It is no surprise that being a teen driver involves lots of new experiences, ranging from good to bad. These new experiences begin by passing the permit test — the first step in becoming a licensed driver — which is now offered online. 

When taking the test online, the participants are required to have a desktop or laptop computer with a mouse, keyboard, and webcam that cannot be a touch screen device.

The test taker is able to retake the permit test online once within a 24-hour time period. Along with taking the test online, the test taker needs to have a proctor that is at least 21 years of age if they are under the age of 18. However, if the participant is above the age of 18, they don’t need a proctor.

Sophomore Katie Lui is glad this is an option because taking the test online “kind of relieves some stress,” she said. “I highly recommend taking it online if you’re really nervous going to the DMV.”

After obtaining a permit, driver’s education is the optional next step to getting a license which, according to driver’s ed instructor Craig Elliott, teens should do because it reduces the chances of car crashes. 

“It’s a huge advantage in just allowing you to learn those safe skills,” Elliott said.

Elliott has been an instructor for 12 years and became one because “I saw a need and I wanted to help, especially teen drivers become safe drivers,” he said. “I’m also out there on the road, and I want to be surrounded with the safest possible drivers.”

With this, his favorite experiences are seeing people finally understand something and seeing people succeed.

According to senior Emily Martin, who did driver’s ed her sophomore year, “it was once a week, which wasn’t bad, but it was over three hours.” 

Two main reasons she did driver’s ed was because it lowered her insurance and because her parents thought it would be a good experience as it offered additional time to practice.

Martin feels that driver’s ed was difficult considering the fact that she had to rush constantly in order to make it to her lesson on time and then get to volleyball practice.

Looking back on her experience of driver’s ed, she doesn’t think she would do it if given the choice now, considering it contained a lot of prior knowledge she had already. “I learned more from my parents than I did from driver’s ed,” Martin said.

Despite mainly joining due to his parents’ encouragement, junior Benjamin Macias is glad he did it because it gave him a better understanding of the rules, made him a better driver, and provided a different experience when he drove with someone else besides his parents.

“It’s a lot different when you are driving with someone else that’s not your parents,” Macias said. “It makes you focus a little bit more.”

Senior Qahara Hepper is happy that she did driver’s ed as it taught her a lot of things that she didn’t know before.

Trying to incorporate driver’s ed into her schedule was a challenge since Hepper was the costume head for the school’s production of “Prometheus.” As a result, she settled on doing it in the fall instead of the spring.

“That was taking up all of the time I could do it,” she said. “I also have a volunteer shift at OHSU. It’s every Wednesday, so it was just trying to fit in like another four hours every week.”

Driver’s ed was a class she needed to do for insurance purposes. Nonetheless, Hepper felt that it helped her quite a lot.

“I didn’t know like 90% of the rules we were learning,” Hepper said. “I knew about the street signs and stop lights and stuff, and I knew the rules of yielding for the most part, but there were things like lane position — I had no idea what that was.”

Reflecting on her driver’s ed experience, she thinks that it made her a better driver, and more attentive than she was before taking the class.

As of now, Hepper says her driving experience has been good, and she is excited to get her license because she won’t have to rely on other people to take her places.

Along with Hepper’s eagerness to do driver’s ed, junior Addie Cate did it because she thought it would be beneficial to learn from someone who is educated on the topic of driving.

“I still use a lot of stuff that I learned in driver’s ed and [it] helps with insurance,” Cate said.

When Elliott does DMV testing, he typically notices that the participants who did driver’s ed are often more equipped with the information they need, resulting in a higher success rate than those who didn’t complete driver’s ed. 

His experience with teen drivers has “been great because I get to see or help them learn how to become safe drivers,” Elliott said.

His advice to new drivers is to “be patient. Not only be patient, but stay alert, stay focused,” Elliott said. “There’s so many distractions, not just texting and driving, or talking on your phone and driving, but lots of potential distractions so you got to stay focused.”

After finishing driver’s ed, the next step is obtaining a license. 

For some new drivers, getting their first car is something they think about along with the high prices, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Cate’s car was her mom’s, and she handles gas prices on her own with the money she makes through her job.

A scary experience Cate went through was when her friend had rear ended her, which caused her insurance to go up.

“I went to physical therapy for my back, but my back was already bad,” she said. 

Senior Mara Riehl got her license during her sophomore year of high school. Her brother lent her his car after he went to college, and when she goes to college, she plans on buying her own. 

As of right now, Riehl’s parents pay for her gas, along with maintenance and any repairs that could be potentially needed on the car.

After her six months were up, she loved driving her friends for the first time.

Being one of the first of her friends to drive, she enjoyed driving them around because they shared some of their first driving experiences together.

In contrast to Riehl driving her brother’s old car, Martin’s grandpa bought her a 2018 Toyota Corolla.

Since gas is so expensive, she splits paying gas with her parents 50-50.

“I always try not to get gas as much as possible,” she said. “It’s kind of stressful because I know it’s so expensive, but I just try to keep that in mind and when I’m driving places, like, do I really need to go there?”

Martin says one of her best experiences was when she first got her license and took her sister shopping. Now she is enjoying helping her sister learn how to drive.

“It was wonderful to teach my sister to drive based off of my experience,” she said.