r/lowcar • u/pupupeepee • Apr 23 '26

The Declining Driver’s License: Good, Bad, or Both?

https://maxmautner.com/2026/04/21/teen-drivers-license-decline.html
34 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

14

u/Singnedupforthis Apr 23 '26

My guess is that the number of kids on ebikes is much higher than 2023. Kids are replacing cars with ebikes en masse the last few years.

3

u/PleaseBmoreCharming Apr 23 '26

Where is this happening? Urban areas? Suburban areas? I think the answer to that question has ramifications for traffic safety as well.

17

u/Singnedupforthis Apr 23 '26

500 kids a day are injured or killed by cars many of the offending motorists are teenagers or their parents. The ramifications of fewer cars operated by or for kids is the best possible thing for traffic safety. Of course, the United States of the Automobile cares very little for traffic safety as there is next to nothing done about those who are injured or killed by cars. The solution in the US is to force people to drive which doesn't address the problem. Fortunately, people are struggling to afford to drive and the costs are only going up. Perhaps the teenagers are shunning operating a motor vehicle becasue they don't want to turn into soulless automobile zombies like preceding generations have.

-1

u/Uma_mii Apr 24 '26

Huh? Kids aren’t allowed to drive?

2

u/ZD_plguy17 Aug 05 '26

I wonder how much different United States would have been if they haven’t focused on subsidizing oil after oil crisis in 70, especially during the time more people used bicycles and low power <125cc motorcycles/scooters like Super Cub to get around to places, not just as hobby on weekend.

2

u/Emergency_Release714 Sep 14 '26

The city planning restrictions were already in place by then, so subsidising oil wasn't really optional anymore at that point. The shift away from that line over any single cause would have been quite extreme and the cause itself would have had to have been similarly extreme. Subsidies were a much easier path to take.

From what we can see around the world, fixing carbrain ist actually a multi-generational effort, and you won't really be saving any present generations, but future ones. The children that grow up without car-centrism being baked into their very being are the ones that will fully realise the change, not their parents. And the ones that are most resistant to change are always the older generations that are still around - this works in reverse too, by the way. When we started down the road (no pun intended) towards car-centrism, it was the very same people who knew a world before tearing down our cities to remake them for cars, and didn't like the new direction. Ironically, as those people are mostly gone by now, the status quo (which is car-centrism) is far more settled into people's minds. It's far harder nowadays to get people to take to the streets in order to protest new highway construction than during that first wave.