At the same time, it's good to have an experienced teacher with you when you first hit the autobahn. Finding out how fast your car can actually be is quite scary at the beginning, and you need to keep an eye on quite a few things.

A person who knows how to operate a vehicle is always going to be better off in life than a person who doesn't. Emergencies happen, road trips happen, etc.

Actually, I think that's incorrect. I'd say that the median person who knows how to drive is better off than the median person without that skill. Certainly the best person who doesn't know how to drive is better off than the worst person who can drive, and it probably has nothing to do with driving ability.

As an electrical engineer who minored in philosophy, I gladly concede the point and accept the correction.