UC Santa Cruz sociologist Mike Males, who has written extensively on social trends involving young people, thinks it's about money. "Cars are expensive and expensive to insure," he said.
In California, child poverty rates have shot up dramatically during the years in which licensure rates have fallen, Males said. In 1980, 1 in 10 of the nation's poor children lived in California; by 2000, it was 1 in 6, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty.
Meanwhile, the price of auto insurance, both here and nationally, has pressed higher. The National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners reports, for example, that auto insurance rose on average from $637 per vehicle in 1993 to $774 in 2002, the last year for which data are available. Because crash risk rises with inexperience, adding a teen driver further ups the ante, typically doubling or even tripling the premiums on a family policy.
Economics certainly factor into it for Steven Shephard, a 17-year-old senior at Ramona High School in Riverside. Like most public schools, Ramona long ago stopped offering driver's education, and when Shephard found out he'd have to pay for private instruction, the handwriting was on the wall.
"Those classes are 200-something bucks, and I don't have the money," Shephard said. He could have gotten a part-time job, he said, but with his build ("I'm 6-foot-5"), he decided instead to put all his energy into football, hoping to win a college scholarship.
The strategy has meant walking to school in the morning, bumming rides home with his friends and tagging along with a carload of other people if he wants to go out on weekends. But Wintersteen, his teammate, says plenty of kids are wheel-less: "I'm a junior, and I'd say the majority in my class don't drive."
Some teens, in fact, say you couldn't pay them to start driving.
"I think it must be a mental block," said Manako Ihaya's 18-year-old daughter, Hana, who hasn't even turned over the ignition in the Honda her mother bought in hopes she and her sister might hit the road. "The more I hold back, the more pressure I feel, and the more pressure I feel, the more I hold back."
Why? She's not sure. Maybe it's in her nature. Or maybe all those policies aimed at dangerous teen driving have finally worked -- too well.
"Maybe it was those videos they showed us from the 1960s in driver's training, with the exploded heads and the guts all over the road," she giggled. "I mean, how's that supposed to help? Ewww!"
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Least likely to burn rubber
The percentage of U.S. teens ages 16 to 17 with driver's licenses fell from 54% in 1982 to 43% in 2002.
U.S population 16 or 17 years old
1982: 7,773,000
1992: 6,757,000
2002: 8,157,000
16 or 17 years old with driver's license
1982: 4,177,000
1992: 3,500,000
2002: 3,497,328
Sources: U.S. Census; Federal Highway Administration
