OT: Florida teens waiting longer to get driver's licenses

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/sfl-flbteendriversnbnov04,0,7034740.story?coll=orl_tab01_layout
http://tinyurl.com/yvdad5

Fewer getting their licenses as soon as they are old enough

The car sits in the driveway, waiting.

Kevin Krutek, 16, has had private driving lessons and taken driver's ed — twice. Yet he hasn't bothered to get his driver's license, and the car he could call his own, a Ford Focus that belonged to his older brother, sits unused in front of his Lighthouse Point home.

"I could get the license if I took the test, I just don't feel the urgency," said Kevin, a junior at Pompano Beach High. "I don't see what the big deal is."

[snip]

Driver's education teachers, parents and teens suggest several reasons, from tougher license requirements to a growing awareness of the dangers of driving. The high cost of gas and insurance, as well as protective parents, may also be factors.

"It's not just my son. A lot of his friends just don't seem to have that oomph, the 'wanna do,'" said Bim Krutek, Kevin's mother.

[snip]

Danielle Mueller, a 20-year-old from Plantation who knew two schoolmates killed in separate car crashes, said fear kept her from getting behind the wheel for several years. She didn't get her license until she turned 18, and just started driving on Interstate 95 this year to travel between her home and college, the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

[snip]

"We have kids whose families don't own a car," he said. "They walk or take the bus."

Some teens intend to get a job to buy their own wheels, but then they calculate the cost vs. the benefit.

"They are starting to realize that when they are working at Boomers for $5.75 an hour, when they have to pay for a car, what that's going to do" to their earnings, he said

[snip]

Bim Krutek, who remembers being impatient to drive as a teenager, wonders if overprotective Baby Boomer parents haven't stifled independence in their teenage offspring by agreeing to be 24/7 chauffeurs.

She admits sometimes to doing this herself. A working mother, Krutek takes her son to school in the morning for the time it gives them together. On weekends, she drops Kevin off at friends' houses, the movies and the bowling alley, then picks him up at night.

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