The problem with weighing risks and rewards with driving is that the balance differs significantly based on whether you're a driver or a non-driver. Drivers exp

The problem with weighing risks and rewards with driving is that the balance differs significantly based on whether you're a driver or a non-driver. Drivers experience many of the rewards of driving and driving-oriented infrastructure (wide roads, convenient parking, private spaces) and very few of the risks (noise, pollution, risk of injury, risk of death). To make matters worse, for the last 50 years, significant safety improvements have gone into the driving experience without significantly helping the non-driving experience. This means that drivers not only have higher reward and less risk, but they perceive the act of driving as becoming _safer_ with better design and more technology (like blind-spot sensors) while larger vehicle sizes and faster speeds have resulted in _increased risk_ for non-drivers. This is also why these debates are usually so fractious; drivers see a world of convenience and increasing safety being threatened by anti-car advocates, while non-drivers see driving as an increasingly dangerous, callous, and selfish act only becoming more dangerous and more callous to non-drivers. Add into the mix the inherent climate implications of driving (even though electric cars may not emit exhaust into the air, generation of electricity itself is not clean in most parts of the US) and the risk-reward becomes even more complex. There's also the question of tax burden. Non-drivers receive almost none [1] of the benefits that road taxes, but in most of the US things like public transit are expected to be largely funded through fares and not taxes. Then there's the even murkier territory that roads in lower income areas are mostly used as thoroughfares by wealthier folks who don't live in these areas, and their through usage ends up putting a higher tax burden on the roads in these areas despite these lower income folks not actually accounting for most of the usage of their own roads. I'm not going to talk about COVID at all. [1]: There is indirect benefit here through the truck logistics network and probably meeting friends and family over interstates that makes this more murky.