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<p><br>
<b>The Decline of the Driver's License</b><br>
<br>
<i>Fewer people of all ages are getting them, and it’s not
quite clear why.</i><br>
</p>
<p>Julie Beck Jan 22, 2016, The Atlantic<br>
</p>
<p>Remember how, in <em>Clueless, </em>Alicia Silverstone’s
character Cher fails her driver’s test after nearly killing a
biker and scraping her car alongside several parked cars? And
then how she asks, “Do you think I should write them a note?”
as she drives away? And then how, at the climax of the movie,
her friend Tai (Brittany Murphy) calls her “<a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY0bHULptWQ"
data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'0',r'425169'">a virgin
who can’t drive</a>” and it is just the harshest burn?</p>
<p>Well, that was a fictionalized version of the ‘90s, and this
is now. Things are different.</p>
<p>Young people are not getting driver’s licenses so much
anymore. In fact, no one is. According to <a
href="http://www.umich.edu/%7Eumtriswt/PDF/UMTRI-2016-4_Abstract_English.pdf"
data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'1',r'425169'">a new
study</a> by Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle at the
University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, the
percentage of people with a driver’s license decreased between
2011 and 2014, across all age groups. For people aged 16 to
44, that percentage has been decreasing steadily since 1983.</p>
<p>It’s especially pronounced for the teens—in 2014, just 24.5
percent of 16-year-olds had a license, a 47-percent decrease
from 1983, when 46.2 percent did. And at the tail end of the
teen years, 69 percent of 19-year-olds had licenses in 2014,
compared to 87.3 percent in 1983, a 21-percent decrease.</p>
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<p>Among young adults, the declines are smaller but still
significant—16.4 percent fewer 20-to-24-year-olds had licenses
in 2014 than in 1983, 11 percent fewer 25-to-29-year-olds,
10.3 percent fewer 30-to-34-year-olds, and 7.4 percent fewer
35-to-39-year-olds. For people between 40 and 54, the declines
were small, less than 5 percent.</p>
<p>Above 55, the story’s a little different. Older adults were
more likely to have a driver’s license in 2014 than in 1983—in
the case of those 70 and older, 43.6 percent more likely. But
these age groups, too, saw a modest decline from 2011 to 2014.</p>
<p>The researchers didn’t look into what the reasons for this
decline might be, but in an earlier study, they <a
href="http://www.umich.edu/%7Eumtriswt/PDF/UMTRI-2013-22_Abstract_English.pdf"
data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'2',r'425169'">surveyed
</a>young adults ages 18 to 39 without driver’s licenses about
why they don’t have them. The top three reasons were: “too
busy or not enough time to get a driver’s license” (37
percent), “owning and maintaining a vehicle is too
expensive”(32 percent), and “able to get transportation from
others” (31 percent).</p>
<p>Another reason that springs to mind is that more people are
living in cities and using public transportation. But in the
survey, only 17 percent said their reason for not having a
license was that they preferred public transit.</p>
<p>In other studies, Sivak and Schoettle suggest that driving in
general may have already peaked in the United States. The
total distance driven per person in the U.S. was at its
highest in 2004, and by 2013, it had decreased by 9 percent.
In part, this may be because people are traveling less in
general: Comparing 2004 to 2014, people spent less time
traveling to places to eat and drink, to buy goods and
services, to work, school, and to leisure activities. The ease
of Amazon, the rise of teleworking, and the endless
entertainment provided by the Internet may be leading people
to stay home more, but it’s hard to say—there’s no research
available that explains these trends. A <em><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/report-finds-americans-are-driving-less-led-by-youth.html"
data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'3',r'425169'">New
York Times article</a></em> from 2013 mentions
unemployment as a reason for young people buying fewer cars,
but as Jordan Weissman <a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/crash-the-decline-of-us-driving-in-6-charts/281528/"
data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'4',r'425169'">noted in
<em>The Atlantic</em></a> that same year, downward trends in
driving started before the recession.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s just that people today have more things they’d
rather do than practice parallel parking between traffic
cones. Or maybe it’s because the photos on those plastic cards
are almost never flattering. Sivak and Schoettle are hoping to
soon study possible reasons for the drop in driver’s licenses.
But regardless of the cause, it seems that if you want to
insult a teen today, shaming them for not being able to
operate a motor vehicle might not be the way to go.</p>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-decline-of-the-drivers-license/425169/?utm_source=SFFB">http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-decline-of-the-drivers-license/425169/?utm_source=SFFB</a>
--
RR
"Freedom is the capacity to pause between stimulus and response." ~Rollo May</pre>
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