This year roughly 800 Berkeley High School students will turn 16. For many students, this means having the opportunity to obtain a driver’s license. But in addition to speed bumps and tricky downtown Berkeley parking, there is a serious roadblock in front of many prospective student drivers: the financial cost.
The road to a driver’s license is lengthy and marked with price tags. First, students can obtain a learner’s permit at 15-and-a-half-years-old, after a DMV-approved driver education course. According to Aceable, an online driver education program, the classes can range anywhere from 25 to eighty dollars, and in-person options can run from two hundred to eight hundred dollars. Next is a knowledge test, included in the California DMV Driver’s License Application, which costs $46 in total. However, the most expensive part of the equation is the required six hours of professional driving lessons.
Patti Fairbrother, a driving instructor for Ride-On Driving School in Berkeley, said that driving schools in the Bay Area can cost anywhere from $180 to two hundred dollars for a two-hour lesson. The behind-the-wheel test is then taken, and each retake costs an extra nine dollars. This means, in total, the process of getting a license would be at least six hundred dollars, but could cost over $1,500 if one was to opt for more expensive options, not including the price of a car, gas money, or how much it costs to add a teenager to an insurance plan.
For some students, like BHS sophomore Luca Distefano, obtaining a license marks a transition to greater independence, allowing them to transport friends, shop, or even drive to bike races. As students grow older, many want to rely less on parents and have more autonomy when it comes to transportation.
BHS senior Chloe Gill mainly uses her car, which she calls Tati, to drive to and from school, and for afterschool plans. “(Driving is) kind of a mix of convenience, necessity, and fun,” she said.
Many BHS students like Gill drive to school. This is due to the fact that the price of housing in Berkeley has increased; Berkeley home prices were up 2.6 percent in June 2026 compared to the same period the year before, according to Redfin. Single-family houses within a 20 minute walking distance of campus can sell for anywhere between eight hundred thousand dollars and two million dollars, according to Zillow. Rent prices are also high, with units in Downtown Berkeley pricing at $2,500 or more.
This means lower-income students typically live further from school than higher income students, and may require driving as a means to get to school. Additionally, if parents are busy working, more responsibilities fall on older siblings to help their family. According to the Pew Research Center, 54 percent of U.S. parents say it’s difficult for them to balance their work and family responsibilities, such as transporting their children. All of these factors contribute to the importance of a student’s license for low-income families.
“(Low-income teens) have to pay for the same amount of driving lessons, plus they are often using their families’ cars, and their parents are working, so it's hard to get the practice in,” Fairbrother said.
For some lower-income families, a six hundred dollar driver education course isn’t something that they can easily afford. A study conducted by the Zebra, an insurance company, found that 33 percent of low-income parents said that the barrier to having their teen drive was the high expense.
Gill raised another issue: the price of driving itself. “I would at least assume that for most people, they're more thinking about the cost of using their license than obtaining it,” she said. Indeed, after a student gets their license, they need a vehicle, insurance, and gas. According to Investopedia, a global financial website, it costs $250 on average to add a teenager to a preexisting car insurance plan, and that nearly quadruples for an average rate of $865 for standalone teenage car insurance per month. Both of these costs can place a heavy burden on lower-income families.
Increasing gas prices pose another roadblock: according to Way.com, a gas servicing platform, costs have risen to an average of $5.46/gallon in Berkeley. Compared to the national average gas price — $4.12/gallon, according to Triple A — driving in Berkeley costs over $1.30 more per mile than the average in the country.
“If you compare the expenses, if you can't afford to get your license, you would really not be able to afford what you'd use it for,” Gill said.
For lower income teens, not having a driver’s license can have real-world ramifications. It’s harder to get a higher paying job if one is confined to only the areas they can get to by public transportation: one study by the University of Southern California found that car commuters in low-income neighborhoods in San Diego have about 30 times greater job accessibility than those who solely rely on public transit. Lower income from jobs creates a ripple effect of poor credit, which can raise the price of rent and car payment. Poor credit is difficult to rebound from, which keeps many lower income people in the vicious cycle of earning less money, and keeping them farther down in the economic system.
“I think all people should have the opportunity to get their license. I feel like (learning to drive) should be a lot cheaper than it is right now,” Distefano said.
One possible solution to a more affordable license could be reinstating driver education in school, explained Fairbrother. According to the California Department of Education, school districts are technically required to offer driver’s education, but due to budget constraints, this often isn’t realistic for many schools. SF Gate explained that the law is mostly ignored due to State Department of Education officials not having the authority to enforce it. According to BHS Principal Juan Raygoza, BHS does not currently offer driver education.
Still, BHS sophomore Lawrence Haines expressed the importance of a more affordable solution: “I feel like (low-income students) should get help or have certain things that should benefit them getting their driver license, because they might need free tests more than others do,” he said.