There's also a generational thing. People who grew up in the late 1970s or later, on average, *don't think driving is fun* -- it's associated with tedious drives through heavy traffic. People older than that still often associate driving with the "open road".
Now think about this. Someone born in 1970 turned 18 in 1988. That would be the very leading edge of the "driving? whatever" generation. This of course was the start of the baby bust, so it wouldn't have a noticeable impact on average behavior until the echo baby boom started a decade later. Those born in 1980 turned 18 in 1998...
So we have generations where, more and more, driving is considered a chore. High gas prices merely exacerbate the desire to avoid it if possible.
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And then there's portable electronic devices. Which you can use nearly all the time, and they're very popular, but you can't use them while driving. So, driving, a chore full of wasted time.
It's not possible to avoid driving for a lot of people, but where it is possible, more and more people avoid it. Yeah, "semi-automatic cars" might bring some people back to liking driving, and electric cars might bring other people back to enjoying driving, but you still can't use your electronic devices and you're still stuck in traffic.
So I just don't think we're ever going to see another "infatuation with the car" period such as we had in the 1920s and 1950s, and that means permanently dropping VMT per capita.