Disability Mobility Initiative
For too long, transportation policy has been written by and for drivers. For those of us who cannot drive or cannot afford to drive, this creates major barriers for us to access school, jobs, medical care, grocery stores, religious services and everywhere else we need to go in order to fully participate in our communities. This is despite the fact that almost a third of people living in the United States can’t access the privilege of driving ourselves where we need to go; only 69 out of every 100 Americans has a driver license.
Research from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics found that people with disabilities are four times more likely to not drive a car, and two to three times more likely to live in a zero-vehicle household. People without driver licenses, both who identify as disabled or and those who do not identify as disabled, are more likely to be Black, indigenous and people of color.
In November 2020, we launched the Disability Mobility Initiative at Disability Rights Washington and began interviewing nondrivers from every legislative district in Washington state. We documented those stories in our “Transportation Access for Everyone Story Map” to increase our visibility. Two years later, it includes interviews with more than 200 nondrivers about how we get around and the biggest barriers we face to participate fully in community life.
- View our storymap
- Read our groundbreaking research paper