A decline in youth licensing: a simple delay or the decreasing popularity of automobility?

ABSTRACT

In Switzerland, as in several western countries, the share of young adults holding a driving licence has decreased (from more than 70% in 2000 to about 60% in the 2010s). This paper addresses this phenomenon by first conceptualising the driving licence as a set of rules, a right to participate in the automobile system and a rite of passage. Trends in driving licence-holding and their evolution are then analysed, based on the 2000 and 2015 Mobility and Transport Microcensuses. The results show that much of this decrease is due to delaying the age at which young people get their driving licence and not a definitive renunciation. This delay seems less due to a complexification of the rules, an increase in costs and the use of ICT than to an increasingly functional and utilitarian relationship with cars in a context where automobility, although weakening, remains dominant.

KEYWORDS:

• Driving licence
• car
• automobility
• mobility
• young adults

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank his colleagues Daniel Baehler, Gianluigi Giacomel, Antonio Martin and Stéphanie Vincent-Geslin as well as the anonymous referees for their inputs and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. By way of example, a documentary filmed about Swiss driving school instructors and foreign student drivers illustrated the role of the driving licence as one of the obligatory rites of entry into Swiss society (Bron 1999).

2. Luxembourg, Italy, Malta, Finland, Cyprus, Poland, Austria and Germany.

3. The first budget was produced by the RTS (www.rts.ch/info/suisse/7219558-pres-de-600-millions-depenses-en-dix-ans-pour-valider-les-permis-de-conduire.html; accessed 01 March 2018), the second by ch.ch (http://www.ch.ch/fr/permis-de-conduire; accessed 01 March 2018).

4. These differences are due to a smaller sample size and to different weighting methods (weighting factor related to households or to individuals).

5. The number of young people aged 18–24 surveyed was 2023 in 2000 and 4541 in 2015.

6. This is the FSO’s classification of communities (2012) reworked into five types for sampling purposes: large and medium urban centres, small urban centres, metropolitan suburbs (suburbs of large urban centres), non-metropolitan and peri-urban suburbs (other suburbs) as well as rural.

7. This variable was created on the basis of household size and the presence of child(ren) or teenager(s) but the individual files of the MTMC do not provide information on the position of young people aged 18–24 years. In families with children, some young people are not children but parents. These cases, however, are in the minority, as shown in particular by similar values to those recorded for families with teenagers (see below). Adult households are composed both of flat shares and of young adults living with their parents and without siblings aged less than 18.

8. The influence of each variable is measured by odds ratios, which express how much the chance of having a driving licence is increased when a given modality is respected in comparison with a reference modality (“ref.”). If the odds ratio is greater than 1, the likelihood increases; if it is less than 1, the likelihood decreases. A significance test is performed for each odds ratio. The hierarchical likelihood ratio method was applied. Some non-discriminating variables have been eliminated (marital status, linguistic region).

9. It is difficult to make precise comparisons (differences in definition of age categories, reference years, margins of error). Similar orders of magnitude are found in Norway, the USA and Canada. The Swiss values seem lower than in Denmark but higher than in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (Delbosc and Currie 2013; Hjorthol 2016).

10. Between 1990 and 2010, the cost of the general travel pass (access to the entire public transport network in Switzerland) increased by 53%, and the half-price travel card (50% discount on any train ticket) by 50%. A comparison of five standard trips over the same period shows that the price of a train ticket has increased by 71% while the cost of a car (including insurance, purchase, depreciation of the vehicle, etc.) has only increased by 32% (Preisüberwachung 2016).

11. Inverse trends have been observed in other countries. According to Delbosc and Currie (2013), living with parents would make it easier for young people to find the financial resources they need and increase the likelihood of having a car and a person to supervise them when learning.

12. The 2014 Swiss Household Panel (n = 12,090) asked the question “How important is protecting the environment to you?” on a scale of 0 (not at all important) to 10 (very important). The minimum recorded mean score value is for 15- to 24-year olds (6.87) and increases through the age groups to reach 7.93 for people aged over 65 years (Ehrler 2016).

13. Our analysis also shows that some caution is required. The aggregation of young adults – aged 18–24 in the figures generally disseminated in Switzerland – masks major disparities. In addition, the variable used is dichotomous and distinguishes people who have a licence from those who do not. However, among the latter, there are individuals who are learning to drive and who have a provisional license.

14. The analysis of the next Swiss surveys will allow us to refine this interpretation. Indeed, a driving licence reform was put out for consultation by the federal government in 2017. The arguments put forward relate to road safety and the complexity of the current system. However, we can interpret this reform as being a consequence of the decline observed among 18- to 24-year olds and the significant media and political interest in this area. The government thus proposes lowering the minimum age for learning to drive to 17 years (the road lobby wanted it to be lowered to 16 years), simplification of the administrative requirements and reducing costs by eliminating certain courses, which should encourage more young people to take their driving test.