Like most of her classmates at Laguna Hills High School, Kayte Greenfelder took driver's education at 16. She sat through the grainy old death-on-the-asphalt movies, memorized the handouts on rights-of-way and traffic signals, even went to the Department of Motor Vehicles and got a learner's permit.
Somehow, though, she never got around to actually getting her license. "I guess I was lazy -- plus, I couldn't afford the insurance, and standing in line at the DMV just felt like a big hassle," said Greenfelder, who at 19 still isn't driving.
But wasn't it embarrassing, year after year, being the only kid in the subdivision still bumming rides from her mother? Not really.
"I knew probably 20 other people just like me."
Getting a driver's license at 16 has long been a rite of passage. The learner's permit at 15, the hair-raising driving practice with the shrieking parent, the dreaded clipboard guy at the DMV administering the road test, the first sobering crash involving a classmate -- for better and worse, the rush for the license is so culturally enshrined that its particulars verge on cliche.
But quietly, while the adults weren't looking, kids have stopped driving at 16 the way they used to. In a shift that has overtaken the culture virtually without notice, a confluence of forces has redefined the concept of "driving age."
Poorer young people, tougher licensing laws, shifting teen attitudes, protective baby boom parents, soaring auto insurance premiums -- these and other factors appear to have conspired to keep not just most 16-year-olds, but more teens of all ages from driving.
Only 43% of all 16- and 17-year-old Americans were licensed in 2002, the last year for which statistics were available, according to the Federal Highway Administration and U.S. Census Bureau. In 1992, that figure was nearly 52%. Meanwhile, in supposedly car-addicted California, teens are even less likely to be driving. Slightly less than 27% -- about 1 in 4 -- of the state's 16- and 17-year-olds were licensed last year, a figure that has been sliding since at least 1978, when it was 50.1%.
Yet for all its size, the phenomenon has largely eluded the cultural radar, even as it has left parents privately commiserating about kids who need to be chauffeured long after they've graduated from high school. Politicians still call for crackdowns on the supposed legions of reckless teen drivers. TV shows such as "The O.C." routinely depict teens driving. Pop and hip-hop songs about cars still get the level of airplay the Beach Boys did back when teens lived in fear that Daddy might actually take the T-Bird away.
