The World's Best Driving Test

A Belgian non-profit made this great video where people taking a driving test to get a license were told they had to prove they could text and drive safely in order to pass. We should make this compulsory!

The Worst Cities for Driving are the Best Cities for Transit

A few days ago Walkscore released their best cities for transit rankings. Atlantic Cities wrote about it here. Here are the ten best:

1. New York (81)
2. San Francisco (80)
3. Boston (74)
4. Washington, D.C. (69)
5. Philadelphia (68)
6. Chicago (65)
7. Seattle (59)
8. Miami (57)
9. Baltimore (57)
10. Portland (50)

Today Jalopnik (an auto blog) featured a reader's list of the ten worst cities for driving. Link here. Here are the worst cities for driving:

1. San Francisco
2. New York City
3. Miami
4. Fresno
5. Boston
6. New Orleans
7. Chicago
8. Hawaii (A place, not a city)
9. Washington, D.C.
10. Austin, TX

The overlap between these lists is not likely a coincidence. Frenso made the worst list due to the highest rate of auto theft in the country, and New Orleans floods a lot. Otherwise, the worst places to own a car are about what you would expect because auto ownership is expensive in these places. I suspect that a more rigorous analysis (to the level of Walkscore, so not crazy rigor) would lead to a near perfect correlation. Raise the cost of driving through tolls, fees, insurance, parking and inconvenience and fewer people will drive. 

A Couple of Thoughts About Why Kids Don't Drive as Much

A few days ago the NY Times had an article about how GM is trying to increase sales of cars to young adults. The Atlantic Cities picked up on it and expanded a bit about why auto ownership preferences have changed. I don't think any of the given explanations are wrong necessarily, but these stories miss what seems to me the most obvious explanations. For my money the most obvious explanation is that U.S. states have been making drivers licenses for minors much more restrictive since the 1990s. See this table for a complete list of restrictions. Back when I was young and foolish I got my license on my 16th birthday, and that was it. I was just as licensed as anybody else. Now, however, most states have some sort of graduated license, which means that if kids are following the law (and I suspect most do) then they get through most or all of high school without ever have full automotive freedom. Having a car you can drive around filled with friends at any hour is better than having a car you can drive alone during the day for most people.

Ultimately states have made it harder to get licensed, which should be reason #1 in the list of explanations as to why kids and young adults have fewer licenses. This isn't even an unintended consequence. It's what the policies were designed to do. It shouldn't be surprising that driving, like many other learned behaviors, is strongly influenced by the way one grew up.  Preferences for walking and neighborhoods that do not require cars  are likely derived from growing up without easy access to cars. This strikes me as the simplest explanation, and certainly a more direct connection than trading cars with smart phones (they aren't substitutes) or avoiding cars because they represent "adult" purchases (as the Atlantic article claims).