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By Michelle Martin (registered) - website
Posted June 01, 2010 at 19:00:36
The decline doesn't surprise me in the least.
I never got a license as a student in the eighties, because I rode my bike everywhere in Oakville (my hometown) and because I went to U of T and took the subway everywhere, plus Go transit home on weekends. Didn't get it until I was 27 years old, because you generally need one in my line of work, it makes you more employable. The cost of insurance for a second driver aged 27 years old was not prohibitive for us.
My oldest kids (ages 22, 21 and 18) don't have their licenses, because they can't afford to pay for their own insurance. We could afford to add them to ours (barely), but we definitely couldn't afford the increased rates if one or more of them got into a fender bender... Trouble is, some student jobs, even summer ones, require a driver's license. So far they've made out alright, though. They've always had jobs and they use the HSR and their own two feet.
Our society is a strange one-- people complain that students have a sense of entitlement. Yet there are student jobs that are temporary and pay only minimum wage but where it is expected that student employees will be insured to drive. How's a student supposed to insure him- or herself while saving for higher education without relying on mom and dad to pick up the tab?
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