Driving Gen Z into the ground
A shortage of driving tests and suggestions that young people should not be allowed to give their friends lifts are just the latest examples of the infantilisation of Gen Z, says Phoebe Arslanagić-Little
In July 2024, there was not a single driving test to be had anywhere in London, at all. The best the DVSA could offer Londoners who wanted a test was one in Birmingham four months later. This driving test shortage is ongoing, severe, and nationwide. It is the result of a backlog that built up during the pandemic and has simply not been resolved four years on. Instead, the queue lengthens daily as more new learner drivers join it. Even a bustling black market has emerged, using bots to book up slots, selling them on for inflated prices and making the problem even worse.
Awareness of the situation is increasing as people like Ellen Pasternack of the End the Backlog campaign and Neil O’Brien MP work to highlight both that the problem is not getting any better (unsurprising, given the absence of any government attempt to solve it) and the very real human costs of letting things continue as they are. There are people who can no longer afford to keep attempting to navigate the system and have given up, who have travelled from London to Dundee to take a test, and countless others who have lost job opportunities.
Reading about all this, I feel like someone who has rudely crammed themselves onto the last bus and left a huddled mass of shivering people behind at the stop, being lashed by cold rain. I needed four tries to pass my driving test (as all the best drivers surely do), which I eventually did in 2022, just as the backlog was becoming even more severe. But despite selfishly hoovering up so many test slots, I now barely drive, have become afraid of reversing and forgotten how to parallel park – not only did I take someone’s place on the bus, I only went one stop…
Before the pandemic, there was concerned discussion over the fact that young people are getting their driving licences later or opting not to learn to drive at all. Between 1992 and 2014, the number of under 20s with licences declined from just under half to 29 per cent, with declines also for those in their 20s. Clearly, the monstrously dysfunctional driving test system that we have today will further discourage more young people from ever learning to drive.
Adult activities are out of reach for Gen Z
What does that mean? Apart from the very serious question of all the job opportunities that cannot be taken up in the absence of a licence, it also means grandparents left unvisited, weekend trips with friends foregone, quick errands made complex and an incessant stream of phone calls to mum and dad asking for a lift. For many of us, this is just another way in which adolescence is extended and adult activities like having friends over supper (not possible if you live in a house share and the landlord has turned the living room into a makeshift bedroom) are put out of reach.
In a startling bid to make learning to drive even less attractive to young people, the AA is now urging the government to ban people under 21 from giving lifts to anyone of a similar age, such as friends and siblings, for six months after passing their test.
Many of us will have grandparents who had children and their own homes by that age. Can it really be seriously suggested that a Gen Z 20-year-old today – who has bought a car with their own money for which they pay tax and insurance – should not be allowed to drive a friend down the road or pick up a little sister from school?
Lobbying like this indicates that infantilisation is not so much something that young people are choosing, but something being forced upon them. There is some logic to the idea that people who have just passed their test might be asked to wait a while after passing their test before being able to drive others, regardless of age, but the AA’s demands are specifically targeted at young drivers. Yet remember that Gen Z are notoriously abstemious, drinking less alcohol, taking fewer drugs and partying less than previous generations.
Thankfully the AA’s proposal is currently little more than a bad idea, and we can hope it will be ignored. Meanwhile, the End the Backlog campaign has proposed measures to both mitigate the driving test queue and resolve it once for all, such as temporarily enlisting experienced driving instructors to work as examiners. There is hope for all those learner drivers, if only the government acts. But the gradual erosion of adult responsibilities is a trend that’s harder to reverse.
Phoebe Arslanagić-Little is a columnist at CityAM and head of the New Deal for Parents at Onward