D didn’t get her license at the “proper” time because of two horrific fatal accidents which happened around that time involving people she knew. The very idea of driving freaked her out so much that we didn’t want to push her onto the road.
When she came home from freshman year of college, she was raring to go and quickly got licensed.
Neither of my two got their license before 18. They both went to boarding preps where having a car at school was prohibited. I think it was my favorite rule. 
My D got her license at age 18 the day before she left for college and my son was a month shy of 19, also right before he left for college. My daughter is now 27 and has never owned a car. She married “into” a car, I guess, since her H has one. My son is now 22 and has no interest in driving.
Mds was afraid to drive in this area. (N. Va.) I don’t blame him. He got his permit and license much later than his peers but I honestly don’t remember. I think it was the summer before senior year.
I didnt get a license until I was 25. When everyone in high school was getting one, I was youngr than my classmates (double promoted) and couldn’t get one. Once my friends could drive, I got rides from them. Didn’t really need a car in college.
Mine got their licenses relatively on time, which is 17 here. I wanted them to do a lot of driving with parents in the car, including long distance highway driving. We did not buy them their own cars. I also think it’s a life skill and preferred to be sure they had a lot practice before heading out in a car on their own. Both DH and I have to drive at times for work and traveling outside of cities almost always requires driving.
Virtually all kids around here get their licensees within a year of turning 17. A good friend of one of my kid’s was probably 21 when he finally got his license. He generally got rides with friends or parents, and I think got sick of asking and I think his friends got sick of him never driving, even though they lived in a city with decent public transport. A couple of 20-something women, daughters of friends, still don’t drive; for at least one the cause is definitely anxiety.
One of mine lives overseas and never drives. One lives in a city and currently is careless. He comes hoe. By train, but we often drive him back, which is time consuming.
I had my license (and a car) the day I turned 16 1/2, legal minimum age in MA. My son did the same thing. My D, well…you know how they say, book smart, no common sense? She pushed back when I started talking about drivers ed classes. I told her Mom’s taxi would end at age 17. She took the classes, bought a cute Toyota Solara convertible and got her license just about the time she turned 17. I wouldn’t have been so adamant if there was any type of public transport in our area, but there isn’t really. I had to transport her back and forth about 5 miles to catch a bus to get to school every day, pick her up 12 miles away if she wanted to do any kind of after-school activity and still try to work full-time myself.
My first indication that maybe I was wrong was about a month after she started driving. I was looking out the second floor window to the driveway and saw her car moving down the driveway straight into the flower bushes/hedges as she stood at the front steps in wonderment. Apparently she had forgotten something in the house and was running in to get it before she realized she never put the car in park, she just jumped out without thinking. A week later I heard a crash and looked out that same window…the front bumper had fallen off the car when she was backing out of her spot (apparently it got hooked on a tree stump or something) and she got nervous, looked forward to see what the sound was but forgot to take her foot off the gas, ended up backing into a tree.
She has started asking if she can drive herself to Saratoga Springs, NY, a five hour drive from our house. NO! I’m not sure when I’ll ever feel comfortable with her driving.
^^Haha. Good ones. I’d rather learn some of these life lessons at a young age than in my 20s. I’m sure a bit of maturity may help overall, however.
I just loved driving my ‘souped up’ '65 Comet to HS. That’s really what it was.
I wish my D didn’t love driving so much. She got her permit as soon as she could in Maryland, 15 and 9 months, and her actual license right around when she turned 17. Unlike @VaBluebird 's S, she doesn’t mind DC-area driving at all and is much more likely to take the Beltway than I am. She is also one of the few in her group of friends who has a license, so when she’s home she’s always the designated driver (if I Iet her borrow the car).
Now she’s trying to afford to buy a car (she goes to school about 4 hours away), and between the cost (especially insurance!) and my worry about her driving there and back, I kind of wish she wasn’t such an enthusiastic driver.
S1 in college & S2 in HS still don’t have their DL because they’ve either been in boarding school or living in a country that drives on the wrong side of the road.
I agree with this, and I also think it’s a skill that you just learn better when you’re young. For those of us who learned to drive when we were young teenagers, and who drove a lot, driving comes very naturally. My observation is that this is less true for people who learned after college.
I’d agree that there’s generally less fear when you learn to dive at an earlier age, but I"m not sure that’s always a good thing. I’ll just say both my older brother (who got his license at 16) and my S1 (who got his at 18) both had accidents within their first year of driving.
I, OTOH, who didn’t learn to drive until I was 29, have never had an accident OR a ticket.