Licenses Take a Back Seat

The road to a driver's license wasn't always daunting. As recently as a generation ago, even the strictest states required little more than 30 hours of driver's education in a public school classroom -- taught as often as not by one of the coaches -- half a dozen hours behind the wheel under adult supervision and a passing score on a driving test.

But driver's education became a target during the 1980s, after a series of studies indicated that teens who took the then-mandatory courses had roughly the same accident rates as those who didn't. Federal subsidies dried up and, one by one, states phased the programs out.

Now, according to a USA Today survey conducted last year, only about half the states provide any funding for driver's ed in high school, and in nearly all of those states, school district participation is voluntary. In California, some public schools still offer classroom driver's education as an elective, but free hands-on high school driver's training has been eliminated almost entirely.

In its place, states in the 1990s began adopting graduated licensing, which sharply increased the time and financial commitment in getting a license while restricting driving privileges for those younger than 18.

In California, for instance, a 16-year-old is required to spend six months with a learner's permit and receive both driver's ed and 50 hours of supervised driving practice before applying for a license. With public driver's ed all but extinct, most students find themselves forced to pay for private instruction, an investment that can cost hundreds of dollars per student at a driving school.

Then, even if the 16-year-old passes the driving test, the resulting provisional license will restrict him or her from carrying other teenagers without adult supervision and from being on the road after midnight. Not much of a payoff for such a hefty investment, many teens say.

But those changes don't explain the fact that licensure rates are declining for all young drivers, not just the graduated licensing crowd under 18. Nor do they fully explain the generation-long drop-off in California.

"I don't think anybody really knows for certain why it's happening," said Allan Williams, chief scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Arlington, Va. However, sociologists who have begun to study the phenomenon have some strong suspicions, starting with the many ways that life has changed for this generation of American teens.