Anthony Martella, 16, demonstrates evasive maneuvers while coached by his driving instructor Brian Hart.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Both of his hands on the steering wheel, his driving instructor next to him in the passenger seat, Anthony Martella is staring down a series of orange traffic cones set up in the empty parking lot of a movie theatre near his home in Vaughan, Ont.
The cones are an exercise in what to do if Mr. Martella ever needs to swerve safely out of the way of another vehicle. It’s one of the lessons he will have to learn on his way to getting his driver’s license this summer – a moment the 16-year-old is eagerly anticipating.
“I wanted to get my driver’s license the moment I turned 16. I’m like, let’s go!”
But his parents insisted he take driving lessons.
Mr. Martella is not your typical driving student. His age makes him an outlier.
Teenagers are no longer racing out en masse to get their driver’s licence as soon as they turn 16, and those who do often face heightened anxiety and distraction on the road.
The average student at Young Drivers of Canada is now over 20 years old, says Andrew Marek, the driving school’s chief growth officer.
It’s a trend seen across North America.
The proportion of high-school seniors with a driver’s licence in the U.S. declined from 81 per cent to 72 per cent between 2006 and 2015, according to a 2017 study.
A 2020 study conducted by researchers at the University of California Irvine Medical School found that nearly 40 per cent of teenagers delayed getting their licences by one to two years, while 30 per cent delayed getting theirs by more than two years.
The average student at Young Drivers of Canada is now over 20 years old, a trend the company attributes in part to increased car costs and the rise of rideshare apps.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The proliferation of rideshare apps such as Uber are a big reason why teens are delaying, Mr. Marek says.
But there are other factors: the cost of driving – gas, insurance – the availability of decent public transit for teens who live in cities, the fact that many teens’ social lives are now online and even accommodating parents who are more willing to chauffeur their kids around than a previous generation was, Mr. Marek says.
When young people come through the doors of the driving school at 20 or 21 years old, it’s usually because of their jobs, Mr. Marek says.
The age at which most people learn to drive has changed, and so too has the way they’re taught.
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Driving instruction has adapted to address two of the biggest issues facing young people who want to get their licences: new distractions on the road, combined with the anxiety many of them have about being behind the wheel.
A survey conducted in 2022 found about 44 per cent of Canadians between 18 and 24 use their phones while driving. Older adults weren’t much better, at 37 per cent.
Driving instruction has evolved to help students deal with this new environment, says Sean McDonald, an instructor at Vancouver-based Atlas Driving School.
“There’s more traffic, there’s more people, every road user is on a phone, bikers are on phones, the pedestrians are on phones,” he says. “When you put all that together it just makes for a far more hectic environment.”
That has meant that awareness of your surroundings – what everyone else using the road is doing and is likely to do – has taken on even greater emphasis in driver training.
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“By being really observant, it helps mitigate those issues, which is part of defensive driving when you can predict somebody’s bad behaviour,” says Dominic Turgeon, the owner and an instructor at Archer’s Blue Car Driving School in Edmonton.
“If you look into your rear-view mirror right now and you can see the guy behind you seems to be glancing down, that guy is probably on his cell phone, so maybe we want to go into another lane,” Mr. Turgeon says he tells students.
The likelihood that others on the road are looking at their cell phones or otherwise not paying attention has come to be at the centre of teaching defensive driving, says Brian Hart, an instructor with Young Drivers.
“It’s more than just looking out for mistakes and things like that. It’s knowing that everybody out there is pretty much distracted,” he says.
That doesn’t help the already high levels of anxiety that new students have, Mr. Hart says.
Young Drivers recently introduced an online course to help drivers deal with their anxiety. The course covers breathing and relaxation techniques and provides students with tips on handling difficult situations.
“You have to get in there and be a bit of a psychotherapist,” Mr. Hart says of teaching people to drive.