Alcohol.
Lots and lots of people lean heavily on it and think that alcohol is the spice of their life. When, it contributes to so many problems than it’s so-called benefits. We tried, in America anyways, to outright ban alcohol. Problem was that the person who wanted it banned, was too extremist.
Like he didn’t think it all through and think just going for the jugular of the problem is what will work. When, it didn’t and just made people work around it until eventually the ban was dismantled.
So, since then, we’ve been putting up with drunk drivers, drunk disputes, drunk abusers and other issues. I still wish we could just slam our hands down at the desk and demand we sit to discuss in how to properly deal with this issue than people proclaiming that it’s not a problem.
At the federal level, yes. There’s lots of things going wrong in the “greatest” country on earth. That doesn’t mean you should stick the head in the sand and ignore advocating for incremental improvements. If no sensible transport advocate actually does anything for it because they think there isn’t enough public support, you’ll never achieve that goal, no matter how many advocates there actually are.
Not just bikes recently released a video which touches on this topic with some more differentiated discussion:
https://nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-these-two-cities-used-to-be-the-same
https://youtu.be/4uqbsueNvag