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Modern society is full of things that are utterly insane to be legal when you think about them in isolation.
Cars, alcohol, tobacco, cheap airline flights, bonkers walk up train fares, etc, etc.
Society would not cope well with a sudden outright ban on any of the first 3, but they'll (hopefully) dwindle over time with the slow pressure of Government policy, societal changes and technological advances.
Greenbank
I don't understand this thread at all. I don't get why people aren't being more emphatic! Have you all drank the cultural tolerance kool aid that @skydancer is talking about? He's spot on but even he is saying to take his own views with a pinch of salt!
You can argue why cars are needed all you like - crap public transport, rural necessity, independence for people who would otherwise not have it, all valid arguments sure - and blame politicians for the mistakes of the past (and present) but none of this changes the facts: through any objective lens cars are unsustainable, evil things.
They pollute the environment, kill people - both directly on the road (between 1951 and 2006 a total of 309,144 people, plus 17.6 million injuries in accidents on British roads) and indirectly through air pollution. They have a wider significant effect on public health as significant contributors to obesity, heart disease, diabetes and so on. They discourage people from choosing environmentally friendly forms of transport such as cycling or walking. They cause massive noise pollution and kill animals. They are still largely dependant on fossil fuels.
So yes, of course it's a privilege.
There is some good news I guess: driverless cars will result in far fewer preventable incidents, emissions from modern cars are falling all the time and young people are buying fewer cars:
http://cityobservatory.org/young-people-are-buying-fewer-cars/