In March, Gov. Andy Beshear signed legislation to lower the driving permit age in Kentucky, a move that has local driving schools seeing a jump in enrollment. House Bill 15 lowered the age teens can get a driver’s permit from 16 to 15. However, the requirements to get a permanent license remain the same. Teenagers must complete 60 hours of driving practice, including at least 10 nighttime hours, and wait at least six months for an intermediate license and another six months for a graduated license, with no infractions on their driving record.
Kentucky was one of eight states that required drivers to be at least 16 to get a learner’s permit. Now, it joins the majority of states across the country that allow teens to get their permits at 15. Neighboring states Indiana allows learner’s permits at 15 and Ohio requires drivers to be at least 15 and a half. Some states — including Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota — allow kids as young as 14 to get a learner’s permit.
A lower driving age means more teens learning how to drive. According to the Business Research Company, the driving school market has seen steady growth recently. Estimates put the industry’s growth from $98.7 billion in 2024 to $103.8 billion in 2025, the company said, with projections to grow to as much as $125.8 billion in 2029. An increasing population of young drivers is just one of the driving factors.
Amber Wedding, owner of Central Kentucky Driving School, said another reason is the sense of anxiety parents feel when faced with the prospect of teaching their child to drive.
“There’s already a sense of anxiety about being behind the wheel,” she said. “Parents just aren’t as ready to teach their kids to drive.”
Add to that the family dynamics and sometimes handing the training to someone else is more effective, she said.
“One of the things driving schools do is to preserve the parent-teen relationship,” she said. “Students often say to me, ‘You don’t yell at me like my mom or dad does.’ I tell them ‘It’s easier for me because I have a brake on my side of the car, and you and I didn’t get into an argument about dishes last night.’”
Wedding said she focuses on teaching students to not just be in control of the car, but to also be aware of their surroundings and other drivers.
“I teach them to think about the ‘what ifs,’” she said. “We want them to focus on giving other drivers space, so they have the ability to make adjustments. One of the things I tell my students is that if they see someone driving aggressively, they’ve already told us what kind of a driver they are. We need to adjust for that.”
Research from AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has found in 2019 that nearly 80 percent of drivers experienced significant anger, aggression, or road rage while driving at least once in the previous 30 days. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Transportation Safety Board said there has been an uptick in traffic accidents and fatalities across the country. And nearly half of all drivers (49 percent) said they felt like people in their area were driving more dangerously than before the pandemic, according to research from the Pew Research Center in 2024.
Driving schools are also seeing older drivers, said Tanya Peters who owns APEX Driving School with her husband, Jim Peters. In some cases, older adults are coming to the school to get a refresher course, she said, but in others the adult children of senior drivers are asking the school to make assessments of whether their parents are still safe enough to be on the road.
“One of our oldest clients was 92 and still driving,” she said. “His son was concerned about his father’s abilities behind the wheel.”
Whatever the age of the driver, students start with learning about the car and how it functions before moving on to driving, Peters said. Once students have had experience with the fundamentals, they are moved on to harder things.
“We go into neighborhoods, then city driving and roundabouts — if there are any in the area — and it keeps building from there,” she said. “We move on to lane changes in higher volume traffic, highway merging, lane maintenance, higher speeds, and some test prep to cover what’s on the exam.”
Instructors are required to not only be certified by the state, but to pass background checks and both the written and driving tests, and to spend an additional 20 hours training with Peters on what to expect as an instructor. Instructors also use specially equipped cars with passenger-side brakes and kill switches, Peters said.
APEX also uses dashcams that can see what is going on inside the car remotely, she said.
Central Ky Driving School’s Wedding said she works hard to make sure that her instructors are prepared for whatever the students may need and spends another three months with her instructors teaching them how to handle various situations that may come up as they train driving students. Additionally, she said, her driving instructors continue their training through other resources on and off the road.
The length of time it takes to train instructors makes it challenging to bring on new people and add more students to her client list, she said. Currently, her driving school has about a two-month wait.
Because of that, the change in the driving age hasn’t necessarily meant an increase in business, Wedding said, because their school was already busy. It has, however, created more of a buzz amongst the teen drivers coming to the school, and has increased the number of 15-year-old students.
Now that teens are getting behind the wheel earlier, however, it’s bound to increase auto insurance rates for parents. Having driving lessons can result in discounts, however.
“It depends on the insurance company, so we recommend that everybody asks their insurance what is required for them to be able to get a discount,” Peters said.