Why America Stopped Driving

In 1922, a group of sociologists went to Muncie, Indiana, to study how the average American family lived. Almost everyone, they found, was addicted to their car.

"We'd rather do without clothes than give up the car," said one mother of nine children. "I'll go without food before I'll see us give up the car," said another. One researcher reminded a housewife that her family had a car but no bathtub. "Why," said she, "you can't go to town in a bathtub!"

The automobile was barely two decades old, and Americans already couldn't imagine living without one.

But a change is taking place that is unprecedented since those sociologists' study nearly a century ago: Americans are driving less.

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