I lived in downtown Atlanta for most of my adult life, and had a daily 23 mile commute. Anywhere I needed to go, except the bar across the street, involved a car trip.
Now I live in the New York suburbs, with a wife and baby, and I drive maybe once a month between Metro North and the subway. My wife doesn't even have a license anymore. It's incredibly liberating. I went to visit my parents last month and got stuck in the never-ending D.C. traffic, and I seriously wanted to kill people. I never realized how much aggression traffic created in me until I didn't have to sit in it any more. I can get as drunk as I want without worrying about driving home (drunk driving is epidemic in car-dependent places like Atlanta). On weekends, I have a happy baby in a stroller instead of a cranky baby in a car seat. Just this weekend we rode the train in from the suburbs, had coffee with my brother on the east side, went shopping near Penn Station, and had drinks and dinner with an old high-school buddy on the west side. At no point did we ever have to take the baby out of her stroller. In D.C., merely going out to lunch is an exercise in traffic and frustration every time the car stops and the baby starts screaming. I realize now that sitting in a car going nowhere is frustrating for everyone, not just the baby--it's just that the baby lacks coping mechanisms to deal with it...