I think that actually people aren’t necessarily disagreeing but looking at the issue slightly differently.
In the end, anyone child or adult, can only have a car if they can afford it - afford to learn to drive, have access to a car and can insure it. Someone has to pay. Lots of people can’t afford to do that regardless of where they live and regardless of public transport availability or none. Their ‘need’ to get about is pretty irrelevant if they can’t actually afford it. Hence loads of adults and teen live in places and are pretty isolated and have limited options for work and socially because the public transport available restricts them and they can’t afford a car. It’s quite simply a feature of poverty/ lack of affluence.
Lots of people keep saying their rural teens need cars. They need cars to get to school or college or to their jobs. Well yes, having access to a car will mean they can access those things and mean those school or job options are available to them. Presumably many parents in these ideas EXPECT their kids to learn to drive quickly so these opportunities can be accessed. But not every teen will learn in those areas due to cost. They simply then don’t have access to those schools or jobs unless their parents take them or public transport allows it. And those with parents who don’t drive, simply have very limited opportunities.
Many parents of MN feel their kids ‘need’ to drive in the sense that they feel they ‘need’ to access opportunities in education and work which require a car journey. They then cobble together the money to fund driving lessons, tests, insurance etc. They felt it was needed. Of course, other teens living near them won’t have that and still manage to live. Many find it impossible to concenive of a situation where families cannot cobble together than money - but given we are talking about a good couple of £k and probably more, lots of families simply can’t put their hands on that kind of money. Teens themselves might have work (if they live somewhere where they can get to the work - possibly catch 22 if they live remotely) but generating the amounts needed for lessons and insurance and buying a car, if your family doesn’t have one is extremely difficult for a teen with part time job in education.
In the end, I’d agree that learning to drive and having access to a car as a 17/18 year old is a luxury. It’s a brilliant, really useful thing that opens up all kinds of opportunities to them and often enables them to continue with education ir jobs that parents have previously facilitated through lifts, but always hoped not to have to drive them to beyond 17/18.
But other teens and their families don’t have these options. They have to choose schools or colleges and jobs or no jobs based on public transport and the fact they know their family or teen will not have access to a car. Their world is smaller and has less opportunities. But that is how it is for many families. And those with cars and whose teens learn to drive whilst at school often struggle to understand that it isn’t simply a ‘need’ - if you struggle to pay for gas and food and have no savings in the bank, then funding your teen to drive just isn’t possible, and even if they have a job it’s not likely to be possible.
Several people talk about not being handed anything as teens. They talk about learning in their late 20s or 30s and only when they could fully find it themselves through their own work. That is the reality for lots of people. And with rising costs if lessons and cars and insurance, more families will find their teens can’t learn until they are in full-time work and funding themselves. The widening of the gap between haves and have-nots is growing.
People don’t die if they don’t have access to a car as a teen or an adult. In that sense, it isn’t a ‘need’. In many areas, people can get about via public transport, if not as easily as with a car. In other areas, public transport is poor and opportunities severely limited by not having a car. You could say you ‘need’ it to access opportunities. Yes, but it’s still a luxury many can’t have as they can’t afford it and their families can’t afford it. And they still live. But absolutely it opens opportunities. And families who can afford to give their kids opportunities often will make other sacrifices because they see during as opening doors. It does, but if you can’t afford it, you can’t.
Some people seem unable to acknowledge that some people simply can’t afford it.