Some AACC students at 18, 19 and 20 years old don’t have their driver’s licenses yet, either because they’re not interested in driving or they haven’t taken the time to learn.
“I’ve just been very uninterested in driving,” second-year communications student Waleska Cruz said. “I remember when I was 16 … all my friends were very excited to learn to drive. But then I was just like, uh, not really.”
In 2020, 25% of 16-year-olds and 45% of 17-year-olds had driver’s licenses. That compares with 1997, when 43% of 16-year-olds and 62% of 17-year-olds had them, according to the Insurance Information Institute.
Some young adults on campus said they aren’t getting their licenses because they’re anxious about driving, while others said they need a license.
Still, many students said they feel pressured by friends and family to hurry and learn how to drive.
“My parents, they always pressure me all the time,” Cruz said. “My sister pushes me all the time, too. … They always tell me, ‘Oh, you’re so old. Like, you got to learn how to drive, you have to sort of face that fear.’”
But some, like first-year psychology student Morgan Caldwell, said they’re not in a hurry to start driving.
“I just didn’t feel like I needed it,” Caldwell said. “It’s kind of on my own time, it’s up to me to move forward with it. So it’s like nobody else is really telling me, ‘You need to do this.’”
For second-year communications student Joey Perticone, “It was mainly because of quarantining. I just kind of didn’t leave my house. I didn’t take driver’s ed until I was 17, 18, and I’m 19 now.”
Perticone had another reason for avoiding driving: “One thing is that I was in two car accidents growing up. They weren’t bad or anything, no one died or was hurt, but I was, like, 4 and 8 years old, so it just scared me a little.”
First-year criminology student Naomi Brown pointed to anxiety as a reason she doesn’t drive yet.
“I’m old enough,” Brown said. “I just haven’t learned. I don’t have all my hours. I have major anxiety when I drive so, like, I don’t trust other people on the road.”
Still, students said it is inconvenient to have to rely on others for rides.
Cruz said she feels embarrassed sometimes asking for rides.
“Depending on people to drive for me, like, it is really embarrassing,” Cruz said. “I have to sometimes ask my sister and I have to ask my parents. Sometimes I have to ask friends.”
Cruz said getting her driver’s license would make her more independent.
Brown said she’s gearing up to finally take the driving test “because I want to drive. I want to drive, you know?”