[aperson_hello]

Beyond all the safety stuff, it's also because that car often saves a huge amount of time compared to walking/biking - especially when there are multiple stops involved in an outing.

And that car can haul groceries, etc. much better than a bike or hands can. I have a grocery store well within walking distance of me (on safe-ish sidewalks even), but I only walk when I only have a few things to pick up because otherwise I'm trying to haul 50lb of fragile and bulky stuff back half a mile to my house by hand (I also tend to go there mostly while I'm already out doing other things, so the marginal additional mileage is nearly zero). Yes, I could take the approach of going to the grocery store every day, but I flat out don't have the time for that (or the weather for that!). Or I could take the approach of buying a much nicer bike with more hauling capacity, but I already have a car (and do enough with it that there's no reasonable way to go without one) so I'm not going to spend $2k on a bike that would only reduce my mileage by 100 miles a year. Heck...just the savings from fixing things DIY covers the cost of my car in a typical year (I have an old house!), not to mention the car rental fees I'd incur for trips pretty much anywhere outside of a 5-10 mile radius.

But to your point, this is also highly situational. If I were in an apartment in NYC, that's a completely different situation than being in a house in a small-size city (honestly, my city in the US even has public transport that nearly rivals comparable cities in Europe...but they key there is comparing to comparable cities in Europe...where everyone still has cars because to go anywhere outside of a small radius, they need a car).