My grandfather, a superb driver but also an infamous speeder in our corner of the world, told me when I was 12, “I want to teach you how to drive now. I love your father like my own son, but he is without a doubt the worst driver I ever met. I’m not having another driver like him in the family. I am scared he will think it is his job to teach you. We don’t have to tell him. We can drive out in the country. No one will know.”

So, I learned, driving up and down farm roads, where the only witnesses were farmers driving big equipment, planting or harvesting. We knew that they would not tell on us. Everybody in town knew what a bad driver my father was—he poked, he never used his turn signal and if his eye caught something he got really interested in, he’d almost, but not quite, come to a stop.  You can see the problems.

Fortunately, this was a small town and everyone knew his car. My grandfather grumbled that this is what comes of a person learning how to drive on a ranch, where there were no other drivers—as if we were Memphis and not a small town.

At that time, a 14-year-old could get a learner’s permit, which meant that you could only drive with an adult for two more years. At 16, you were free to drive with no restrictions.

The day I turned 14, my father bravely offered to teach me so I could acquire this precious privilege.

I told him the truth, that I already knew how to drive because grand-daddy had taught me. The look of relief on his face was quickly replaced with shock. “You and your grandfather have been doing what?” My mother was in the kitchen, biting her lip to keep from laughing and hurting my father’s feelings.

“Yes. He thought it would be good to get a head start.”

This week the Kaiser Family Foundation issued a report which showed that kids spend more time each week with their iPods, their laptops and their cell phones than their parents do at their jobs.

Where do they get that time? For one thing, they get it by using more than one device at a time. Another time-saver may be, as this Washington Post story  says, that they are not busy begging for the family care and driving around. “This generation is used to being driven,” says one expert.

As a former teenager, I can attest to how much time can be spent pleading for the keys to the car. It would have been beyond enduring to be in a car with a parent 60 seconds after turning 16. Much time was spent phoning to see who could get a car instead of, say, texting. All we had was Bell telephone (only one telephone company!) to make plans, media-deprived kids that we were. (We did not even know to call it media.)

This generation is unique. No generation has been so exposed to a barrage of media, which can begin as early as six months, an October, 2009, Kaiser Family Foundation report said. Child development experts have no baseline measures for understanding what this may mean to these babies as they grow up.

However, what is known that too many teenagers believe they can drive while texting or phoning. There is data to prove that. Informally, there is proof, too. Britney Spears was caught in a famous picture, driving and talking on her cell at the same time a small baby was squeezed between her knees— instead of being placed in the safety seat the law requires.

There is an emerging body of brain research which shows that young brains do not mature nearly as early as has been thought. It may not be until age 25 until the complete adult operating software is installed, so to speak.  This new knowledge and other forces have contributed to laws calling for a stair-step approach to licensing young drivers—a 16-year-old is not equal to a 21-year-old in the eyes of the law.  Oh, yes, and driver education taught by trained personnel, not fathers who blithely forget the turn signals.

What this study shows is that the kids are not up in arms about the driver’s license as a rite of passage. That can only be a good thing.

But they must be the first generation since the Model T not to be eager to get their hands on the wheel.

The Washington Post

“The quest to get a driver’s license at 16 — long an American rite of passage– is on the wane among the digital generation, which no longer sees the family car as the end-all of social life.”

…”Federal data released Friday underscore a striking national shift: 30.7 percent of 16-year-olds got their licenses in 2008, compared with 44.7 percent in 1988…”

…”A generation consumed by Facebook and text-messaging, by Xbox Live and smart phones, no longer needs to climb into a car to connect with friends. And while many teens are still eager to drive, new laws make getting a license far more time-consuming, requiring as many as 60 supervised driving practice hours with an adult. (Emphasis added)

“Rob Foss, director of the Center for the Study of Young Drivers at the University of North Carolina, and others suggest these “graduated” state licensing systems — which have created new requirements for learner’s permits, supervised practice hours, night driving and passengers in the car — are responsible for much of the decline in 16-year-olds getting licensed. At the same time, drivers education has been cut back in some public schools, so families must scrounge up money — often $300 to $600 — for private driving schools.” (Emphasis added)

Source: Washington Post, January 23, 2010 Source: U. S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Administration, Report of the Distribution of Licensed Drivers: 2008 by Sex and Percentage in Each Age Group and Relation to Population