When you're an isolated teenager, you think getting your driver's license is the only key to freedom before turning 18. For many kids, that's a totally accurate assessment of their situation. If your only options for transportation are getting your mom to drive you everywhere or walking next to a six-lane highway, having a car you can drive yourself feels like total and complete liberation.

While cars can be liberating, they can also burden drivers financially and temporally. The teen in this story is getting cut a real raw deal. After he got his driver's license this summer, his mom and stepdad told him he could only use their car if he could drive his younger siblings to and from their different schools and extracurricular activities. That already sounds a bit extreme to me, but considering that they're also making him pay for the gas and it's no wonder he reneged on the deal.