text: The first reason that limiting car use is a good thing is because it can help people become free and less dependent. It has caused people to not always be in a hurry and made them less stressed. In Bogota, Colombia they had a car-free day where people hiked, biked, skated, or took buses to work. People felt so free and they felt they were doing a good deed so some got rid of their cars for good. Cars are becoming less popular in the world as we speak. For example from 2005 to 2013 the number of miles driven in the U.S. has reduced by 9%, which is equal to where the country was in 1995. Another example is that a study last year found that driving by young people decreased by 23% between 2001 and 2009. Also shopping centers are moving to places where they can be walked to rather than on a way off highway somewhere. "What intrigues me is that rates of car ownership per household and per person has started to come down two to three years before the downturn," says Micheal Sivak who studies this trend at the University of Michigan.