I think the right term for highways or most other car roads is “car sewer” - you need very specialised equipment to navigate them, they are deadly, smelly, loud and unpleasant. One of the worst environments humanity has produced.

Yes they ship people around somewhat fast. Slower than possible with other methods, and the cost is incredible - economic (much more expensive per passenger than almost any alternative), political (they inherently divide people, dehumanise and make people never really share a public space), health - they reduce lifespan by both lowering living quality as well as directly killing a staggering amount of humans per year).

And we have learned how to build better places for humans that do not need these coffins on wheels - if you visit any European capital, and most Asian ones - you will see environments built for humans, not cars - soo much nicer.

So cars as a technology have definitely not been beneficial to humanity overall, but it has been somewhat useful to some.

I think strongtowns were very good advocates of what places in America could like if you look beyond cars. I personally like the “not just bikes” channel though.