll pay the rest. Unfortunately even entry level jobs are now being occupied by older people in need or not available with all of the businesses in retail closing. B) Insurance. Even though I have bought used cars for my kids and only put collision coverage on them, with a young driver the rates are insane. C) Probationary periods on licenses now. When I was 16 and had my license there were no restrictions on when I could drive. In my state, there's now restrictions on when you can drive and who can be in the car with you until you're 18. D) Even if you can afford the gas and have a job, it's expensive to operate a car. If you're a teen putting $40+ bucks in a car/week can be pretty hefty.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
no, the military is bloated to satisfy the corporations and their rich investors. The reason for the difference between western europe and america is 1) america is larger and 2) america has a strong checks and balances/seperation of powers govt and 3) america is more heterogeneous/diverse. Western europe on the other hand is smaller and have a parliamentarian govt and is more homogeneous. This means that Western european nations are more democratic. Democracy means heeding the will of the people. because the USA is less democratic the corporations run things. Corporations want revenue and profits. A bloated military and wars bring corporate profits. QED
At first, the car represented freedom. Now you could go where you wanted. You could move out of your cramped duplex and get a big house out of the city. It was nice, it was modern.
Today, in America, the car is more like a prison you're born into. As an adult, you're forced to have one if you want access to the broader job market, and many times you're going to spend hours a day in it - whether you like it or not. The suburbs have devolved from open areas into overdeveloped parking lots.
And there's all the hassles. Commutes to work break down into frequent gridlock. Insurance costs are prohibitive. Cops look at you like a meal ticket.
At the end of the day, people just aren't getting the same joy from driving. So we're beginning to scale back our embracing of the automobile a bit. Maybe, we've realized, it's better when you can walk to the store in a few minutes or ride the bus to work. Who actually likes having to drive 10 miles to get some clothes or navigating in rush hour on the way to the office?
Your cars suck. Your engineering suck. American cars were a reason of pride - now they are the joke of the world.
Most American cars can't be sold in china because they don't pass the pollution regulations. - seriously.
Most American cars are sold in Europe with German engines because American engines don't pass German regulations established 30 years ago.
Some years ago, Obama wanted to make American cars do 54 mpg in 20 years. Industry said it was impossible.
BMW said they have no ordinary car with such absurd consumption for the last 5 years, this was a thing of the past.
Take the national pride out of the youngsters, and there you go. They're ashamed of their shabby shit.
As a city dweller public transport and the occasional rental car were all I needed for a long time.
A few years ago I got a nice bonus from my employers and bought a little car to see what I might do with it. I can't say it's changed my driving habits all that much: I still take the bus to work, but drive on weekends. The price of gasoline is certainly a factor, but will have to be quite a bit more before I cut back further on driving. I'd love to drive an electric car, but the infrastructure isn't there. I live in an apartment and have nowhere to plug one in, despite numerous discussions with the building management.
There are a few destinations around here (like downtown Vancouver) where I still prefer to take the bus, because the traffic and parking are impossible.
...laura
In 1997 when I was 16 a gallon of gas cost 85 cents. I could drive my '83 Jetta for two weeks for about $8. My high school was about 4 mile round trip commute, but I also drove around a lot in my free time. I now never drive with out an explicit purpose. It now costs me about $50 in gas to drive my Passat for about 10 days. I now commute 32 miles round trip 5 days a week and 2-3 weekends a month I also drive about 30-45 miles round trip to go skiing or hiking. I live downtown and actually commute out of the city to work. During the warmer months, I do also commute to and from work on a bike at least once a week and sometimes as much as 3 times if I am feeling ambitious. But gas cost more in the summer too, so there isn't much of a savings from the winter when I drive the commute everyday. I live in the city so that after I get home from work I don't have to drive anymore. I am not sure if I drive more now, but either way I certainly pay a lot more than I used to when I started driving.
As one of those "damn kids who need to get off your lawn" (relatively speaking), particularly one who drives maybe 300 miles a month, let me say some things:
1) I don't like driving. I planned my life so that I don't have to drive that much. I live 2 miles away from where I work, and within walking distance of the grocery store and a fair number of restaurants. Hell, I walked to a Protomen concert. With rent and gas both being stupid expensive, I'm not really saving much money this way, but I'm saving time.
2) I don't need to drive to get to entertainment. I have the internet, there's plenty of clubs and bars within walking distance, so the only reason I really need to drive is to visit friends. Compared to yesteryear, when you needed to drive to watch a movie or to do whatever else people did for fun back then (bowling?).
So since I don't have to drive much for either fun or work, I end up not really driving much because I specifically try to avoid driving a lot. I used to drive 300 miles a week getting to school - I hated it, decided I didn't want to do that again, and now I'm not.
Almost no one lives within 100m of a grocery. (It's usually difficult to even park within 50m of the door.) The grocery is usually about a 10-minute drive, and it's usually on very busy roads that often lack sidewalks.
It's a chicken-and-egg problem. You can't walk more because distances are too far and roads are not pedestrian friendly. And there's no motivation to change the situation because everyone drives.
I think all of the factors mentioned in the original article are valid contributors.
But the Internet factor is probably a little more complex than just "teens just socialize online these days".
There's also the fact that with the internet, you can work from anywhere with a usable connection. Younger people making a living doing software development or web design, technical writing, or other jobs along these lines can do them from home, or from a coffee house down the block. There's no need to drive in to an office every day.
Additionally, it's possible to order just about anything you want to buy online. I wouldn't say it fully replaces shopping in physical stores, but it reduces the need. That just makes one more reason a teen can get by without needing a car. When I was a teenager, going to the mall was a big part of socializing with friends -- as well as your primary way to obtain new music or movies, or even gadgets from stores like Radio Shack. Today, malls are usually dying or surviving by catering to the high end customer. They're no longer a magnet for teens as a destination.
It's probably largely a result of all of this, but I see youth today taking much less interest in cars too. Sure, you still have the occasional "gear head" or enthusiast out there. But it's not like it was when I was growing up, where you'd almost always find someone in a classroom with a copy of one of the automotive or motorcycle magaines, and pictures of some exotic sports car taped to the inside of a locker door. Cars, today, are sold based on the electronic features in them as much as anything else. Many kids don't care what they drive as long as it's cheap to operate and has a cool stereo in it.
They drive like assholes over there, and few people are so aggressive, big-headed and ignorant as American teenage kids. There's nothing more dangerous in traffic than American teenagers.
Price of gas, vehicles, upkeep, taxes, etc. If companies like Elio motors actually get some of the car/motorcycle crossover vehicles out it might change the trends. I think Elio has the best chance because of the price point. I like the vehicle Lit motors is bringing out but it's way over priced. The target needs to be $10k not plus $20k. I usually buy small vehicles but even they can run over $20k. I blame government regulation and the general unwillingness of companies to cooperate on developing cheaper integrated systems that are universal across vehicles for driving the price up. My '91 CRX SI cost somewhere around $12k off the showroom but I recently had to get a new daily driver so I bought the CRZ which cost about $24k. It's a two seater and has six airbags. The thing is built like a tank. Between the extra weight and required government add-ons it is way more expensive than it should be. While safety is an issue however when you drive there has to be an assumed level of risk. When someone drives a motorcycle they know they have a high chance of biting the big one in a wreck. All the safety stuff just makes the driver over confident so they don't pay attention to what they are doing. If a person's chance of death goes up I bet they'll put the cell phone away and watch the road.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
I'm kind of bucking the trend, but it's due to now having a job that is 25 miles away from where I live. I repair machinery and instruments, so no chance for telecommuting. 10 years ago, I was combining part time and self employment and didn't have to commute.
15 years ago, I worked in the same small city I do now and so I was driving the same amount. I was doing sysadmin work that about half of it could have been done by telecommuting, but that wasn't as prevalent then.
With all the outsourcing and all our manufacturing jobs (that aren't done by robots) pretty much gone I see more and more adults in Fast Food. That means less of these jobs for teenagers. Plus American Kids get a _lot_ more homework now. They have to keep up with the standardized testing, and companies don't like training workers so they demanded the schools do _something_ so they don't have to, and the schools responded with a tonne of homework.
It boils down to an eroding middle class due to massive wealth inequality, but we're not allowed to talk about that (the same folks who benefit the most also own the media outlets). It's fun to watch these pundits that aren't allowed to talk about what's really happening (or who've got the blinders on too tightly to see) try to come with reasons for it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Combine that with the bad economy and how fewer parents can afford to allow it now they are working the jobs the teens used to be aiming for... if they can find a job.
Teens today MUST have their embarrassingly expensive smart phones (think about it, it costs them less than the ground lines but you pay 3x-5x more.) which cost more per month than the car would. They'd nearly all choose the phone over the car.
All things being equal, a significant number would be priced out due to the cell phone expenses that weren't a big issue before.
Driving is also miserable, traffic has noticeably increased in 10 years; sometimes I wonder if there wasn't an unreported baby boom that has begun to get on the road (plus they are on their dam phones while driving.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The crappy cars teenagers had access to were destroyed by the Cash for Clunkers program.
Motivation for me in Europe, in order:
lack of city parking,
cost of fuel,
it's-destroying-the-planet,
getting ripped off by garages on jobs too big for me to do myself,
Zipcar,
hirecar cheapness in general,
folding bicycles
I think also bigger cities are a factor. For anyone living in a city a car is more of a pain. It really divides people into countryside people and city folk.
As an aside... guys making the rules in the cities and capitals especially have absolutely no idea what it's like to wait for a bus in the countryside that never comes. Outside the city (which almost always are horrible places I don't like to be...) the car is nearly always completely indispensable. Suggestions of bicycles and non self maintainable batteries are so out of touch of non urban living.
A blog I run for the wealth
The Chicago area has this problem worse than anywhere. Roads here are always "work zones" yet the quality of the road never actually gets any better, and there's rarely any actual work being done.
I can only assume the politically connected road contractors use the cheapest possible materials so they can do the same work again just a couple of years later.
I'm 30. I drive about the same amount now as I did a decade ago - that is, not much at all. But the reasons are different.
10 years ago I lived on campus at university. Meals were provided and I had a downtown area within a 15-20 min walking distance (for going to a movie, eating out, etc). My classes were all a 5-10 minute walk away. So the only time I really drove was when me or my friends wanted to go somewhere further afield. Most of them didn't even own a car so we usually took mine. A new restaurant on the other side of the city or the odd weekend road trip to a different city a few hundred km away. But that was about it.
I hated that car. It was dirt cheap to buy but keeping it was so expensive for a poor starving student with virtually no disposable income. Registration/third party insurance was like 800 bucks a year and keeping it parked on campus near where I lived incurred a hefty fee too. I didn't even bother insuring it - wasn't worth it (other than the compulsory third party insurance that forms part of the registration fee where I live). It had plenty of mechanical issues that were quite costly to deal with too. It taught me that frankly, if you can get by without a car, you should do it, even if it's slightly less convenient. They are just money suckers.
Now I am married and make a good income. I could easily afford to drive as much as I wanted. However, I still don't drive much, and the main reason is the internet. I'm a consultant and so my time is split between working at home, or working onsite for a client, who could be anywhere in the country. So I FLY quite a bit now - several times a month, but probably don't drive many more miles than I did back in university. My wife and I go out, and do the grocery shopping once a week etc. but that doesn't add up to that much really.
Anyway I imagine the drop in teenage driving is due mostly to what I found driving when I was younger. It's very expensive to keep a car. It's not so much the cost of fuel but the other costs of keeping a vehicle. Most younger people I talk to say the same thing - waste of money. They prefer taking the bus/train (public transport is OKish in this city, though by no means excellent). Or they'll just get a taxi. Catching a cab a couple of times a week still ends up much cheaper than owning a car.
The real reason why kids are not driving is that things are expensive. getting your license is expensive in states that no longer offer it at schools. A car is expensive. Insurance is even more expensive. But then you add on the costs of FUEL. That doubles everything.
But, once we get electric cars below $20K, then only the initial license and insurance will costs a lot. The reason is that a kid will be able to drive for next to nothing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Didn't we have an article on this subject last month that showed that texting and social media are as popular as they are for teenagers because they're otherwise denied access to one another far more than any of us had to deal with growing up? Their days are heavily scheduled, they grew up with their parents keeping them in and letting them out only when they could be watched, etc.
Please don't tell me that any of you think that stops the second these brats enter their teen years?
Uh... Yeah? Because I was 10 at the time....
So 18 is about 9. And 9 year olds can't drive. That's why. As each generation takes longer and longer to reach maturity they're stuck in a semi permanent twilight zone of childhood where nothing is expected of them or by them.
I drive less now than when I did even 5 years ago. A lot has to do with how close I live to work, shopping, etc. Also I cant afford to go anywhere anymore, My pay's been about the same for the last 7 years, and with everything outstripping what little increases I receive. Mean while the owner of my company complained that his pay increased by 100k. Fuck him.
These days its harder for teenagers to get "cool" cars to drive around in.
Not just price (although the days of cars that teenagers can afford that are also "cool" are mostly gone) but also things like safety (i.e. older "cooler" cars are out because they dont have the safety of the newer boring cars) and power levels (some parents and such being concerned about their young drivers driving high powered cars and in some cases jurisdictions introducing restrictions on new/young drivers driving high powered cars)
There is a flaw in your logic. What is probably confusing you is that the ratio used was 50%. However, modifying the example, lets say all 10 guys slept with one only two of the girls.
Now you have 10 boys having average sex with 2 grils each, giving a promiscuity rate of 2 sexual parterners per boy. 2 girls have slept with all 10 boys and 8 girls have had no sex at all, which using your version still gives a rate of 2.
However, 80% of the girls have had no sex and 100% of the boys have had sex. Are you really trying to say in the example that the girls in the control group are as promiscuos as the boys?
Being promiscuous, according to the Free Online Dictionary is " Having casual sexual relations frequently with different partners; indiscriminate in the choice of sexual partners." Promiscuity is the measure of how promiscuous a population is (in the examples the population would be 10 males and 10 females). It doesn't measure how many average partners the population has, it measures the average of how many are promiscuos.
The reality is that promiscuity is not measured the way you are trying to measure. In the example given previously (10 boys with 5 girls), the promiscuity rate among the boys is 100% and among the girls is 50%. In the example I gave, it is still 100% for the boys, but only 20% for the girls.
Historically, in the West, men were encouraged to sow their oats before settling down, but to marry a virgin. As such, culturally women were far less promiscuous then men. Today, studies show that woman are far more promiscuous than they were in the past, but still far behind men (by anywhere from 30% to 50% fewer partners depending on the study).
BTW, this doesn't mean that the woman who are not promiscuous necessarily virgins, it simply means that they do not meet the standard definition of promiscuity (likewise for the males who are not promiscuous).
This is the result of a wider social strategy aimed at the feminization or pussification of the western/white male. If these chemically and socially neutered males lose interest in sex and procreation generally, then auto usage and sales generally will suffer greatly. Think about this before modding down.
was good for america but now gm is in trouble american driving is in trouble
OK, but were you a teenager 10 years ago and are you a teenager today? Doubtful that you could drive at 10 and have married at 12.
Probably because they're not working. :P
> Whatever your age, do you drive less than you did 10 years ago?
Yes, but I don't live in the US while I did 10 years ago.
I'm not a teenager, and if I was, then I wouldn't have driven *at all* ten years ago, and so I would be driving *more* now, since I do actually drive sometimes.
Max.
Another symptom exposing the reality that americans are now poor, irrespective of how much voodoo economists tout the recovery as demonstrated by an increasing (albeit slowly) GDP and a very small amount of inflation (CPI maybe, but not real inflation). /story
More online shopping.
During the Cold War, there was a stigma attached to not wanting a driver's license. It was viewed as siding with the Soviet Union with its ideology of disdain for individuality as expressed in personal at-will mobility. The Millennials have not known of that stark choice between liberty and tyranny. They have become accustomed to tyranny where transportation is concerned.
As for Cash for Clunkers, the dirty little secret is that the vehicles targeted were those whose engines could be retrofitted to run without EMP vulnerable electronics (distributors and mounts for mechanical fuel pumps on the blocks or timing cases).
If we're going to discuss this properly then I think we need more info on any possible threesomes.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I was a teen during the period the article claims peak teen driving occurred. ('80's) Back then, you could buy a cheap used car for what you could make at a summer job, gas was less than a dollar/gallon and if you stayed out of trouble insurance prices weren't insane. Now, fuel prices are out of line with inflation, used cars cost a years wages for a typical teen still in high-school, and insurance is out of reach.
Blame democrat monetary policy, environmental over-regulation, and every other policy, law, etc democrats have put in place over the last 30 years! democrat party and those that for for them kill jobs!!!! It really is that simple!! I invite all democrats to give up their citizenship and move to the facist, socialist, or communist country of their choice, at their own expense!! I am quite sure they will be much happier there, since they hate the United States SOOOO much!!!
When I was a teenager, there was very little to do in rural Pennsylvania. One cure for this boredom was to pile into a crappy beater of a car and drive around looking for pedestrians to harass.
There was (is?) a weird culture among bored young motorists in the rural U.S. that entitled them to honk and yell rude things at pedestrians simply because they were walking on the shoulder of the road or the sidewalk if there was any to speak of. You don't have a car; you must be poor, I can make fun of you without you beating my ass because I am in a fast-moving car, et cetera. So goes the teenage logic of these actions. As far as I know, this culture persists in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
Quite frankly, if all the new electronic tiddlywinks we have today like Snaptweet and Facial Book keep these idiots off the streets, good. I'd rather not have some pimply-faced squirt lean out of his mother's minivan and call me a 'fag' for walking my dog at 7pm.
Think about where the European debt came from. Thinking about 2008 and events in the USA is a good starting point. Those governments bailed out their US exposed companies (and things like Goldman Sachs fucking over Greece) and are left with the debt.
I just never bothered (I'm in my early 30s). I lived in suburbs near big cities, or in big cities proper all my life across a handful of countries, and there was rarely anywhere I needed to go that I couldn't reach via public transportation of some sort, with the very occasional (2-3 times a year) place I'd just take a cab to.
There's a few annoyances (when moving I hire movers, but if I'm packing myself, carrying all the empty boxes and packing material from wherever I get it is a pain), but all around its just a whole lot less worry.
Didn't save me any money though, considering how brutally expensive a houses near main subway lines are though. So its really just because I prefer this lifestyle.
i'm betting less driving is required to get there, wherever that is.
need i say more?
Higher gas prices caused by government keeping prices high. Not allowing drilling on federal lands or building more refinerys.
Less jobs for teens. Obama's higher taxes, and Obamacare destroying jobs, adults taking part-time jobs teens usually take.
And parents not buying their kids cars because they are living on unemployment checks.
So the government is predicting a continued bad job market thanks to the democrats for a long time to come.
The USA produces cars for the man in his 40ties with average income. Wife, kids, dog, shopping and long stretches of road. Nothing exciting for the young ones. You don't aspire driving an SUV 'cause you'll look like your dad. Any affordable hybrid makes you look like your mom. Muscle cars made of cheap artificial materials. But above all Steve McQueen and Paul Newman have been replaced with metrosexual characters that mostly convey the meaning of having a good hair dresser.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Part 1/4 of my 4 part series as to why they don't drive
1. They have no money.
Part 2/4 of my 4 part series as to why they don't drive
2. Nanny regulations.
Part 3/4 of my 4 part series as to why they don't drive
3. More nanny regulations
Part 4/4, the concluding part of my 4 part series as to why they don't drive
4. They have No Money.
I drive much less than I used to. Back in the summer of 2010 I decided to ditch the car for daily use and switched to bicycling. I lost 60 pounds in 6 months and have never felt better. I now bicycle 3,000 to 4,000 miles a year. I live out in the country and have found bicycling to be practical. It is 4 miles to the Post Office. 6 miles to the barber. 8 miles to the bank. 9 miles west to a meat store in the country. 10 miles south to a supermarket. I've got a good rack and saddle bags on my bike and can easily haul 70 pounds of groceries. It seems ridiculous now to use a 1 to 2 ton piece of machinery to go a few miles. My basic guidance is that if I'm going 5 miles one way or less, I'll bicycle. If I'm going 5 to 10 miles one way, it is a toss up depending on what I'm doing. And if I'm going more than 10 miles one way, than I'll probably drive. I don't even use the car every week. If I lived in town, I'd consider not even owning a car. amanandhishoe.com
Ahh, the benefits of working from home. Awesome. Cars seem so antique.
If you live in a city, it is possible to "ditch the car." However, some of us live in rural areas and still need a vehicle, especially when a larger town is 100 miles away, one way. Although, if fuel prices rise and the economy continues its stall, I see a future of co-operative shopping happening soon.
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In 2014, you don't need to have a fancy car to make a statement. An iPhone at a Starbucks is worth far more street cred. In addition, hot cars for 18 year olds when I was a kid was typically started off as a beater which we fixed up. Modern cars are too complex for a teenager without a proper shop to work on. I don't know a single teenager which would prefer wheels over bandwidth. Both cost enough that they have to choose. How about a pathetic minimum wage? In high school, I could easily make enough money working at McDonalds to pay for a car, insurance and gas. Today, the car costs nothing, but gas and insurance costs a fortune. Proliferation of electric bicycles and cheap scooters. You can buy a scooter for $300 used, pay almost nothing for insurance and gas is close to free.
All in all, cars for a teenager aren't so important anymore.
THIS. THIS! I fucking HATE those false work zones. If there is no work, there should be no work zone. Take the goddamned barrels and cones out of the road and get out of our way.
Easy to fix - charge the contractors rent for the road they cone off.
I averaged around 20,000 miles a year back 10 years ago. Now I'm down to around 6,000 miles a year.
How much is the average teenager after-tax wage these days?
With gas at ~ $3.50/gal. and climbing rapidly, add in out-of-sight insurance premiums, car payments and maintenance to that, how far can a teenager drive on a week's wage?
I would expect the answer would be, not very far.
bicycles
This analysis, like all "one size fits all" programs, is flawed from the start because it assumes the entire U.S. is one big homogeneous group. Standard Federal Foolishness, a complete waste of money, and of course the "conclusions" will be based on the ideology of the people doing the study.
If you live in the American West, you can't survive without a car unless you are in SF. If you live in rural America, you can't get by either. If you're in a city with public transportation, or the Northeast corridor, the story is completely different.
And no surprise the discussion here follows predictable divisions, the lefties preaching European style mass transit (That few Americans WANT, as we aren't very good at building mass transit systems, can't run them efficiently, and don't like using them... And the righties saying it is all the fault of the "Obama Economy". People without cars saying how great their life is, people with cars saying the same thing...
Murphy was an optimist
I am 16, however, I am less than 6 months to 17. I have already driven 35,000 miles...
when I bought my first car, a 1950 Ford V8 for $50 , there was no insurance, no certification, no mechanical certifications and gas was 10 cents per liter and now
the costs for insurance, cars, certification and gas have all gone up.
Cars by 25 times and insurance costs as much or more than the car for a cheaper beater.
It is pure economics driving miles driven down.
make that ten cents per gallon
Go back to Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase. The new land was arranged in a rigid grid for individual family farms, not for a central village based on the topology of the land or a water source. This also leads to crops that can produce a surplus on a family farm (as opposed to rice or crop that require a larger group to produce a surplus). Hence "rugged individuals", local loyalty to local institutions, etc.
Railroads were another decision. The federal government paid for them with land grants that were grabs for the politically connected (gee, like Green Energy money today!) and their Transcontinental rails all failed except for the private efforts (J. J. Hill and the Northern Pacific and smaller one). But he land grants on the aide of the right-of-way stayed. This finally lead to the Granger movement ( http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/241647/Granger-movementmovemen), and development of towns on rail lines. Which lead to uniform time zones, large distances between towns (huge wheat and corn fields, spread out in an area Europe never knew, etc.). This lead to "going to town" once a week or once month and having a Sunday house to stay over (interesting architecture!). This was a whole day of travel!
But this changes church services (Morning services are not good, long revivals are expensive), commerce (think Sam's Club bulk in one trip, not euro-shopping baskets trip each day), etc.
Years ago, I (almost) repaid a Swedish friend for the wonderful Swedish Xmas he gave me by hosting his daughter and her boyfriend on their round-the-world trip . They assumed they could take a bus or train from DFW to Austin from the airport. No. I picked them up and we started driving ; they were like American kids chanting "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" Then we had a flash storm and had to pull over for flash floods. I had to remind Lisa how she laughed at me for panic a mere 2m of snow on the road (the road marker poles were 3m).
"Caesar: Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian and thinks the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature." - Caesar and Cleopatra; George Bernard Shaw 1898
I remember my high school Physics teacher, somehow amazed that a class of students who had enough difficulty not choking on their own drool couldn't understand the principle of a free-body diagram, blaming the fact that we weren't doing our homework due to having jobs. "And it doesn't make any sense that you're working these jobs," he said, "because all you're doing is making just enough money to pay for a car and enough gas to get to work."
That was a decade ago, and the problem has only gotten worse. The cost of legally required insurance, plus gas, and plus repairs is about equal to what a teenager is capable of making. Buying a used car is frequently the least expensive part of the equation.
In my case, I was seeing red for a whole week after the teacher had chewed us out for having jobs. Not because I had an A in his class, but because he just wasn't thinking. Sure, kids were using their cars mostly only for driving to work and back. But that one drive out of ten that wasn't to work was the reason you had the car. If your parent(s) were working, and you live in suburbia, your teenage life is just going to school and coming back to an empty house. Most mothers were working now, so they couldn't just get a ride to the movie theater or whatever--so either kids got jobs, or they did something solitary and sedentary, like watch TV. Parents complain that their children are just laying about the house all day--but are they willing to take their kids somewhere when they get home at six in the afternoon, and bring them home again before bedtime?
And don't say "in my day, we rode bikes to each others' houses"--a friend of mine in high school was riding his bicycle to work when he was run over by an unlicensed, uninsured driver in a crosswalk. The driver wasn't even charged with manslaughter. The town treated the kid like he was some sort of extreme skateboarding daredevil--"he knew the risks; he knew the roads here weren't made for pedestrians." When someone driving 40 miles per hour on an icy road hits a kid, it's the parents' fault for letting him outside the house without first buying him an SUV.
I don't think the question should be "why aren't kids driving?" but "what do we do to cope with the fact that some can't?" Everyone's predicting some sort of social catastrophe as kids grow up addicted to social media, video games and porn, never learning the interpersonal skills necessary to function as a fulfilled human being, and uninterested in increasingly demanding careers, and regardless of the fact that every generation has thought the same thing about their kids, everyone's taking this as accomplished fact when there are concrete steps we could be making to solve the issue. It's not just about mass transit. When kids have to walk two hours to get to the closest hangout spot, the price of their car insurance just happens to be almost exactly what a teenager making minimum wage can pay, and when traffic is moving so fast that a kid on a bike is considered to be taking his life into his own hands, of course kids are going to stay home. They're being FORCED to.
As for myself, I've never driven a car nor held a license. When that Physics teacher was chewing us out, I was tempted to just walk out of there. I started working at 14, and most of that money went towards supporting my family. I wasn't working to pay for my own car, but my mother's--it was literally a two hour walk to the grocery store, we needed to eat, and the number we were quoted for putting me on the insurance was just crazy. Since then, I've never had enough money at once to pay for driving school, get a car, pay for insurance, and pay for gas--so I've never gotten a license. People are frequently disappointed in me for not living up to my potential, but hey--I was programming a robot with PBASIC in my high school's robotics club when I had to make a decision between my family and school, and I chose family. The economy said I was worth more as a cashier than a programmer, so here I am.
Hell, I consider myself lucky that I
I can't get a girl 'cause I ain't got a car.
I can't get a car 'cause I ain't got a job.
I can't get a job 'cause I ain't got a car.
-Alice Cooper
In the 80s I used to drive long distances, in the 90s I drove half an hour to get to work, and took road trips.
In the Aughties I started taking the bus most of the time.
In this decade I mostly walk or bus to work, rarely use the car anymore.
I think we've reached #PeakCar already.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I live in California, where driving seems to be more important than in other parts of the U.S. and in Europe. I live in Silicon Valley where a persistent housing shortage and higher demand for workers means that people who have high paying jobs often have long commutes, 40+ miles one way.
I don't drive, never have, due to poor vision. So, I have arranged my life around either public transit or walking to work. I worked for about 23 years where I was able to walk to work and another 20 years where I had short bus or train rides. Since I have retired, the cost of public transit has more than doubled in absolute currency so I can understand the claim that the price of fuel could be a reason why fewer teenagers drive. The same with insurance rates.
Having been in Europe 30 years ago, I can say with confidence that the public transit there is better than what we have here. It is better integrated.Also the cities and towns still have the human scale of pre-industrial cities. No town in California has been designed, or has evolved, with the idea that everything you need should be within walking distance, although some are nearly so. As someone who has never used a car, I have to be choosy about where I live to take advantage of that fact. One of the reasons higher density living is being developed is because there are fewer places to build and more and more people do not need or want a car. So the layout of urban areas that assume commutes by car might become a thing of the past. But even if urban sprawl is replaced by high density communities, they will be located along rail routes.
Thinking about the Boomerang Effect, where adult children of Baby Boomers have to move in with their parents because they can't afford to live on their own, to the tune of about 17 million, as I recall reading recently. That may say that the reason kids drive less is economic and is a ringing indictment of our economic system that changes in the economy have made it harder for young people to realize what their parents had. All of the reasons given so far, the cost of gas, insurance, social factors, might be true to some extant, but the fact that many in that age group are forced to move back in with their parents after college points to a larger set of factors, economic ones, inbalances in the economy that didn't affect their parents. The quality of jobs ins't there, the investment to create decent jobs isn't there. I would argue that it is tech and the digital revolution and the international labor market it has created that is to blame. That is the dirty little secret that many engineers are loth to admit, that the promises for a better future for all through the use of computers has not been realized. Only a very few have benefited the most, but most people have to do lower-paying less quality jobs because of the misbalanced set of incentives created by the application of computers to work.