There is no way for a human to operate a car safely over a mid to long period of time. The human brain does not have bandwidth to process all the information taken in while driving a car. Eventual the driver will get into an accident with a high probability of injury and possibly death. Cars are designed to filter information from the environment. A driver can't sense what is around them. Cars are too big and too heavy. Infrastructure demands are too great. The fuel costs are too high no matter what fuel you use. A cars fails on practically every meaningful metric.
Walking, biking, and public transit in a livable community is the only rational way forward.
Just because you're not a competent driver doesn't mean the rest of us are getting into accidents. Walking, biking, and public transit are great options for short trips with limited cargo. But none of those options are going to be viable in my lifetime for getting my daughter to a volleyball tournament 40 miles away at 7:00 AM on Saturday. Including hauling backpacks, folding chairs, boxes of snacks for the team, etc.
I've noticed that the arrogant and condescending people who are most opposed to cars tend to be childless young urbanites with very limited life experience. The rest of the country operates in a completely different way, and votes accordingly.
> There is no way for a human to operate a car safely over a mid to long period of time.
My observed injury rate per vehicle mile, per trip, or per time spent, in a car is much lower than the same rates on a bicycle. Incidentally, my largest injury on a bike was due to street car rails, so thanks public transit for making the roads less safe for bicycling. I can't count the number of times I've tripped while walking, resulting in mostly minor injuries, but nevertheless more injuries than I've sustained in automobiles (not counting violence from siblings). Lack of safety restraints on public transit mean more minor injuries from sudden stops as well.
> Cars are too big and too heavy
Autorickshaws are much smaller, lighter, and more fuel efficient. Plus they're cute!
> Infrastructure demands are too great
Infrastructure demands for cars scale. You can use cars if you can get fuel to enough fueling stations and have cleared trees and other obstacles from paths. Pavement is optional but encouraged. Parking lots are nice to have, but any cleared space works. You don't get a lot of speed, and probably not much fuel efficiency, but it works. Paved roads are nicer, and they get built because they're useful. Of course, busses and bicycles like paved roads too (paving for bikes requires a lot lower standard too).
If you can't get fuel to fueling stations, there's things like wood gasifiers[1], although gasoline and diesel are much more scalable if the infrastructure is present.
> Walking, biking, and public transit in a livable community is the only rational way forward.
This would severely limit the scope of livable communities. Or at least significantly increase transit time for many to most activities. Those are all great options, when available and appropriate, but a lot of times it's not the best mode of transportation and often it's not even appropriate. The diversity of origin/destination pairs in most metropolitan areas of a certain size makes it very hard for most users to be served by direct public transit routes, and hub and spoke routing makes a lot of trips turn into first go 30 minutes in the wrong direction, then 30 minutes in the right direction, when a point to point automobile trip would be much less time.
I can't imagine some of my recent trips working well with public transit. Especially those trips where I'm carrying sports equipment for multiple people not traveling with me. How do you take three or four sets of hockey gear on a bicycle, or walking the half mile uphill from the bus stop to my home?
In the future, my transportation may be more limited. In the mean time, I'm going to use the best option I have for my needs. If cars are gone, most of the places I've lived are uninhabitable, and I'll have to live somewhere I'd rather not live, so there's that.
Walking, biking, and public transit in a livable community is the only rational way forward.