I obviously can’t speak for everyone, but in the US my parents were elated when I reached the age where they could start teaching me to drive, which in my state is 15 and a half years.
They helped me buy my first beater car for $500, then told me to get a job to pay for gas and insurance. After 16 I was never home, I was working, at school, or out with friends.
Public transportation instead of a car could have taken me to some of the densely populated areas, like the cities or the beach. But with a car I could go to the desert, to the mountains, camping in the middle of nowhere with my friends. When your state/country is HUGE then public transit might be nice, but a car means freedom to get out of the urban areas.
I was basically self sufficient, and my folks were happy to have some time back for themselves.
Same here. Having a car as a teen unlocked all the cool shit for me. Freedom to roam and meet with cool people, going fishing, shooting guns at a sandpit, getting drunk, getting laid, etc. Nobody would believe all the cool shit we did back in the day without pictures haha.
This was my adolescence except miles removed from Cowtown, the second largest municipality in Pigshit County, Ohio. People wanna talk about car culture and how the suburbs ruined everything, and I get it, but rural life as a teen was depression on top of the depression I’d already developed in elementary school.
If I hadn’t been able to drive my busted-ass ‘85 Toyota Van when I was 17 I don’t know if I would have made it to 18, I was hanging on by a frayed thread. Even then, my hometown was utterly worthless, I’d have to go at least half an hour on the highway to go somewhere with a veneer of life.
I would love for the semi-rural suburb where I currently live to modernize and become walkable and bikeable, but I’ll still take this any day over what I had 25 years ago.
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