Don Hastings, a retiree who began teaching driver's training in 1955 in the Los Angeles school system and who oversees what's left of Garfield's education elective, believes that's "probably a good thing. The kids are pretty immature nowadays."
In fact, concern over maturity and safety were behind two of the most recent deterrents to teen driving -- the decline of school-based driver's training and the imposition in many states of so-called graduated licensing.
Many teens, though, add at least one more reason: They're just not in a hurry to burn rubber. Taught from toddlerhood to express their feelings, some say they feel freer to resist a transition for which they don't feel ready.
"I was a little scared," confessed Erin Phillips, 18, of Laguna Hills, who waited two years to get her license, though it meant her mom had to drive her to and from her part-time job at a mall two miles away in Mission Viejo. "I kept picturing the worst possible things."
"There's a fog of misperception, shared by virtually every adult in this country, that every 16-year-old wants a license," said Rob Foss, senior research scientist at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center.
Foss, who studied licensure rates among North Carolina teens in the mid-1990s, found that many didn't drive simply because they weren't interested yet in learning or lacked confidence.
Take Aarinn Cates. She's almost always in need of a ride somewhere. Nineteen and unlicensed, Cates, who moved from California to Florida during high school, says she hasn't gotten around to getting a license because "I don't have time."
"When I was in high school, I had too many other classes, and the private driver's training was priced too high," said the teen, who lives in Bradenton, Fla. "When I moved, the school I moved to didn't allow cars because there was too much drag racing, but nobody was in a rush to drive here either."
Now, she says, her parents shuttle her to her job as a supermarket bakery clerk and will probably drive her to the community college where she is set to start classes next year. Her mother says she doesn't mind: "We sheltered our kids quite a bit, and I personally don't feel they need to be out there."
Aarinn's brother, who is 16, has been told he can't learn to drive until she does. Other than his impatience, she says, the only pressure she feels is the occasional red-faced moment. "Sometimes it's embarrassing because you see a cute guy driving his own car, and there you are being dropped off by, like, your mom."
