Arizona study finds car dependency reduces life satisfaction
A viral research study led by Rababe Saadaoui, a PhD planning student in Arizona State University's School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, has uncovered a link between car dependency and life satisfaction in the United States.
File this under "No Shit, Sherlock!"
Although it is nice to have evidence to support the obvious.
Limited mobility due to living in a city without a car -> maybe look at the correlation between car-centric city planning vs. pedestrian-centric + increased reliable public transport and satisfaction instead.
I have to say, as much as I want to hype up the headline, the other user is correct. The graph in the article shows that people who use a car for <5% of trips are quite unhappy, while everyone else has roughly the same happiness level, within 0.1 happiness points (whatever that means). Given the auto oriented nature of the US, we can assume the people using cars very infrequently are doing so not because they live in walkable areas, but because they cannot afford a car.
So really all the study shows is that it sucks to be poor.
This title mis-characterizes the report. Basically people who use the car less than 5% are much less happy. Everyone else is about the same. Indeed people who use the car between 50% and 95% of the time are the happiest. 😟
Sucks to walk and bike in a car dependent city?
