[Silhouette]

A very large number of people in the US have access to no public transit whatsoever - and as for sharing a car... that’s what they’re likely doing with their partner. One person uses it to go to work while the other is at home, probably caring for their children.

How do all these hopelessly trapped families ever take their kids to things like medical appointments?

[Ancapistani]

Are you honestly curious?

If so, there’s something of a sliding scale. Most of them take their car - their single car, that serves the whole family. When it breaks down, they lean on friends, family, and neighbors for help.

Those without a vehicle in the first place... don’t. I live in a town of <15k people today, and grew up about thirty miles outside of it. I graduated high school in the early 2000s - many of my classmates didn’t see a doctor unless they had a medical emergency.

It seems like there is a large disconnect between your perception and the reality of life for much of America.

[Silhouette]

Yes, it was a genuine question. I'm a Brit, and clearly the culture around driving is different in many ways on our side of the Atlantic.

Some of the earlier discussion here has apparently been mostly people talking at cross-purposes and didn't turn out to be very enlightening. However, it does seem that at least some people here really are trying to defend something that I think most people would consider unconscionable where I come from. The arguments have essentially been that people there have no realistic choice but to rely on theirs cars, even if driving them is obviously dangerous, or they literally can't live a normal life and support their families properly.

This raised a lot of questions for me that single-car or car-free households face all the time over here, like how you get the kids to school or anyone who isn't the driver to important appointments like medical ones. I was surprised that your response was more-or-less "you don't", but then in the context of medical appointments there is again a very different culture here to yours. It would be similarly unconscionable for most of us in the UK to bring a child into the world and not then make sure they get all of their check-ups and vaccinations at the right times, and you'd have to try very hard to find a situation where a parent without access to a car couldn't still make those provisions for their child in some realistic way. From comments by yourself and others here, I conclude that this is not necessarily the case in the US, or at least in significant parts of it.

[TylerE]

They own cars?

93% of American households do - and I expect if you took away a few large dense metros like NYC and Boston, that number would jump up to about 98%

[Ancapistani]

In my experience, there’s even something of an inverse correlation between vehicle ownership and wealth. If you’re able to own a reliable vehicle, you tend to only own one. If you’re limited to buy-here-pay-here lots and such, families tend to have three or four in various states of repair.

[withinboredom]

On days we had to do something like that, whomever was taking the child dropped the other off at work.