Road rage Dependence on cars is driving US to despair

Dependence on cars is driving US to despair

- Oliver Milman

The United States, with its enormous highways, sprawling suburbs and neglected public transport systems, is one of the most car-dependent countries in the world. But this arrangement of obligatory driving is making many Americans unhappy, research has found.

The car is entrenched as the default, and often only, mode of transport for the vast majority of Americans. More than 90% of households have at least one vehicle and 87% of people use their cars daily. Last year, a record 290m vehicles were driven on US streets and highways.

This extreme car dependence is affecting Americans' quality of life. A new study has found there is a tipping point at which more driving leads to deeper unhappiness. It found that while having a car is better than not for overall life satisfaction, having to drive for more than 50% of the time for out-of-home activities is linked to a decrease in life satisfaction.

"Car dependency has a threshold effect - using a car just sometimes increases life satisfaction but if you have to drive much more than this people start reporting lower levels of happiness," said Rababe Saadaoui, an urban planning expert at Arizona State University and the lead author of the study. "Extreme car dependence comes at a cost, to the point that the downsides outweigh the benefits."