One in three Americans does not drive. So why is our transportation so car-centric? » Yale Climate Connection

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, about one-third of the nation’s residents do not have a driver’s license. Disability rights advocate Anna Zivarts argued in her 2024 book, “When Driving Is No Longer an Option: Moving Beyond Car Dependence,” that America's car-centric infrastructure is not only bad for the climate, And it doesn’t meet the daily needs of many Americans.

Zivarz was born with a neurological disorder that causes low vision and prevents him from driving. Frustrated by the experience of traveling in Seattle with her young children on public transportation, she created a mobility-focused group at Disability Rights Washington, the organization she works for, to raise awareness of local non-drivers Awareness of needs. This has become a much larger project given the national impact of these issues.

The Yale Center for Climate Connections interviewed Zivarts about her research.

The interview has been condensed and edited.

Yale Climate Link: Your book argues that many more people in the United States don't drive than usually thought, and that our transportation infrastructure doesn't meet their needs. Can you give an overview of who these non-drivers are?

Anna Zivac: I started this research to learn more about people like me who are unable to drive due to a disability. There are many different disabilities that may affect a person's ability to drive, whether it's low vision, blindness, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, intellectual disability, mobility impairment or a chronic health condition. I feel like every time I talk to community members, I hear different experiences with disability. One thing that is often overlooked is anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder while driving. There are many people who do not consider themselves disabled but find driving extremely stressful. If they can drive, it is only when absolutely necessary.

For many seniors, this is reality. Or maybe driving feels safe and comfortable only under certain conditions. I think of my grandma who had heart disease. She drives anyway, but she passes out – not a good situation at all, but she lives in a really rural area and doesn't want to move into a nursing home. Or my mom, who can’t drive at night anymore.

There are also people who can’t afford a car. Some people I spoke to would drive if they had a vehicle that could accommodate a wheelchair, but that's not what they can afford. All kinds of people can't afford cars for other reasons: owning a car is expensive; car insurance is expensive. Because of the racialized nature of poverty in our country, Black families are much less likely to have access to a vehicle than White families.

This does not address who in the household has access to the vehicle. There are often many dynamics within families around gender or other issues that we fail to explore when we focus solely on these issues [household members] as a whole.

There are also people who don’t have a driver’s license for a variety of reasons. In some cases, documentation: While there are many states that allow undocumented people to obtain driver's licenses, not all undocumented people want to have their information entered into a system and tracked that way, for very valid reasons. Some people drive without a license, but there are also people who feel they can't drive because they don't have a license.

Others come out of the criminal justice system or have their licenses revoked. This can happen for safety reasons – drunk driving or something like that – but in many states we see it happen because of seat belt use or broken tail lights. Various fines and fees can accumulate and result in license suspension. This happens to poor people, right?

Others are too young to drive. In some places, 10 to 15 percent of the population is under 16 years old.

Finally, some people choose not to drive. A large proportion of them are young people. Gen Z is not getting driver's licenses at the same rate that my generation was in the 90s. When I was a teenager, about 50% of 16-year-olds in the United States had a driver's license; now that's down to about 25%. Part of it is choice, and I think part of it is the financial cost of owning a car, maintaining a car, and buying insurance.

Therefore, these are non-drivers in the United States. We need to go places, but we can't go there with a key like a driver.

YCC: On the topic of under-16s, you write in the book that the American cultural norm about children being driven anywhere by their parents seems strange from an international perspective. Can you say a little more about this?

Zivarz: In many other countries, children have more room to roam because the infrastructure is set up in a way that allows for this. However, in some cultures in the United States, expectations for parenting require significant amounts of time and privilege to be raised in very intense ways. When we create a system that assumes every child has a caregiver who can drive them wherever they need to go, it creates a lot of exclusion because some families don't have that opportunity, right? There are adult non-drivers with children for whom they are responsible.

Dr. Kelsey Ralph of Rutgers University has conducted some interesting research on children who grew up without driving supervision. As adults, even if you control for race and income, they have lower income and lower education because a lot of the opportunities are related to driving.

YCC: You write in the book that you talked to government officials and transportation professionals and they were surprised to learn that a quarter or a third of the people in the community might not be able to drive. Can you tell me about their assumptions going into these meetings and how these discussions typically proceed?

Zivarz: In webinars, often the first question or comment is something like “Thirty percent can't be true. In my suburban or rural community, everyone drives.” or “If you don't count the kids, this The proportion is less than 30%. ” I usually ask, “So, at what age and what abilities does a person have to be counted?” 16? 18? 12? Starting first grade? Because all of us, even from birth, need to go places. Not everyone can travel independently, even as adults. So why should we? What about drawing a line?

Virtually all of my presentations begin by asking people to think about the people they know in their social circles who don't know how to drive. It personalizes the question and prevents some of the backlash I've received in the past – because generally speaking, people do know people in their lives who can't drive.

I think the first time I did that was at a big webinar where I was asked to talk to the Federal Highway Administration. I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is going to be hard – these are highway builders.” I asked them to join the chat room, and they knew these people couldn't drive, and there was a series of answers. And I thought, “Okay, there are people you love and care about who don't drive. Now I'm going to talk about how we design a transportation system that works for all of those people.”

YCC: Why do people who plan and build our transportation systems assume that everyone driving is a problem? What are the logical consequences of this hypothesis?

Zivarz: Well, we leave people out, right? I think there's an assumption that, “Okay, there are people who don't drive, but they can get rides” – because most of our communities are so dependent on cars, and for most non-drivers, that's how we get around. We end up either relying on social networks or social services to get rides.

But this always comes with a string: Every time you want to go somewhere, someone has to validate your choice. Even if you have a loving, caring partner who has plenty of time to drive you where you want to go, the way you interact with the world will be affected, right?

But in many cases, people don’t have a loving, caring partner who can take them around. Let’s say people need to leave their homes for safety reasons or health care reasons, but that option isn’t available.

Beyond these two extremes, there are situations in between – like wanting to hang out with friends but feeling like asking someone for a ride is too much because it’s not considered important. People lose opportunities for participation, social cohesion and community building, which has an impact on mental health.

Then jobs are lost.

YCC: So how do we get to a system that’s more suitable for non-drivers?

Zivarz: The first is visibility. We need to help non-drivers understand that you are not alone. There are a lot of us and we need to be more visible.

It also requires being able to imagine a community without cars. This is how we lived before cars were invented, it's possible in some places today, and I hope more people can experience it. I spent 15 years in New York City and not having a car was the norm – which was really good for me. My disability was not a big deal there at all. But we also need to create a system that works for non-drivers in rural areas, not just in expensive big cities.

These are complex issues that also relate to land use, housing and housing affordability. So we need to be very intentional about addressing these issues.

It's really at a systems level, what can we do to make it easier for people to get where they need to go without having to drive there.