Why are fewer young Brits learning to drive?

Learning to drive used to be a rite of passage for teenagers, but now one in five young Brits say they haven’t even considered learning. No wonder, said The Telegraph: it’s “Britain’s biggest rip off”, and booking a test has become a complete “nightmare”, too.

‘Driving divide’

The average learner pays for more than 18.5 hours of driving lessons by the time they take their test – which costs a minimum of £777, said Helen Coffey in The Independent. The price of a theory test is £23, the practical test sets you back £62, and half of British learners have to retake the test at least once.

All this means the average cost of passing a test in 2026 is at least £924, according to a study from Confused.com. Nearly one in five young people in Britain – 19% – have not even considered learning to drive because of the expense, according to a poll by the price comparison website. A separate study, by car insurer Prima, found that 70% of British adults who do not hold a full driving licence believe learning to drive is unaffordable. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, that figure climbed to 76% .

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This has created a “driving divide”, which means that getting a licence is now “frequently the preserve” of young people “privileged enough to have parents who can cover the cost”, said Coffey.

Robot cars

For those able to afford lessons, waiting times have risen so “astronomically” that it takes between five and six months to book a practical driving test, said The Telegraph. The average wait was around five weeks in February 2020, before the Covid pandemic caused a backlog that has yet to be resolved.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency had set a target of shrinking the average waiting time to seven weeks by the end of 2025. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander pushed the target back to summer 2026, but has since admitted even that would not be met. And even once the licence has been secured, new drivers can expect to pay an average of £1,241 to get insured.

There are cultural shifts at play, too. “Perhaps the simplest explanation is that many young people just don’t need to drive,” said Lucy Reade in The New World. Compared to previous generations, Gen Z are “concerned about climate change” and “nutty about public transport”, which is easy for many of them to access given the “massive urban migration” of young people towards cities. And now there’s the spectre of self-driving taxis on the horizon. “For a generation already less likely to learn to drive, the prospect of simply summoning a robot car to do it for us may prove irresistible.”