people have just accepted cars as the default mode of transportation

That wasn't an accident and it didn't just 'happen;' it was the very deliberate result of a combination of automobile and oil industry propaganda and US government policy back in the 1930s-1950s, motivated by several factors ranging from utopian modernist city planning to good ol'fashioned racism.

Some random sources to get folks started:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement

• https://www.strongtowns.org/curbside-chat-1/2015/12/14/americas-suburban-experiment

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s_Fair)

• https://www.pbssocal.org/history-society/the-birth-of-sprawl-how-ending-the-great-depression-meant-inventing-the-suburbs

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motonormativity

After I've moved I could technically do everything using public transport and bikes

The issue is that public transport is literally more expensive than a private car for me in the Netherlands (as I get a company car)

The crazy thing as well is that especially after COVID people will use the isolation of cars as a positive. You have people who don't like transit cause they would have to be near other people. Which just shows how crazy isolated and disconnected from our communities we are in the US atleast.

Its an interesting angle because that is what we did exactly with smartphones and social media too. We adopted them so voluntarily as if they were the best things happened in this century.

But looks like in todays world we could have been a much better society without them ever existing

It depends : are you white ?

That's happening in Paris. Some other cities are moving in right direction too, some installing new trams from zero etc. Most bigger cities have subways. But you should try visiting rural France without a car... Not a butcher or a bakery left for many kilometers/villages around, only big roadside Malls with an enormous supermarket and some fake little "shops" at the entrance. Many rural villages are dead and without a car you're screwed big time. This is where the Gilet Jaunes came from.

Our president just said democracy? Never heard of her and named prime minister a member of the party with the least elected parliementaries but OK.

Average lane-brainer argument

Fact: 99% of city planners quit one lane before they fix traffic

Thank you. I was about to ask for the same thing.

I was confused for a moment.

That sounds nice but oof 4% turnout.

Op cut it out for some reason, but it is in the linked article. Here is a screenshot of the 'y-axis':