What percentage of Americans could work without a car?
Whatever percentage of Americans who could find housing within walking distance of work.
Okay, yeah, if the answer is that short, it sounds like a flippant response to a serious question. But what I mean to illustrate here is that we always have to deal with policy trade-offs. There are a whole set of policies all over the United States that zone neighborhoods of houses to be separate from places where factories or stores or other workplaces are found, and those POLICIES then make cars seem indispensable. But if cars are indispensable, it becomes all the more urgent to make sure everyone driving a car is driving safely, so it becomes more urgent to figure out how to keep unsafe drivers from driving. This is the conundrum we get into in a society that doesn't plan actively to decouple employability from owning and operating a car.
Basis for knowledge for my comment: I have lived for six years of my life, in two separate three-year stays, in a country where I never drove (even though I had a driver license there). Even during much of the time I have lived in the United States, I have commuted from home to work on foot, or by bus, or by bicycle. It can be done. What trade-offs society accepts in making it more or less easy to obtain paying work without investing in a driver license and car first depends on the political process, of course.
Whatever percentage of Americans who could find housing within walking distance of work.
Okay, yeah, if the answer is that short, it sounds like a flippant response to a serious question. But what I mean to illustrate here is that we always have to deal with policy trade-offs. There are a whole set of policies all over the United States that zone neighborhoods of houses to be separate from places where factories or stores or other workplaces are found, and those POLICIES then make cars seem indispensable. But if cars are indispensable, it becomes all the more urgent to make sure everyone driving a car is driving safely, so it becomes more urgent to figure out how to keep unsafe drivers from driving. This is the conundrum we get into in a society that doesn't plan actively to decouple employability from owning and operating a car.
Basis for knowledge for my comment: I have lived for six years of my life, in two separate three-year stays, in a country where I never drove (even though I had a driver license there). Even during much of the time I have lived in the United States, I have commuted from home to work on foot, or by bus, or by bicycle. It can be done. What trade-offs society accepts in making it more or less easy to obtain paying work without investing in a driver license and car first depends on the political process, of course.