Most Gen Z adults in a LendingTree survey supported putting a legal expiration date on driving. Among respondents ages 18 to 28, 71% backed a maximum driving age, compared with 35% of baby boomers.
Published in November 2025, the survey found that support extended well beyond the youngest adults. Overall, 61% favored an age cutoff, and millennials were even more likely than Gen Z to support one, at 74%.
Yet a separate LendingTree survey published the following month offered older drivers a comparison of their own. Nearly half of Gen Z drivers, 48%, admitted checking their phones at least sometimes while driving. Just 6% of boomers said the same.
Both surveys defined baby boomers as ages 61 to 79 and Gen Z as ages 18 to 28. They measured opinions and self-reported behavior in separate samples, so the findings do not establish that the people backing an age limit were the same people checking their phones.
Backseat Advice
Gen Z drivers were the most likely generation to describe themselves as backseat drivers, at 41%. Meanwhile, 30% said someone had directly told them they were bad drivers, compared with 17% of drivers overall.
Reaching into the back seat was another habit with a wide age gap. Eighteen percent of Gen Z drivers admitted doing it while driving, compared with 2% of boomers.
QuestionPro conducted the driving-habits survey online among 2,015 U.S. adults from Nov. 5 through 10, 2025. The age-limit survey involved 2,050 adults questioned from Oct. 9 through 13. Both used nonrandom samples with quotas intended to reflect the broader population.
A Longer Record
The older LendingTree analysis updated in January 2024 ranked Gen Z worst for driving incidents. It examined insurance quotes collected from January through November 2023, when the included Gen Z adults were 18 to 26.
That group had 49.07 incidents per 1,000 drivers, compared with 19.44 for boomers, roughly 2.5 times the rate. Incidents included accidents, DUIs, speeding, and other citations. The accident figures alone were 30.25 per 1,000 Gen Z drivers and 12.64 for boomers.
Those figures describe people seeking insurance quotes, and they were not adjusted for miles driven.
A ConsumerAffairs analysis updated in February 2026 also ranked Gen Z worst and boomers best among four generations. It used 2023 federal fatal-crash data and calculated rates per 100,000 people in each age group. Its age bands differed, grouping Gen Z as 15 to 29 and boomers as 60 to 79.
More recent crash data produced a different order under another measure. In a LendingTree analysis updated in July 2026, millennials accounted for 31.5% of selected 2024 fatal crashes involving unsafe driving behaviors. Gen Z followed at 27.7%, while boomers accounted for 13.2%.
That analysis covered factors including aggressive driving, careless driving, and inattentive operation. Its percentages represent shares of the selected crashes, rather than risk per driver or per mile.
Driving frequency also differed across generations. In the age-limit survey, 58% of licensed Gen Z respondents said they drove daily, compared with 37% of licensed boomers.