I’m 25 and I don’t have a drivers license. I mean, I’ve never really felt the need to go and get one. Public transport is usually the fastest option where I live, and it takes a lot less responsibility to use it.
But most people would still prefer driving, rather than using the public T. Why?
Well, as someone who has lived in Europe half my life and the good old US of A the other half, I’d argue that people don’t prefer cars over public transit in general. America has a super strong car culture, and we could blame American’s for this problem, and we could also be tempted to say that America isn’t dense enough to have good cheap national public transit, but we had the best public transit in many ways leading up to world War 2 (good video on the topic: https://youtu.be/-cjfTG8DbwA ). In reality, with urbanization, lobbying, and the status/convenience cars just made a lot of sense. Plus, flexible passenger- and cargo-carrying capacities are a huge plus for cars all on your own schedule. Even, in great public transit cities people who can afford a car and the associated fee to drive it, largely will do so, since it just gives you the greatest amount of options to get around.