In 90% of places, simply not driving is NOT an option. Public Transportation isn't developed enough to make it to where individual driving is a matter of choice, really.

They don't really have any choice to let almost everyone drive, the country's economy would collapse at this point in time as no one could work more than a few miles away from their place of residence, and even those of us in bigger cities would still have multiple hours in transit, leaving us fairly unable to regularly spend our money on luxuries such as going out to dinner/etc.