Thomas King, age 13, of 5t. Paul, Minnesota, for his question:

How long have driver's licenses been in use?

Way back in the horse and buggy days of 1905, cars were rare and few people knew how to drive them. If you hired an automobile, the driver was required to have a chauffeur's license to take you and the puffing vehicle to your destination. In later years, as cars became more common, city after city began to require what was called an operator's license for anyone driving himself or someone else. This operator's license was the grand daddy of our modern driver's license. Some states were issuing driver's licenses by 1915 and the permits as a rule were good only for one year. Even the Motor Vehicle Departments are vague, however, as to where, when and to whom the first real driver's license was issued.

In the 1920s, drivers in many places    could get by without licenses. A person who did this nowadays would be breaking the law and also, in need of a psychiatrist. To earn a license, he must take a driving ability test. To pass it he must prove that he knows the rules of the road, the skills of driving and how to cope with a car. In 1965, we had 13 million traffic accidents, involving 49,000 fatalities. And most of this havoc was caused by faulty driving, by people who fail to grasp the fact that what they know or do not know about driving a car is a matter of life and death.