Sorry, but unless you are disabled…nobody is obligated to drive.

Now hold up.

I’ve had jobs I literally could not get to without driving. As in, public transit did not go from walking distance of where I was to walking distance of where my job was. At all.

I’ve lived in places without grocery stores within walking distance. Without hospitals, dentists, without pretty much anything but a shitty strip mall within walking distance because suburbia sucks.

Look, there are whole suburbs in the United States that open directly into highways. If you try to walk to or from those suburbs you will be arrested because it is illegal to walk on highways. Let me emphasize that one more time: in some places in the US you cannot legally leave your neighborhood without a car.

You can say these aren’t obligations - people can just move or quit their job. But then you’re circling back to the regressive policy issue, because it’s a lot harder to do that when you’re poor.

And “unless you’re disabled”? One in four adults in the US is disabled. And that will inevitably include you if you live long enough to experience the side effects of old age. Yeah, not all disabilities impact one’s ability to walk or take public transit, bet’s not write off disability with an “unless”.