Gen Alpha eager to hit the road, survey finds

So we recently told you about a new CarMax survey showing Gen Alpha teens are eager to hit the road unlike older Gen Z kids. Yeah, that's right. The survey found 80% of today's 14 to 16-year-olds want their license as soon as possible. Let's bring in Garcia now for some insight into what parents and their teen drivers need to know. Garcia? Well, after years of Gen Zers delaying getting their license, Gen Alpha is eager to get behind the wheel. So we wanted to really dig deep and see what's happening locally, then explore what teens and parents need to know about learning to drive. Let's welcome Jason Zimmerman, CEO of Greenlight Driver Training. You're based in Danville. You serve the Bay Area. You've been doing this a good long time. Yes, absolutely. What are you seeing now compared to, let's say, 10, 15 years ago? Sure, absolutely. So what that survey, you know, illustrated is what we're seeing in real life as well. The students generally are super excited to get their license. What we see, though, is there's an underlying nervousness, a little bit of fear there that's causing them to delay a little bit. So that survey is indicating that there's a lot of excitement. And then kind of typical teenage fashion, there's a little bit of gap in the follow through. But we are seeing that the current crop of students coming through is generally more eager and a little less fearful, a little less level of anxiety as they get ready to get that driver's license. I like a lot of talk leading up to your 16th birthday or even your 15 and a half for that permit. So we have a follow through. I'm there with you. Let's talk about what parents should and shouldn't do. I've seen your presentation, and you say that parents should not take their kid out to the church parking lot on a Wednesday night because you spend a lot of time having kids unlearn what we teach them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So parents are a huge part of this process, right? Practice is super, super important. But also getting that foundational training and instruction from certified driving instructors is really, really important for this process. So while we want you to get out there with your kids, it's important that you start with some professionals and let them teach those foundational skills so that your students are learning the appropriate things at the very beginning of the process so that we have good habits, right? We've got to have a good solid foundation to build on top of as we go. Do you find most of the kids you teach to drive have had time behind the wheel with mom and dad? We get about a 50-50 split. We get a lot of kids that are just super nervous and parents that are super nervous. And so they're kind of unwilling or not quite ready to go get in the car with their kids. So we have that crop, and then we also have a group where the kids are really gung-ho and they want to get going, and so they've spent a little bit of time in the car with mom and dad, even before they're supposed to, right? It's really important. That permit, when you get it, day one, it's not valid until they've had instruction from an actual instructor, so we get a lot of problems where people are kind of jumping the gun a little bit. I look forward to talking to you for a number of reasons, one of which, a couple weekends ago, I was in the car with my brother and his teenage daughter, my niece, and she was driving, so I was like this in the back seat. my brother put the map up on his phone in a holder so it could be hands-free and she said dad i can't look at that screen while i'm driving and he said you're gonna have to learn to rely on a map because she doesn't know how to find let's say Sebastopol for a volleyball tournament whatever how do you handle screens in cars because they weren't around when my brother and i were learning absolutely and so what uh your niece was saying there i can't look at that screen while i'm driving is really kind of an important part there that's indicating that she's got so much of her mental bandwidth dedicated to just driving that car she can't handle processing the map and that's really common in new drivers right okay one of the biggest challenges for them is so much of what their brain is doing is dedicated just to driving the car they can't deal with all the other things that's why it's so important that we stay back on the screen stay back on the music stay back on the friends in the car until we've got that experience and we've built that cognitive capacity so that driving becomes almost second nature right we've been driving for a long time we don't even think about it we just do it for these new drivers so much of that mental horsepower is just going into steering that car dealing with the map or something else is just too much so to my brother's credit he took down the phone put it on mute and he said okay so after this light you want to get in the right hand lane because we're turning right like that sort of thing so he narrated a lot friendlier coming from dad versus you know automated voice um my husband has a fancier car and it has a screen right up in my face i can't i mean i can turn it off but i never do how do you teach teens to handle something that is always staring at them? Sure, absolutely. We talk about it, right? You got to make them aware of it and you have to explain. Teenagers love the why, right? And explaining the why of why you have to ignore it and you have to learn to ignore it until you have that capacity to deal with it, right? So it's a tool that's there. It's really important not to get married to it. Don't get your eyes down into that screen, right? We've got to be up looking at what's going on around us, keeping those eyes way up the road and that sort of thing. So really explaining to them the impact of taking your eyes off the road is a big piece of that puzzle. I mean, we used to talk about texting and driving, but now it's like everything and driving. What's the biggest mistake teens make and the biggest mistake parents make in learning to drive? Sure, absolutely. Biggest mistake for teens, eyes down or staring at the scary thing, right? Moving your eyes while you're driving is absolutely critical. So humans naturally want to look at the scary thing, right? When we're driving, that's bad news. Our hands and our eyes are hardwired together. So if we look at something, we tend to drive at it. So if I don't want to hit that thing and I look right at it, I'm going to drive right into it. So we really want to move those eyes and look where we want to get to. And our hands will follow automatically. It's incredible when we're teaching kids, they start going like towards the curb or something. We don't even say anything. We just point, their eyes move and their hands follow. It's incredible. So for the new drivers, move those eyes, look where you want to get to. Okay. And for parents? For the parents be relaxed be relaxed it's hard i know it's challenging it's challenging but um really you know calm uh quiet right the only time we want to get loud is when that car stops they don't need to listen to what word we're saying if it's loud it means stop right so that's a good one um and then the other thing is take your time they have to have that permit for six months there's no reason to go put them on the freeway on day one right right take your time build like we're talking about build that foundation and then level up as they're capable don't make them drink from the fire hose throw them in the deep end right take your time they got to have that permit for a while and they're building that solid foundation is going to make them that much safer that much more quickly can i have you do a little bit of myth busting i've heard that those stickers like new driver please be patient that those invite bad behavior from other drivers on the road is this true yeah sometimes it is true absolutely we noticed and when we first started our business we didn't have a lot of branding on the car um and then as we've added the stickers right we've seen a little bit more behavior where drivers are kind of messing like antagonistic yeah they're kind of messing with the new driver and stuff like that so it's kind of an interesting situation people people do all kinds of interesting things okay so so for maybe like for mom and dad's car don't slap a sticker on there i would advise against it i would advise against it plus they've got to learn how to drive just like everybody else is out there right we're all in this thing together so if we can kind of blend into the mix and drive like everybody else they're going to be learning they're going to be learning in an appropriate environment without any kind of you know extra factors right you will like i always say i trust you it's everyone else i'm worried about we could talk for an hour i appreciate your time it's it's so important for all of us to know parents and students and drivers alike Jason Zimmerman CEO of Green Light driving based in Danville serving the bay hey thank you so much of course thank you