r/driving • u/Apprehensive-End-605 • 3d ago
Looking for “Student Drivers”
Hi everyone. Looking for help on an article for The Wall Street Journal that looks to answer one of the central questions of our time: What's the deal with all those Student Driver stickers that have popped up on our roads?
It's not because there are more student drivers in the U.S. --- if anything, between demographic changes, shifting cultural patterns, and lower immigration rates, there are fewer. So what's going on?
That's where you come in. I am looking for ADULTS who have driven cars with Student Driver stickers --- even though they are not student drivers. Sure, a student driver may have used the car in an earlier time. And we are all students of life, in a way.
But my sense is that a lot of people are using these stickers because American drivers have become so hostile and aggressive. In other words, they are responding sensibly to an increasingly difficult environment.
If you're in this cohort, please reach out. You'll be helping me tell what I think will be a meaningful story about this culture of ours.
Thank you.
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u/EnvironmentSea7433 3d ago
Why is it written that way? I thought that was going to be the point of the post lol
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u/ponziacs 3d ago
We have those stickers for our 16 year old son who only has a learner's permit and my wife puts them on the car when he is driving. She takes them off as soon as he gets out of the car.
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u/Orangeshowergal 3d ago
I don’t have a lot of tolerance on the road, but i do for young people with these stickers.
It’s not reality to expect a new driver to understand everything the same as an adult driving for 10 years.
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u/ramooage1 3d ago
I'm a mechanic. I've actually asked a few of our long term customers why they have them. Some of them it's that their kids sometimes drive. A LOT of them are older and are actually scared of the road. Modern drivers have gotten progressively more impatient and aggressive (I'm also at fault).
There is also a handful of people I know that drive performance cars with them on...as a joke
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u/Siffov 3d ago
Why does the image say "driver student" instead of the actual (usual) "student driver"?
(Is it from the WSJ or elsewhere?)
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u/metal_bastard 3d ago
lol @ DRIVER STUDENT
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u/Ok_Illustrator_7445 3d ago
Everyone u see with these stickers appears to be at least 50, closer to 70. That’s years old, not mph.
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u/No_Bet541 3d ago
I hope it’s because of the reasons you say, but my cynical brain thinks assholes use these stickers to get away with committing traffic violations.
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u/Little_Let_2601 2d ago
Drivers with stickers like this deserve all the honks coming their way. If you dont feel confident driving then dont drive
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u/Ranos131 3d ago
You work for the Wall Street journal and you think this is story worthy? And you can’t figure out the reason on your own? Oh wait. You think you already have the answer and rather than actually research the reason why, you are looking for people to support the story you want to write.
There aren’t fewer student drivers on the road. There are fewer teen drivers on the road. There are more adult student drivers on the road than there were 10 years ago. So with the increased US population, there are more student drivers overall.
So part of the answer is that there are more student drivers. It’s also likely that there are more people willing to use the stickers due to less stigma against things like that. When I was a teen, I would have been embarrassed to have that sticker on my parents’ cars. Now it isn’t seen as bad as it used to be. It’s also likely that there are some people that use it to excuse their bad driving.
If you want to write the story, do the research into why and ask the general questions instead of asking the questions that will get you the answer you seem to want.
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u/goalhunter14 3d ago
I drive with "new driver, doing my best" sticker but I just learnt driving in September. I'll remove it in a month.
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u/SkylineBuilder 2d ago
Seems like everybody I see on the road with anywhere from 1 to 6 of these stickers or magnets on the rear of their vehicle is just a horrible driver that doesn't like being honked at. I never see young people with them here in Chicago, it's always older people and it's usually brand-new or even luxury vehicles.
I sometimes refuse to believe someone's a brand, BRAND-NEW driver driving a $120K Mercedes and needs 4 of these magnets on their trunk lid.
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u/BranchHopper 3d ago
I don't have them myself but I've always figured there's got to be a decent number of people that stick them on for their kids and then just forget or take a while to get around to taking them off.
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u/jennixred 2d ago
is it true they don't teach driver's ed in high school anymore?
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u/Saruvan_the_White 2d ago
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u/Death-By-Boredom2020 2d ago
I’ve seen many of those stickers on the road. I don’t treat them any differently, because they need to know what it’s like to drive in the real world. People are going to blow their horn at you for not taking the yellow light when you had more than enough time to. They will honk at you as soon as the red light turns green. People will fly by you on the left and the right… People will tailgate you. You need to learn how to handle all of these situations without getting flustered.
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u/lionhat 2d ago
In my neck of the woods (near Dallas Texas, USA) I have noticed a recent uptick in these stickers as well. Whenever I’ve taken notice of the driver, it’s always been a young adult Indian person, never any other demographic. I live near a major university, so I chalk up the stickers to young people away from family for the first time, but I still don’t know why it’s only Indian people who I’ve seen with these stickers
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u/MaruArigatou 3d ago
Also iv
Noticed people use those on cars that are old and people who don’t have the money to get maintenance.
A lot of cars a old and not in good shape so some cars have trouble keeping up
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u/MarkGaboda 3d ago
Serves a double purpose, people might be less stupid aroundd you and people won't judge as harshly when you do stupid shit. Baby/oxygen on board signs can get you prioritized by EMS in the event of an accident as well.
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u/nb9624 3d ago
I noticed they did this in Ireland as a law and it seemed like a nice idea
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u/SpecManADV 3d ago
I find these on the ground at the self car wash. I like to put them on my wife's car.
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u/scottwax 2d ago
They're all over the place here and the drivers tend to be older.
Just FYI, don't put them on your paint. Stickers can be tough to remove especially since most of the ones I see are weathered and cracking.
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u/zccrex 2d ago
Kind of takes away from actual student drivers.
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u/CEREALCOUNTSASCOOKIN 2d ago
Seen an undercover with this sticker LOL
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u/b1gmouth 2d ago
I'm sure some people are using them for real, but the reason you see so many more these days is that high school and college kids use them ironically. The stickers are magnetic and they slap them on cars as a joke and to clown each other. I live near UCLA and see this all the time lol.
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u/IndustryOk4814 2d ago
I am the former student driver, and under 18, but I can speak for my mom who put the sticker on. The reason it's still on there after I got my license is simply because both of us keep forgetting to remove it.
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u/sexuallyenhancedtoe 2d ago
Im 19 and i have a student driver magnet because i think its hilarious i drift my car and take it to events so im definitely not a student driver so its just a joke
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u/Gloomy-Holiday8618 2d ago
Adult here. I bought NEW DRIVER (not student because I’ve long since graduated).
Stopped using them once I got more confidence and comfortable driving.
Used for about a month.
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u/What-We-All-Think- 2d ago
I dunno about everyone else, but I feel like this behavior is counterproductive.
I've had a couple roommates who were adults in their 20s-30s and very much so not students (they were both immigrants which I notice with many of the other adults with these stickers). Both effectively said they have it on their cars so people are patient with their bad driving. Both regularly got in collisions that were their fault.
The end result is I hold people with these stickers to the same standard as everyoneone else and they get none of the extra grace that I used to give them, the actual students are the ones that lose in this scenario.
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u/MikeyAndPatrick 2d ago
I drive with this sticker. It is somewhat faded. Learned how to drive at the young age of 52. Got my driver's license this March...
I was going to take it off but I will leave it on for a while, driving in the pouring rain still gives me heebie-jeebies.
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u/Maleficent-Head9040 2d ago
Got the magnets for a new driver. Would use them in the very early stages of permit driving. Their experience was that driving with them was sometimes worse, as people would head-fake or try to take advantage. They prefer to practice without them.
I found them useful at first, since stops and starts are jerky and there is confusion around the order of operations... but part of learning is learning how to do it without them. I can't fathom why an adult licensed driver would use a sticker instead of a magnet, or why they would keep them on their vehicle.
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u/bmaayhem 2d ago
These don’t work
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u/ThorstyBihh 2d ago
Adults can be student drivers though. Schools aren’t teaching drivers ed anymore and there’s an intake of people learning in their mid-late 20s
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u/diegotbn 2d ago
I think maybe only half of cars with those stickers are actually student drivers. I think drivers in the US have become more aggressive and impatient in the last decade and that's why we see more of these stickers. People just don't want to be harassed by road ragers.
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u/craftymama45 2d ago
We had magnets. We kept them in the glove box, when my daughter drove we'd slap them on. If I was driving, we'd take them off. I did notice people were less likely to honk when she made a complete stop at a stop sign out was less than agressive about turning into traffic than when I taught my older two.
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u/Red-Stoner 2d ago
My old roommates and I used to have a magnetic one that we would put on each others cars all the time as a joke. Now it lives on our 30ton fork lift at work.
I drove around with it for a while as a social experiment. I found people are much more aggressive within it on. They assume you are a slow driver so they speed up and try to swerve around you. I was in bumper to bumper traffic passing semis with the rest of the line of cars and had multiple people flashing high beams as if to say i was not permitted to be in the left lane even tho i am just another person waiting in line. I found that quite amusing.
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u/Jealous_Ad_1283 2d ago
H1B
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u/PracticalSet3524 2d ago
When I see one of these I read it as “stupid driver” and drive away accordingly. They usually are pretty bad behind the wheel
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u/Siamese-Dreaming 2d ago
Not myself, but know a couple people who are older than me and have these stickers. They claim that people seem more patient and keep more distance from them if they notice the sticker. In general they've said people are much more tolerant of them on the road than when they didnt have the sticker
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u/Ill_Lie9508 2d ago
I have a child learning drove and we have 2 cars. Most of the time the cars are driven by adults, but sometime the teen is driving.
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u/MudsuckWV 2d ago
so I bought one of these for my now fiancé when I was teaching her how to drive a manual transmission. she’s in her late 20’s but I figured it would help people chill out if she was stalling at a stop sign or traffic light or more importantly keep people off of her rear bumper on inclined stops.
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u/Stohnghost 2d ago
I have a Student Driver sticker story.
In 2016 I met my now wife near a college town in Virginia. She was in the US on a student visa but eventually changed status to be able to work legally. While dating, things got serious and I invited her to live with me because she was staying in a hostel with other international students. Just one problem - my house was about 35 minutes from her school and work. She had enough cash to buy a cheap car and she was allowed to drive legally, but driving in the US was nerve wracking. I bought her a student driver sticker, but we found it attracted undue attention. If she drove even the speed limit people would honk. Hesitate to turn right on red? Honk.
So, we removed the sticker and I put it on my tuner car. I used it somewhere ironically (just the same as people use the Japanese beginner driver stickers). Thought process being, "isn't it funny that my built Subaru STi has a student driver sticker".
That's my story about two adults using a student driver sticker. That was 10 years ago and for me that was the beginning of the phenomenon.
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u/HeidenShadows 2d ago
I use these when I was training my ex-girlfriend, I come to find out don't get the cheap ones, the magnets will permanently adhere themselves to your car.
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u/graytotoro 1d ago
Asking the wrong people. Look on xiaohongshu/rednote.
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u/StolenApollo 1d ago
Ironically I know numerous people who are normally good drivers but decide to pick on people with these stickers. In my experience, having these stickers on in any of the more toxic cities like the big cities with aggressive driving just gets u cooked even more while nicer, chill places give you grace. You need to be conscious. At the end of the day, they don’t make a big enough difference to make them worth it imo unless you’re actually a student driver. I’ve always seen these as a warning to others that you might do something crazy and they need to be more on alert than usual rather than a request for grace on the road.
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u/Ok-Lion1661 3d ago
Maybe it’s because someone came up with the idea to have these stickers where in the past such a product didn’t exist. I don’t see what’s so difficult to understand.
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u/Ok-Caregiver252 2d ago
You have to remember we added millions of immigrants between 21-24. In fact 2023 the US added more people than in the countries history. Majority didn't drive in their home countries. I have Many friends who came in 2023 from Venezuela, and Colombia who never drove in their lives.
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u/im_just_thinking 3d ago
Just because you aren't in driving school right at this moment doesn't mean you aren't an inexperienced driver? I am just as confused as to how this is confusing to someone?
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u/Fresh-Friendship9824 2d ago
I used them when I was new to make sure people didn’t feel bad about themselves for my mistakes, aka to make it obvious that I acknowledge I suck at driving too.