May 17, 2023
Can America Go Car-Free? Gen Z Hopes So.
By Eleanor Buchanan
Young people today are already driving less, but breaking the country’s car-dependency will require unprecedented investment in infrastructure and public transit.
While driving to my family’s house for Christmas, I got into an accident that totaled my car. I’d made this exact trip before, but this time I hit a small patch of frozen slush on the salted road. The accident left me with a severe concussion, along with months of headaches, brain fog, whiplash, and vertigo.
I was lucky to be alive. Around that time, I resolved to live car-free.
In recent years, studies have shown that young people are driving less. While roughly 62 percent of 17-year-olds had their license in 1997, only 42 percent in 2021 were legally allowed to drive.
What inspired this shift away from cars by our nation’s youth? The answer is complicated. For some young people, the fears around driving and safety outweigh any convenience it offers. Studies show that riding trains tends to be 20–30 times safer than driving, and riding buses is as much as 60 times as safe. Making matter worse, according to The New York Times, car safety features like seat belts, airbags, and dashboards were created to best fit the size of an average man in the 1970s, an outdated standard that has resulted in disproportionate injuries.
