I've spent vast amounts of time commuting on public transport and by car.
You can't pay me to ever get on a bus again.
And not just in the US/Canada either. Even in the dense cities of Europe, public transportation << car transport. No bus can ever beat the comfort and convenience of putting a large amount of shopping / luggage in the back, getting in your private bubble, and going directly to your destination.
Then there's the people you meet on public transport. 99 / 100 of them are just people who want to go from A to B. But then there are the trouble-makers and weirdos. Do you really want to be stuck on a bus or train, straining under shopping bags or holiday luggage, with some unpredictable idiot eyeing you?
Some people, like newyorker.com, have a platonic ideal of public transport where we are all happily whisked from A to B on hyper-efficient and advanced vehicles, perhaps humming kumbaya to ourselves. But the reality is that it will always be inconvenient and slow - at best - and dangerous and super unpleasant in reality.
The one instance where public transport works well is when you want to travel 5-10 blocks, there's a lot of traffic, and you are carrying nothing, and there just so happens to be a subway going the right way.
The real way forward is to have electric cars, nuclear power plants, remote work, and maybe this new Musk tunnel thing.
So just being someone that got tired of the commute and moved to a dense European city that's a 2000 years old, there are several assumptions you make I can't agree with.
1. I've absolutely been menaced on the road several times in the USA, you have to share the road with that 1 of 100 idiot too, (in a fast multiton hunk of metal). You've discounted this in your head but treat that same risk on a bus or whatever as impossible to cope with. I get it, everyone has their preference but you're not being equitable in the comparison. 2. Tiny dense European cities suck to drive and park in, but tend to be rather pleasurable on foot as all the services are accessible there, not wallkign through a giant parking lot 3. Driving a car is crazy dangerous by the numbers. Again everyone has their preference and your entitled to yours but again not actually an equitable comparison. 4. You seem to have a high minded view of driving I did not really encounter in 24 years of driving in US cities.
In the end, you're entitled to your preferences and I encourage you to continue driving but please be fair in your comparisons and leave the rest of us to ours.