I'm telling you the material reason for why people behave this way, I'm not saying it's morally justified or something. By not paying people for their commute we are incentivizing them to speed, break traffic laws, and endanger themselves and others. If you want to explain some odd human behaviors you should look to the material base first before you look to the superstructure (car culture, selfish personality, individualist ideology, etc etc).
If people were paid for their work commutes, I bet you'd see a lot of this behavior disappear. Not all of it, but a lot of it.