That’s not what “critical” means though. I could say tuna is critical to my health because 80% of my protein comes from tuna, but a sane person would be like “why is you so obsessed with tuna” and “there are other kinds of food out there”. Most people dont even try anything different. My fucking neighbors drives their kids to school because they are too lazy to wake up 15 minutes earlier to catch the school bus, and waste an extra 20 minutes of their time in the process. Most car trips are less than a few miles in the US or something like that.

I’d argue we’d have a much stronger economy with dramatically fewer personal cars and car trips.

Yet deaths are up, especially for pedestrians and cyclists. Per distance driven is the wrong metric anyway since more highway miles makes the system appear safer than it actually is. Plus automakers and regulators prioritize occupant safety, not actual absolute safety. And traffic “engineers” optimize travel time while ignoring things like induced demand. The regulators (US focus) are an absolute joke whem it comes to safety, as the multitude of gigantic pickup trucks and SUVs and the dogshit infrastructure clearly show.