LOS ANGELES — When Ryan O’Connell, 28, moved here from New York last year, he didn’t want a car. “I’ve always been so scared of driving,” he said. “I feel like I would be a bad driver.”

Normally, that would be a problem in one of America’s most auto-centric places, where cruising along the Sunset Strip is a lifestyle and cars are not only a means of transportation but a status symbol. But Mr. O’Connell was only briefly perplexed.

“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he said, “and then Uber descended from the gods.”

These days, he uses Uber, the smartphone-enabled car service app, as much as three times a day, Mr. O’Connell said the other day, sitting with friends by the rooftop bar at the Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles, a popular Uber destination. He takes it from his home in West Hollywood, Calif., to his job, as a writer for the MTV series “Awkward” in Hollywood, and out for drinks after work. His roommate and best friend has a car, and yet they rely on Uber to get around on weekends.

“It became very clear to me that I could use Uber and have the kind of life I wanted,” he said. “I feel like I found a way to take the best parts of my New York lifestyle, and incorporate them in L.A.”