Leadership is deeply ingrained in American culture. Most US households have access to a car and the vast majority of adults say they drive at least a few times a month.

However, 10% of US adults are non-drivers – meaning they say they rarely or never drive a car or other vehicle – according to a new Pew Research Center survey. This includes 6% who say they do not drive at all.

Where people live plays an important role in how they drive. About two out of ten the adults living in urban areas (18%) say they rarely or never drive. That’s about double the share of those who say this and live in suburban (7%) or rural (8%) areas.

Those who I live in the northeast (17%) are more likely than those in the South (10%), West (8%) and Midwest (7%) not to be drivers.

Beyond these geographic differences, certain groups of Americans are more likely to say they rarely or never drive a car:

• Adults from lower income households: 19% of those living in lower-income households rarely or never drive, compared to 6% of those in middle-income households and 3% of those in upper-income households.
• black americans: 21% of black adults are non-drivers, compared to smaller shares of Asian (13%), Hispanic (12%) and white (7%) adults.
• Younger Americans: Adults under 30 (15%) are more likely than those aged 30 to 49 (9%), 50 to 64 (7%) and 65 and over 65 (11%) to don’t be drivers.

How Americans get to work

We were also interested in how a large subset of Americans commutes—namely, workers. The US Census Bureau provides a window into this group by asking about the main form of transportation they typically use to get to work.

Overall, 78 percent of workers age 16 and older said they usually drove to work in a car, truck or van during the previous week, according to 2023 Census Bureau estimates. American Community Survey (ACS). Looking at commuters alone, the vast majority (88%) drove alone rather than by car.

Relatively few workers got to work primarily in other ways: 4% took public transport, 2% walked and less than 1% cycled to work. Another 14% worked from home in the previous week and did not commute. Less than 2% used another form of transport (including taxis and motorbikes, among other methods).

However, there are some local differences in how people get to work.

In the District of Columbia and New York State, for example, a relatively small proportion of working residents age 16 and older drove to work (33% and 55%, respectively). These were also the places with the highest share of workers taking public transit: 22 percent of workers living in DC and 24 percent in New York State. One in ten New Jersey workers took public transportation, the third highest share in the nation.

In places where a large percentage of workers telecommute, the share of car commuters increases when telecommuters are excluded. In DC, for example, 28 percent of workers did their work from home in the week before respondents took the 2023 survey. When looking at commuters only there 45% drove mainly to work.

New York’s low driver share was largely due to trends among workers living in New York City, which contains 42 percent of the state’s working population age 16 and older. Only a quarter of New York City workers drove to work in 2023, compared to 77 percent of New Yorkers outside the city. City dwellers were much more likely to take some form of public transport to work (48%) than to drive.

This is in line with previous research that has found most US commuters on public transit they live in the country’s largest metropolitan areas, while those in less populated areas largely drive to work.

Most US households have a car available

Even Americans who don’t commute by car may have one at home. Most US households (92%) have at least one vehicle available for personal use, according to 2023 ACS estimates.

Nationally, 8% of households not have a vehicle, a third have a car available and 36% have two cars. Another 22% of households have three or more vehicles.

DC (36%), New York State (30%), Massachusetts (12%), and New Jersey (11%) are among the places with the highest shares of households without an available vehicle.

In less dense rural states like Idaho, Utah, New Hampshire and Montana, less than 5 percent of households remain carless. In three of those places, about a third of households have access to at least three vehicles, among the highest shares of any state.

In every state or jurisdiction except DC and New York, about nine out of ten or more households have at least one vehicle available.