Caution - Slow Teens

I'm a bit baffled that people like Kevin Drum are a bit baffled about an intriguing observation:

Apparently teenagers are increasingly not bothering to get driver's licenses these days....The whole story is fascinating. Part of the reason for the decline is that many states, including California, have made it more difficult for teens to get a driver's license, but the fact is that it's still not that hard.... Rather, a big part of the problem seems to be that a lot of teens are perfectly happy being ferried around by their parents, and their parents are happy — or have at least resigned themselves — to do the ferrying.

According to the story in the LA Times:

Only 43% of all 16- and 17-year-old Americans were licensed in 2002, the last year for which statistics were available, according to the Federal Highway Administration and U.S. Census Bureau. In 1992, that figure was nearly 52%. Meanwhile, in supposedly car-addicted California, teens are even less likely to be driving. Slightly less than 27% — about 1 in 4 — of the state's 16- and 17-year-olds were licensed last year, a figure that has been sliding since at least 1978, when it was 50.1%.

Not getting a driver's license, and not bothering with the hassle of getting a car, is a form of rebellion. True, it's a strange sort of passive-aggressive rebellion - but rebellion all the same.

The spirit is: if the grown-ups are going to be such miserable jerks every bloody damned day of their ugly pathetic lives, the least they can do is drive me and my friends to the movies.