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“Car dependency has a threshold effect—using a car just sometimes increases life satisfaction but if you have to drive much more than this people start reporting lower levels of happiness,” said Rababe Saadaoui, an urban planning expert at Arizona State University and lead author of the study. “Extreme car dependence comes at a cost, to the point that the downsides outweigh the benefits.”

This ties into something I've thought about a long time having lived in the busy Seattle corridor for a stretch (there's accidents on I-5 literally every day). At a certain point, even with an ever-expanding number of lanes, everyone having their car becomes limiting not freeing. Because we're all on the roads all at the same time all the time, it takes longer to get places and we have to spend more of our time planning on the off-chance there might be traffic because a short drive to Tacoma could be 30 minutes or 2 hours. It doesn't make you feel free to do what you want, because everyone else is also using their freedom to the point that everything is clogged and backed up all the time and everyone is so tired of it all they've taken to driving like maniacs since the pandemic.

The results were “surprising,” Saadaoui said, and could be the result of a number of negative impacts of driving, such as the stress of continually navigating roads and traffic, the loss of physical activity from not walking anywhere, a reduced engagement with other people, and the growing financial burden of owning and maintaining a vehicle.

That's the big one. average people are torn between trying to keep an old car from before everything in cars was computerized and trying to keep it running, or you're forced into the modern-era of cars where there is no economy vehicle, they're all luxury, and the cost of buying it and keeping it maintained is way, way, way, way higher. As is the insurance.

“Some people drive a lot and feel fine with it but others feel a real burden,” she said. “The study doesn’t call for people to completely stop using cars but the solution could be in finding a balance. For many people driving isn’t a choice, so diversifying choices is important.”

It literally isn't a choice if you want to be able to have a job, the number of low-level, low-paying jobs that absolutely act like you're unreliable if you don't have a vehicle is too damn high. It's really almost not a choice at all.