Quite many "normal people" also enjoy the freedom of the automobile. It has contributed significantly to the culture of autonomy, unity on large scales (beyond one's local town), and cosmopolitanism. Online, it is acceptable to be cynical about cars, but in the real world, among common people, this mindset is not that prevalent.
Even in European countries lauded for great public transport, people own and enjoy cars. Of course, there are benefits to public transport that the car cannot offer, such as efficiency at scale. But it's not so black-and-white. There are also benefits to car ownership that public transport cannot offer, such as independence.
One might say that Uber, car sharing companies, and shopping online are bridging the independence gap. To an extent, this is true. But not always. Particularly, not when the non-car-ownership option is much more expensive, and not when people’s needs demand a higher level of independence.
My point: much of this has more nuance than is opined online. Do not presume when speaking for “normal people”.
Personal opinion but I see personal cars as more of a burden than freedom, compared to public transport.
You need to care for the car even when you are not travelling. You need a parking space, insurance, maintenance, etc... And when you are driving, you need to be attentive, sober, and well rested, otherwise you are a danger to yourself and others. With public transport, you have none of that, no one will die if you take a nap, and once you are at your destination, you are free, you don't have a ton of metal to care for.
The same applies to taxis and ridesharing, but public transport is usually more efficient and cheaper.
"Normal people" are often short-sighted. They only know what they know. They're heavily advertised to, and they lack imagination.
In the US people are dropping like flies from obesity and disease. But even their day-to-day quality of life is awful, because naturally they don't feel good. A portion of this is directly because of a pro-car culture. When you can't walk anywhere ever that has an effect.
People in the US are still very pro-car. They can't, or maybe don't want to, connect the dots on the consequences of that. American individualism is so extreme that people are happy to kill themselves, so long as they're the one who pulls the trigger.
Their words may not be reliable. This is why we need data. How much money are average people spending? How healthy are average people? Etc etc. That should influence our decisions around public policy.
"Normal people" have been on overcrowded trains with spotty service. They know what putting someone else in charge of how, when and where they can travel inevitably turns out.
"Normal people" also know multiple people who have died in car accidents. They also struggle to walk up a flight of stairs and hate their lives.
Once again, you cannot trust what so-called "normal people" say. Particularly when there's political pressure at play. I'll say it again, but plenty of people would happily shoot themselves if they got to pull the trigger.
Hyper-individualism of the US, and the rest of the West to a lesser extent, is a cancer. We work hard every single day to ignore it's plagues. The extreme cognitive dissonance our citizens are forced to produce means they're not reliable narrators.
The reality of the human condition is that humans will always GREATLY favor the status-quo, no matter what. Because they're already living it and, if they're not dying, they have a strong survival incentive to maintain it. Change is risk, and risk is bad.
When I get in my car to drive, I don't think "oh God this has the greatest chance of killing me out anything I can do". Even though it's true. Do you know why I don't think that?
Because that sucks ass. If I had to live like that, I'd probably kill myself. I'm here, with the status-quo. So, I must make the best of it.
I'm not unique. Every single person, you included, lives like this. You have no choice but to ignore as much of the bad shit as you can, because you can't fix it in your lifetime.
It's much easier, and better for your own health, to believe people are getting stabbed like kabobs in the subway and you're oh so safe and comfy in your nice suburban home. That's a much better thought process than the reality, which is that you're much more likely to die and it's not even close. So that's what you choose to believe and that's the belief you nourish.
It's comfirmation bias, but it's the life blood of the human condition. The alternative is worse.
This is also a feedback loop. People like cars, because the infrastructure of the society is built around cars. And the infrastructure is built like this because so many people use cars.
I own an old VW van, and use it to experience this freedom: roadtripping through Europe. Even short trips to a campsite near my home feel like holiday the moment I drive it out of the garage.
But I've never understood this "feeling of freedom" of all these tens of thousands of people who pull up into their daily traffic jam. Twice a day. How is that "freedom"? How do people justify this for themselves - other than "no alternative". I commute weekly by train, and it's marvelous to look out of the window at the daily traffic jams on the highway, from the inside of a train that zooms by this hell at 160km/h. I've had jobs where I had to stand in such jams daily and it's truly a soul-sucking, time eating, fun-sucking grind. Especially compared to sitting in a train and drinking a beer, watching a netflix, reading a book or working on my laptop. That, to me, is much more freedom. Not as much as roadtripping, but free, nontheless.
Even in European countries lauded for great public transport, people own and enjoy cars. Of course, there are benefits to public transport that the car cannot offer, such as efficiency at scale. But it's not so black-and-white. There are also benefits to car ownership that public transport cannot offer, such as independence.
One might say that Uber, car sharing companies, and shopping online are bridging the independence gap. To an extent, this is true. But not always. Particularly, not when the non-car-ownership option is much more expensive, and not when people’s needs demand a higher level of independence.
My point: much of this has more nuance than is opined online. Do not presume when speaking for “normal people”.