For day to day commuting public transit can be less stressful but for going where you want when you want it's hard to beat a car.
I generally walk anywhere under two miles and avoid driving between 7am and 7pm. Having a means of transportation under my personal control readily available to me is well worth it. Tonight I'm going to go meet someone selling something on Craigslist. It's about the size of a milk crate and weighs >50lb. I could carry it on the subway and do it for free (monthly pass).
Next week I have to get a coffee table. Sure, I could buy one online but I think buying a used high quality one for cheap/free on CL or from a thrift store and having the ability to get precise measurements in advance
I could take an Uber or taxi but it only takes a few Ubers a week to be more expensive than owning a car (if you own it outright).
If your life involves doing anything more than being a worker bee who goes lives by a schedule and pays someone else for assistance with transportation outside that scope then having your own means of transportation is invaluable in terms of convenience and possibly cheaper.
If I wanna get somewhere, public transit is a lot nicer, because I can sleep on the way, or use my phone.
And if I just wanna enjoy getting around in nature, I take my bike.
Like everything else (including riding a bike), this is true of the beginner, and relegated to your subconscious after a few dozen hours. It all just becomes automatic.
I drove past half a dozen stop signs, hundreds of cars, several traffic lights, four different speed zones, and made a cross-traffic turn, and was thinking about testing code this morning.
You can pay attention without having to actively think about what you're doing, just requires making it a habit.
In my 20s I loved driving, I had my radio, complete privacy, my 1.5 commute was tolerable.
Now I'm in my 30s, and I hate my hour spent in the car everyday. Not because I can't find a good song or a good podcast, it's just that it feels like such an enormous waste of time. At least if I used public transit I'd be getting exercise. In my car, I'm just forced to sit and pay attention to the road, I can't read HackerNews or watch a show or read a book that isn't available in audio.
