Alexia Marquez was adamant about safety when it came to buying her first car, but she also wanted something good on gas.
So, the 21-year-old started doing her homework: She talked to car dealers, read reviews online, asked questions of friends and family, and test-drove a number of vehicles before buying a blue 2020 Ford Edge SUV.
She makes the monthly loan payments, gives the vehicle a regular bath, keeps the interior clean and rides shotgun when her grandmother takes her to her job at a Walnut Creek furniture store.
But for all her time and money, Marquez can’t legally drive the car alone. More than five years after turning the required age of 16, she still does not have a driver’s license.
“I feel really comfortable when I’m on the highway but I don’t feel as safe when it’s residential,’’ the Concord woman said. “The only reason I’m trying to get my driver’s license now is because my grandfather is sick. It’s important to me. I don’t want to become a burden to them.”
For generations, getting a driver’s license has been a huge teenage milestone. The rite of passage allows teens to avoid relying on mom and dad for rides, get a job, and have much more social freedom.
People who came of age in the 1980s and ’90s often joke that they were at the DMV on their 16th birthday, even before the doors opened. But things are different with teens and young adults these days.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, an agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation, the share of teenagers with driver’s licenses in the 16-19 age group declined from 64% in 1995 to just under 40% in 2021.
Experts say there are many reasons for the decline.
Driving can be dangerous, frustrating and deadly. A new Forbes Advisors’ survey found that California drivers are the most confrontational in the nation with a high percentage claiming they’ve been a victim of road rage.
The number of violent road rage incidents across the United States has also surged over the past decade. Between 2014 and 2023, road rage shootings increased by more than 400%, according to an analysis of data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive conducted by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom that covers gun violence in America. During that 10-year period, angry drivers shot 3,095 people, according to The Trace.
Robert Foss, former director of the Center for the Study of Young Drivers in North Carolina, said licensing data shows license postponement trends among teens. One factor is that some states have Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL) systems that require teens to drive with a learner license for 6 to 12 months before they can take the test to get a permanent license.
Tony Dutzik, the associate director and senior policy analyst at the Frontier Group, an organization that studies driving trends, said buying a car, and paying for insurance, gas and maintenance can be cost-prohibitive for some young drivers.
“Getting a driver’s license is not as inexpensive or as easy as it was growing up in the ’80s,’’ Dutzik said. “I think a lot of hurdles are steeper and the benefits are just not as great.”
“Gas is expensive,’’ said Gabi Castro, a 17-year-old San Jose resident who is studying for her driver’s test now because getting a license was not a top priority when she became eligible a year ago.
“I think me and my friends, we were more focused on school than studying for tests for driving,’’ said Castro, who calls herself a “passenger princess” because she hitches rides with her parents, older sister and friends.
Driving instructor Traci Rebiejo, who spent 32 years in law enforcement, including 17 years as a traffic officer with the Livermore Police Department, said she has seen an influx of 18- to 23-year-old new drivers. She’s taught more than 100 students over the last five years and about half were older teens and young adults. She said the students getting their licenses late blame the pandemic for getting them off track, but some have also struggled with a fear of driving.
Christyn Refuerzo is 20 now, and she is home in Union City from Sarah Lawrence College in New York for the summer. She said she put off getting her driver’s license for myriad reasons.
“I had my heart set on not staying on the West Coast for college,” Refuerzo said. “I thought of transporting a car to New York, but that would have been a lot of work and expensive.”
But she said there were deeper reasons as well.
“I also wasn’t that excited to learn how to drive. I didn’t feel emotionally ready to drive. Part of it might have been because of the pandemic,’’ the young adult said.
Foss said the pandemic disrupted teen licensing “massively” for at least several months, perhaps longer.
“The pandemic shut down driver ed classes, creating a growing log jam each week it was shut down. And, of course, driver licensing offices were closed, and in-person driver testing was disrupted as well,” Foss said in an email.
Victoria Burgess, 18, of Albany, passed her driving test with flying colors earlier this summer.
Before that, she said, “I had a lot of public transportation at hand.” Ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft are also readily available these days.
Burgess, who is headed off to UC Santa Cruz to study biology this fall, admits her parents raised their eyebrows a bit when she put off getting her license. “They think it’s weird. They think it’s a form of independence, so they think it’s weird that we don’t reach for that.”
Casey Chew, 18, of Lafayette, practices driving at Greenlight Simulation in Danville, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
While there is no available data that links teens’ use of social media, texting and Facetiming with waiting a few years to get a license, Foss said that there is “rampant speculation” that teens don’t need to drive to socialize with friends and also don’t care as much as previous generations about in-person interactions.
“There is certainly a possibility that these and other effects of social media are influencing teen licensing,’’ he said in an email.
Greenlight Simulation in Danville has found a way to play into teens’ love of screens while teaching them a thing or two about the rules of the road.
Last year, Jason Zimmerman and Josh Hurley opened the small driving school to teach teens (or anybody, for that matter) to drive by using a high-tech simulator that replicates the real everyday challenges of driving.
It looks like a giant arcade game, but it teaches the driver to be on the lookout for red-light runners, jaywalkers, or sudden movement by other cars and how to drive at night, in inclement weather, and in a variety of landscapes.
“We hear and see a lot of kids coming in saying, ‘I’m just super nervous to drive,’” said Zimmerman, a longtime car enthusiast, race car driver and youth sports coach. “We hear the word anxiety a lot. What we’ve really seen is that it’s not that they don’t want to drive, it’s that they are scared to drive.”
Casey Chew, 18, of Lafayette, went through Greenlight’s six-session course and still drops in to practice his behind-the-wheel skills.
“It was very low stress because I didn’t have to worry about crashing an actual car, and now when I practice driving, I feel more comfortable with it,’’ he said.
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Chew’s mother, Karen Chew, said she never pressured her son to learn to drive.
“I’m fine with it. He was anxious and nervous about getting his license,’’ she said. “I figured when he was ready to work on his driving, he would.”
Still, she admits times have definitely changed.
“I got my license on my 16th birthday,” she said. “I think it’s a different mindset. I think more will wait.”
