QOTD: Youth Behind the Wheel
There I was the other day, driving down Chicago’s famed Lake Shore Dr., stuck in traffic, when I looked over to my right and saw a kid at the wheel who was almost certainly too young to be a licensed driver.
He was supervised by an adult in the passenger seat, but the sight was still jarring.
And it sent my head spinning. On the one hand, I’ve long advocated for young drivers to get more time behind the wheel. I’ve been saying, almost since I got my own license, that arguing over whether kids should get licensed at 16, 17, or 18 misses the point — to me, it’s more about how much training young drivers get than how old they are.
Indeed, when I got into the Chevrolet Cavalier for my first “official” on-road drive as part of driver’s ed, I’d already been behind the wheel. My parents had let me drive a bit on empty farm roads and in empty farm fields, and even, on rare occasions, around our subdivision.
Meanwhile, my drive partner had never once driven an automobile. Guess who slammed into the curb immediately upon putting the car into drive? Hint: NOT yours truly.
On the other hand — Lake Shore Drive? Really? It’s one thing for a kid to learn how to drive by slowly tooling around a road surrounded by cornfields or under his parents’ watchful eye on lightly-traveled suburban side streets? LSD is a busy highway, and when traffic is moving, it moves at highway speeds.
I tried not to judge — maybe this kid just looked younger than he was. Maybe he’s had a bunch of wheel time. Certainly, the state of Illinois requires more hours behind the wheel now than it did in the mid-90s.
And sure — my last on-road drive with an instructor involved a freeway hike. Freeway driving is a necessary skill to learn when in driver’s ed. So, yeah, maybe the kid was just about done with his on-road learning.
Yet, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my old argument. So I pose to you — is age or behind-the-wheel experience more important when it comes to getting youngsters licensed safely?
[Image: Shutterstock.com/Mr.Magic]
Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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My mother was driving by the time she was 10. She looked evey day of 18. By the time she was 12, she appeared to be 25. The local cops in Lincoln, NE all knew her, and just ignored it. Her Grandmother didn't drive, Grandpa worked for the Burlington Railroad, and was either asleep or gone, so my mom was sent to pick up one or both of her drunk uncles at the bar down the road almost nightly. She learned to drive in a Model A on her uncle's farm in South Dakota. One tme she was picking up a drunk uncle who had, as usual, lost his latest fight at the bar, and got her so rattled by trying to get out of the car at 30 MPH, she hit a parked car. No real damage, and she thought the cops would finally bust her, but the owner of the hit car was OK, and the cops just told mom to "Be careful honey!" I was 13 the first time I drove alone. We had a '69 Hurst Olds loaner for a few days and when I was told to move cars around so my dad could get his car out of the garage, I went around the neighborhood a couple of times in it. It was about 2 miles or so. Never got caught.
My friend's daughter looked like she was about 10 years old when she turned 15 and started learning to drive. At 25 now, she looks about 14, but is married and a veterinarian out west. Almost as soon as she got her license, she got pulled over in all the Toledo and Detroit sububs, along with Washtenaw County and Ann Arbor Mi. Only once was it for something she did, the rest were all, "How old are you" checks.