Nearly 90% of the eligible population in the US have a drivers license. That's the bottom line.

It's definitely possible to survive without owning a car in multiple cities in the US...

That is a confirmation of the qualifier I gave: "It is possible, usually within narrow environments and/or with considerable compromise, to survive without owning, using, or access to one. It is exceedingly difficult, and the net household ownership rates within the US and most other Western / Industrialised countries, reveals this."

Note that owning a car is not the same as access to a car, and that in the context of understanding driving principles, car-share, hire, or borrowing a vehicle are included in use.

The Uber/Lift on-demand chauffeur service or traditional taxi/limo or van/paratransit services would not require driving skills by the customer, though I strongly suspect most such customers (possibly outside Manhattan) actually do, or did, drive.

For the US, household car ownership rates range from 98% to 65%:
https://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-...

Even creating car-free zones, streets, or blocks within US cities is problematic:

https://www.governing.com/topics/urban/gov-car-free-cities.h...

The same article correlates car ownership with wealth, or conversely, lack with poverty. Apparently, if a household can own a car, it prefers to.

Eyeballing national data, similar trends appear:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...

Note peak ownership rates exceed 1 per person at national scale.

The question of giving up driving is a significant one among senior care and living, with numerous articles easily found:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/10/08/1623925...

https://www.seniorcaring.com/resources/talking-to-elderly-pa...

https://www.dmv.org/how-to-guides/senior-driving.php

From the NPR story:

Bunni Dybnis, a social worker at the Los Angeles-based geriatric care service LivHome, says [family intervention] is typically how older drivers decide to give up the car keys: Their child or grandchild intervenes. "I could probably say it's 99.99 percent not the older adult saying, 'I want to stop driving; help me,' " says Dybnis, because giving up driving feels like giving up one's independence.

I'd like to give the number of licensed drivers by state, as a percentage of population. That doesn't seem immediately available, though raw counts are:

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/hs00/dl22.htm

Note that a licensed driver is one who is certified to drive, whether or not they own a car themselves or live in a household which does. And that rate tends to be high.

It also underlines my initial claim: that interacting in modern industrialised nations, and certainly the US, without any ability to directly use a car, is at best difficult and imposes numerous compromises.

OK, here's a 2017 US overview, in millions:

- Population: 325

- Licensed drivers: 225

- Registered vehicles: 272

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2017/d...

That's a 67% rate for registered drivers, for all ages. Population under age 18 is 22%, so 11% of otherwise age-qualified adults do not have a drivers license.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045218