Fill in the blank.
Hahahaha! Love this! Okay, My HS senior does not have her license because 1., she is insanely busy with homework, but mainly because 2., on her fourth ever drivng excursion, she had a bit of a fender bender with a concrete wall. It went like this: Parent- “okay, pull up there (in front of wall, duh, dumb parent), park, and try reversing. Then we will switch places so I can drive us home.” Kid- parks, and puts car in drive, instead of reverse. $5000 worth of damage, and only just trying again, after more than a year.
P.S. The wall was fine.
Mine didn’t get theirs til senior year. Too busy, not super interested, I wasn’t keen on 16 year old drivers given the statistics. D1 is 26, lives in a city with good transit and does not own a car. Expensive, hassle to park, doesn’t need one. D2 hopes to go down the same path.
I find it so interesting. I could not WAIT to get my DL in HS. I borrowed my roommates’ cars in college. I had something to alter in order to go to the bars. Who wouldn’t want a DL!!!???
And I get the part about not needing to drive. This is just about owning a drivers license.
Times are changin’…
My 18 year old does not have her DL because she was afraid of driving when she was 16. I do not think scared drivers are safe drivers so I did not push.
She is just now using the permit she got last fall. She is very cautious and will need a good driving instructor I think, beyond what a parent can provide.
Because I have a manual transmission car and she couldn’t drive it. Still can’t, but she does now have a license. Still can’t drive, is absolutely awful driver, but did pass a test because in Florida if you can breathe you can pass. She did get it the summer after high school.
Her sister got her license just after she turned 17, but she was also a senior (just young). We moved just after she turned 15, and I was confused about the rules in the new state. She could have gotten a permit immediately but I thought you had to take a drivers ed class. You dont. So by the time she got the permit it was May or June (we also had to get new passports in order to have the correct paperwork), and you have to have a permit for a year. Also, the cost of insurance for a teen driver was a factor, and two teen drivers? $3000!
We only have one car, so even when she got the license there wasn’t a lot of driving going on.
My 24 yos does not have his. He is an Aspie with very high anxiety issues. Driving terrified him bc he sees the car as a deadly weapon where one minute of distractability (he has EF issues, so he definitely recognizes his own ADD) could cost someone else their life. He lives in a great “village” sort of town and walks everywhere. He lives right next door to the Magic shop, all that really matters to him!
Aren’t DLs really hard to alter now? Ah, for the days of a finely sharpened pencil and a piece of chalk…
Born and raised in NYC, I didn’t get a license until I was 26; Now, at nearly 60, living in CA, I still have more friends back in NY without licenses than with.
My DD, now a HS senior, born and raised in CA has neither had the time nor the inclination to learn how to drive. She wisely believes that 15 1/2 and 16 year-olds should not be behind the wheel of a car (I’m with her and @intparent on that one!), and, knowing how she thinks, probably doesn’t want us to incur the additional expense that comes with her having or driving a car. She’ll drive when she’s ready to drive.
Piece of chalk? Ok, I don’t want to know @Lindagaf
Yeah, I couldn’t really alter mine, even back in the 80s. They had invented the laminating machine.
I don’t know if I’m buying it @twoinanddone. Sounds like a lot of excuses! 
My 18 year old is too busy with schoolwork, and he has a built-in ‘Uber’ driver known as Mom. 
He claims he is waiting for driver-less car technology to become mainstream. 
Our almost 21 year old does not have his driver’s license yet (despite having had a temporary learning permit for three years and having passed the summer driver’s ed course) because he has ADHD and is very nervous (as are we) about being a distracted driver. Also it didn’t help that he was lightly rear ended in an intersection last year while driving with his dad in the car (totally the fault of the other driver, as she wholeheartedly admitted, but it still freaked him out). We are not encouraging him to get the license until he feels ready, though we continue to renew the permits and have him practice with us in the car. I try to remind myself what we are saving on insurance is the silver lining. But someday I hope he’ll feel ready…
Maybe my DS should have listed the time he spent learning to drive as an EC?! ;))
Sure, it was easy to make that 4 look like a 2, and then a 3. And the chalk needed to be off-white. Pure white was a giveaway.
My 17 1/2 year old son doesn’t have his drivers license because he is too lazy to take driver’s ed.
Lots of excuses, but some of them real. The move when they’d just turned 15 and 16 was a big one because I just didn’t get the laws of the new state. I didn’t understand that you could just go to driving school and didn’t have to go through the high school like we did when I was a teen.
Didn’t mind saving the $3000 either! It did cost me $300 for the new passports and $150 for the new licenses/permits. That was bad enough.
My older daughter, the one who can’t drive a manual, was a micropreemie. Usually I read all the stories and studies about their learning problems and think, “hmm, nice theory but I don’t see that in DD.” Recently read one about how many of these kids can’t drive and it was like Bingo!, that’s my daughter. Driving takes took much coordination all at the same time. She can go around the neighborhood, but add any traffic and she’s doomed. Recently an I’ll room ate asked her to drive roommate’s car to the drug store. She made it, but while they were there it started raining and got dark. No way could daughter drive home. So they waited until roommate felt a little better and went home. Like I said, she has a license, but she can’t drive.
I live in a small city in which my daughters were not alone in thinking it was very important that they get their drivers’ licenses ON THEIR 16TH BIRTHDAYS, if at all possible, and so had to plan carefully and expend some energy to do everything required for that to be possible (e.g., calling the DMV’s automated sign-up system as early as possible on the day that test spots for their birthdays were first available). I liked their enthusiasm and focus. I didn’t get my license until I was 25; I was terrified before then. I am an excellent driver now.
17S just got his permit b/c 1. He failed the first time because he thought he could ace this test without much prep like he does others…ha ha…good life lesson. 2. Now that he is older…and had to pay the fee (we give you money for first attempt) he passed and is very cautious. I think another year helped him mature and know that it isn’t just like the Need for Speed game. My daughter, who is 15 and can get a permit (eek) has no desire to even look into it.
My 21 yo son got his driver’s license at 17, but very reluctantly. He’s a very cautious person and we live in a suburb of Los Angeles known for its terrible drivers. He can drive ok, but doesn’t like to. At college, he doesn’t need a car and when he’s home, he basically only drives a couple miles at a time to familiar places to visit friends. My 17 yo (almost 18) daughter is an Aspie and is even more anxious than my son about driving. She did get her driver’s permit last summer, but frankly, since then we’ve basically ignored the actual driving part. Here in CA, you aren’t even allowed to drive with your child until they’ve had a 2-hour in-car lesson with a driving instructor, and we haven’t even gotten that far yet. We may try this summer, but I really don’t think it’s a big deal for her if she doesn’t get a license at this point.