We may not be serious at 17, but we will soon be able to pass our driving test. Wednesday June 21, in Matignon, the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, confirmed that the government was going to lower the minimum age for the license from the 1er January 2024. A measure aimed in particular at young apprentices. It will delight many others, since 86% of 18-26 year olds consider it essential, according to a study by the Institut Montaignepublished in May 2022.
However, the precious sesame is more important for populations far from metropolises and city centers. The figures from the reports of the National Institute for Youth and Popular Education (Injep) reveal a territorial and social divide on mobility issues in France: 85% of young people aged 18-24 living in rural areas had the allowed in 2019, compared to 41% in the Paris conurbation. In 2014, they were 77% in the first category and 50% in the second.
In Vinzieux, a town of 450 inhabitants in the Ardèche, distances are calculated by “minutes by car”. There, the car is king and Elisa Ribeiro understood it well. This high school student passed and obtained her license on June 5, at the age of 18, after having chained the hours of accompanied driving. “It’s a must, we don’t even ask ourselves the question. I need it to be independent, to go where I want”she testifies.
“Financial pit”
At her side, Emmy Berne, 17 years old and 2,100 kilometers of accompanied driving to her credit since December 2022, is impatiently waiting to blow out her eighteenth birthday in May 2024. She would already like to be able to drive alone, to avoid her parents of “take the taxi”but also not to pass his exam at the same time as the baccalaureate, next year.
It would be an understatement to say that public transport is scarce here. Only the school bus runs in the morning and evening (and only during school term). To reach Annonay, the nearest town, it takes an hour’s walk and then fifteen minutes by bus. By car, twenty minutes are enough.
The mayor of Vinzieux, Hugo Biolley, can testify that the question of mobility is the first concern of young people in his town. He can do so all the more since, at 22, he is the youngest city councilor in France and the first concerned. The student at Sciences Po Grenoble, holder of the pink card from the age of 17 and a half, but who had to wait until he was 18 to take the wheel alone, has traveled an average of 10,000 kilometers every three months since his start of term. Lamenting the gas and maintenance costs that go with it. “The car allows us to emancipate ourselves, gives us access to training and employment and, at the same time, it is a financial and ecological abyss, creating inequalities”regrets the chosen one.
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