These things are true, but its also mindful to remember that the US is a huge place and once you're licensed to drive you can go to any public road in any state

These things are true, but its also mindful to remember that the US is a huge place and once you're licensed to drive you can go to any public road in any state. You can go to Maine, Minnesotta or somewhere that there is a large amount of snow for a long period of time. You can drive the Blue Ridge Parkway, or rip through canyons in the southwest. You can go to NYC, or stick to superslab/highway roads. Yet any 16 year old that shows they can drive around suburban streets and get 80% of the questions right on a test can go absolutely anywhere, and hold that license until they die or a court revokes it. An idea just popped in my head that perhaps roads (like ski trails) could have different difficulty color codes, and that you had to be licensed to drive on each type. This is likely too much complexity, but still a neat idea. Public transit I feel (and perhaps I'm wrong on this) actually was something that many cities had in the US and were planning before every 3 person family had 4 cars. Here in Columbus, Ohio, we used to have street cars going up and down some of our main streets. At some point in the 60's or 70's they removed all of those in favor of lowering costs and making more room for cars. Its been through poor planning and assumption that they'll have an infinite supply of cheap petrol that we've gotten here. We started most of the cities pre-car, but once cars hit, we somehow thought the suburbs were a good idea and that everyone should be able to travel anywhere in a short period of time on their own.