EDITORIAL-The Lost Art of Freedom: Teen Driving
- Allan Tompkins
- 9 hours ago
- 3 min read
Driving may never be as important as it is today.
By The Log Staff
For many teenagers throughout the country, one of the most exciting parts of high school is receiving your very own car. Being handed keys doesn’t just mean you can drive, it means you can drive anywhere and everywhere.
It’s a rite of passage—you’re now older and trusted by your parents in a way unlike before. It’s a new feeling of freedom, a step forward toward becoming a full-fledged decision-making adult.
Yet, for many teenagers, driving is becoming less of a desire than it used to be. The idea of gaining independence and exploring places one’s never been isn’t as appealing as it once was.
In today’s society, there’s way less “I can’t wait to get a car,” and more, “My Uber’s here, see you guys later.” Teenagers are losing this “rite of passage” that is so pivotal to their development as human beings.
Aside from the obvious high cost of maintaining a car, another reason is the grueling, tedious process of getting a learner’s permit. To list the criteria, teenagers are required to complete the four-hour-long Traffic Law and Substance Abuse Education course, get parental consent and pass the general knowledge and vision/hearing exams.
As if that weren’t enough, a new Florida law that took effect on July 1, 2025, has now decided to replace the four-hour-long course with a six-hour-long driver’s education course, lengthening the process toward acquiring a learner’s permit.
Legislators justified their passing of the bill with statistics coming from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety showing the crash rate of teenagers being 4 times greater than that of drivers over 20 per mile driven.
But forcing teens to sit for six hours to “learn” doesn’t make them safer; it just makes them not want to apply for a permit in the first place. Not to mention, a majority of teenagers leave the lessons on as background noise as they do other, more entertaining activities.
A demographic report from the Federal Highway Administration shows that in 2021, only 60% of Americans had a driver’s license compared to the 80% seen in 1983. In that same report, Florida was one of only eight other states that had seen a 20% decrease in drivers aged 19 and younger between 2012 and 2022. After the passing of this new law, these numbers will unlikely level out anytime soon.
What does this ultimately mean, though?
Well, with the less likely future of our nation is to achieve traditional teenage milestones such as driving, the less autonomous skills they develop going into adulthood. A larger reliance on Uber, Lyft and technology in general is beginning to pose a larger problem to the youth of America.
The exponential growth of AI language models like ChatGPT poses questions on the authenticity of a diploma and only grows concerns over present-day teenagers’ ability to tackle real-world problems in the future, rather than feeling comfortable delegating them.
This conformity to having things done for us is ultimately hurting the values of independence and curiosity that once defined American youth. It likely contributes to teenagers’ consideration of going through a process to earn something they may never use.
Why feel the need to exert your own energy to go somewhere or think of something when your own chauffeur and personal Google are a couple of clicks away?
Sure, sitting behind a wheel doesn’t exactly seem like it can really be that impactful with the rest that is being said here, but it is that exact mindset that is leading kids and parents alike to not place such a large emphasis on things as “unimportant” as driving.
On the contrary, in a world where everything is aimed at facilitating our lives, some skills are just too important not to be learned, and abandoning them will not only lose a part of what it means to grow up, it’ll also cause unforeseeable harm to the youth of today and tomorrow.
Check out this commentary by CCNN’s Matthew Benitez to learn more: