oh my god we are a THIRD of the country???

[aphyr@woof.group]

@maya as a cyclist, I was honestly shocked by this number too!

[gavin57@toot.wales]

@maya @aphyr It is roughly the same proportion in the UK as well, yet we seem to have adopted the 'strip mall miles from anywhere' school of urban planning as well.

Ours don't have guns in them though, so I guess there is that.

[maya@social.seattle.wa.us]

> There’s been some interesting research by Dr. Kelcie Ralph at Rutgers around children who grow up without a driving caregiver. As adults, they have lower earnings and lower education attainment levels, even if you control for race and income, because so many opportunities are tied to access to driving.

[maya@social.seattle.wa.us]

> asking people to think about who they know in their own social circles who can’t drive

lol "maya is too lazy" (though "maya is too spacey and easily startled to drive" probably works them back around to the correct conclusion)

[latte@mastodon.online]

@maya ooh this is interesting. i can't drive lol and am lucky to not have needed to...

[vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de]

@latte @maya even in small European countries such as England unless you drive you are confined to big cities and towns and mostly a strict 9-5 lifestyle (for the buses which do exist), the moment you move outside these areas they become way more car dependent

I got away for 30 years of my life without a car until I had to move away from London and SE England to a provincial town.

I don't mind driving these days, but still feel there should be better transport provision for those who don't, especially in outer suburbs and for evenings and weekends..

[kilogex@dice.camp]

@maya @aphyr makes sense. Over 80% of the US population lives in urban areas, and while the majority of them own a car less than 20% use it on a regular basis.

[isa@thenighthas.me]

@maya @aphyr i feel so validated by this, even tho im not an american hahaha. i dont drive either and i know a lot of people think i need to "grow up and learn how to drive already" or they think "yeah it's best if you don't drive"

[disorderlyf@todon.eu]

@maya @aphyr Because most of the non-driving population exists in cities and it's convenient for the people who decide that to have non-drivers trapped in cities.

[aphyr@woof.group]

@disorderlyf @maya weirdly it's not as much that as you might think. A big chunk is folks too young or too old to drive, which means even rural areas have surprisingly high fractions of non-drivers. https://wisconsindot.gov/Documents/projects/multimodal/geography-non-driver-flyer-oct-2024.pdf