Americans Drove Less in 2005

antifoidulus writes "CNN is reporting on a study that shows that not only did Americans buy more fuel efficient vehicles in 2005 (although sadly this trend reversed itself in the later half of 2006) but they also drove slightly less on average, according to the article, 'The drop in driving was small — the average American drove 13,657 miles (21,978.8 km) per year in 2005, down from 13,711 miles in 2004.' This is the first drop since the energy crisis of the late 70's. However, although SUV and mini-van sales have been falling, they still represent over half of the private vehicle sales in the United States."

Comments

Too bad

[ryanov]

I think it's disgusting that price is the only thing that people seem to think about when deciding whether to burn fuel.

Incidentally, I wouldn't put minivans in the same category as SUV's. Many SUV's get less than 20 mpg -- most minivans get above 25 mpg.

Re:Too bad

[seanadams.com]

Even if minivans get marginally better mileage than SUVs, they still both have very poor (passenger*miles)/gallon, because they are both usually driven with few passengers. An acura, on the other hand, gets better mileage than either of them, and is also lighter and more meuverable - therefore much safer to everyone on the road. I really don't see a difference between SUVs and minivans when you consider safety and mpg together.

Re:Too bad

[JCondon]

SUV bashing isn't even all that accurate. Sports cars trade mileage for performance. For example, the Audi A6 sedan gets 22mpg (combined)--the same as the Toyota Highlander SUV. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/

Re:Too bad

[seriv]

Yes, it is true that there is little difference between full-sized sports/luxury sedan and moderately sized suvs. In fact, if you do a statistical comparison between the the smallest SUVs and the largest sedans, these large sedans are worse (at least when I did that over a year ago). SUV bashing, however, is still valid. These small suvs make up only a fraction of SUV sales, and the largest are worse than anything other than something like a Ferrari.

Re:Too bad

[j. andrew rogers]

As a general comment, the arguably stupid part of the fixation on SUVs is that if everyone stopped driving them tomorrow and drove a Prius instead, it would have a negligible impact on oil consumption in the US. That fixation is fundamentally misplaced.

The only way you'll make a difference is if people stop driving generally. Which means more telecommuting and smaller suburbs, something I am okay with on both accounts. Whining about SUVs is pissing in the ocean because it ignores the major causes of fuel consumption.

As something of a tangent, the reason that gas taxes are a non-solution is that the demand is inelastic because the basic infrastructure of the country forces the existing level of consumption. In most parts of the US, driving your own vehicle is actually economical, and there is no alternative in any case. You cannot automagically build a public transport infrastructure in cities with millions of people that were never designed for ubiquitous public transport. That is the real chicken-and-egg problem; for the most part it is not possible to live in the US without burning a lot of fuel even if you wanted to, and it would cost trillions of dollars to make that not the case. In that cost-benefit analysis, slow and gradual migration is a good thing.

Re:Too bad

[drsmithy]

I won't debate you as I can't win on mpg. However on safty... that depends on whose safty you're talking about. Minivans (and most SUVs) are pretty darn safe to the occupents of the vehicle as long as they are driven properly. But I suspect you mean the safty of the people the large vehicle creams. Which serves as a nice physics lecture. So, what's your solution?

People in (modern) standard cars are at least as safe - if not safer - in those than they are in an SUV, *unless they hit an SUV*.

In other words, if the majority of people are driving around in regular cars, the net safety level is higher.

SUVs are popular because they're relatively cheap, despite being the worst at just about everything. Take away the massive tax concessions that make these vehicles economical and their usage would disappear nearly overnight.

I always enjoying watching those (Sydney) north-shorers spending $100+ filling up their X5s. It's nearly as entertaining as watching them gets the kids out of the car to guide them into the parking space.

Re:Too bad

[syphax]

Huh? My minivan gets better mileage than SUVs with equivalent capacity. It also has a lower center of gravity and bumper height. It does weigh a lot, though.

And driven with few passengers? Do you think people buy minivans for the looks? Our minivan rarely goes anywhere with less than four people. That's why we got a minivan.

Re:Too bad

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Or perhaps I could have pointed out that his contention that mini-vans are usually driven with few passengers is pretty bogus. People don't buy mini-vans to feel safer, nor to feel sexy. They buy them because they need them to haul kids around, full stop. Sure mom will use them alone during the day to do errands, but then she often ends up making use of the large cargo space for groceries and other homestuffs, in which case the passenger capacity is not really wasted either.

But I thought it was just simpler to point out that "Acuras" are not a type of car but merely a brand and thus by implication anyone making comparisons with them doesn't know what the hell he is talking about.

Those are americans?

[Rufus211]

What state has a wide yellow license plate with no graphics? And what's the circular road sign with a red border?

Re:Those are americans?

[Katchina'404]

The wide plate looks very French to me. The truck has three speed limit signs stickers (NOT country stickers), which is quite common in Western Europe (I think they show the max speed for this truck on small-, medium- and large-sized road, or something like this).

Rounding Error

[Le Marteau]

'The drop in driving was small -- the average American drove 13,657 miles (21,978.8 km) per year in 2005, down from 13,711 miles in 2004.

This is what passes for a slashdot story these days? OMFG.

Minivans?

[TheFlyingGoat]

Based on the Edmunds 2006 buying guide for minivans, the average gas mileage they get is around 20/26. This is only slightly less than the 22/30 gas mileage that 4 door sedans get (the Civic throws this off, otherwise it'd be around 28). Obviously there are better vehicles for getting better gas mileage, but for people that want a little more space, have a family, or need to move larger objects once in a while, minivans aren't a bad option.

I personally drive a V8 crew cab pickup truck and even got a comment from a guy I used to work with about ruining the environment. Thing is, I work from home every day and as a result drive less than 4000 miles per year. I burn far less fuel than most hybrid owners, but still have to put up with their comments about what I choose to drive. You don't know people's driving habits, so it's really not fair to make generalizations about them.

Incidentally, while we didn't NEED a pickup truck, it did make sense for us since we're remodeling our house and landscaping during the summer. We tend to haul something at least a few times a month. Our only other options would be to rent a truck or borrow someone else's truck. It's also nice having a heavier vehicle during our Wisconsin winters.

Whenever vehicle stories come up on Slashdot, I read comments about how buying an SUV is all about showing off how much money you have, and that 99% of people don't need a truck. The fact is, anyone who owns a house and puts a decent amount of work into it or has a family with at least 2 kids will make use of the space in their vehicle. Hybrid SUV's are good alternatives, but the extra cost (initial + repairs) just turns people off to them right now.

Re:Minivans?

[osmodion]

It's nice to see someone actually pointing out the very obvious fact that not everybody with a truck drives a significantly larger vehicle than needed. I know from experience just how expensive it is to rent cars, and it makes sense for people like you to own larger vehicles. People also seem to forget just how much more expensive it is to buy/lease a hybrid over the non-hybrid model, and not everyone can afford one. Then there are families with multiple children; trying to smush them all in a smaller, more fuel-efficient hybrid or sedan would result epic disasters. Yes, there are many people driving gigantic suvs without any idea of how drive them or any use for all the space, but there are legitimate needs for larger trucks and suvs.

This is because...

[Cyno01]

People are going out to less movies because of wait for it... PIRACY!!!

Wow...

[mofomojo]

I didn't know CNN did reporting.

Leap year

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is so small that it's almost totally explained by 2004 being a leap year.

Re:Leap year

[DrKyle]

Yeah, add into that the # of Americans who didn't drive as they were overseas fighting "wars", didn't drive because their cars were destroyed by hurricanes, or didn't drive because they were in line waiting for Revenge of the Sith, and you've probably got the whole decrease covered.

Statistical Noise

[Valacosa]

I agree wholeheartedly

I did the math and the difference is 0.3%. There's a word for that: statistical noise. It's a shame there's no one over at CNN with enough of a mathematical / scientific background to pick up on that and nix this story.

What's more is I don't trust the numbers themselves. Numbers like "13,657" and "13,711" imply a degree of precision, whereas "14 kilo-miles" (you guys should really switch to metric) does not. Given that there's no measurement error analysis I'm inclined to think these numbers are essentially the same.

In short, this is bullshit.

Re:Statistical Noise

[erikus]

Hmm, it looks like you missed this paragraph:

Growth in U.S. demand for gasoline slowed from an average 1.6 percent per year between 1990 and 2004 to 0.3 percent in 2005 and 1 percent in 2006, the report said.

Your 0.3% is right on, but it's consistently been 1.6% in the years before. Now are you sure it's noise?

Re:you don't drive when you don't have anywhere to

[cmorriss]

Parent:
Yeah, well, it's easy to drive less when you don't have a job to go to. (With link to bureau of labor and statistics)

Umm... Did you even read the site you linked to? Here are the latest numbers right on the front page. Spectacular numbers, all of them. People most certainly have jobs to go to. Probably just that more are working from home and driving less when on vacation.

Unemployment Rate:
History 4.4% in Oct 2006

Change in Unemployment Level:
History -238,000 in Oct 2006

Change in Employment Level:
History +437,000 in Oct 2006

Change in Civilian Labor Force Level:
History +199,000 in Oct 2006

This American Drove More

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

This year, I drove more than any year before. Mostly because I am sick of the potemkin security at the airports. Although I had to go through the ID song-and-dance to get my driver's license, that was a mostly one-time thing. So when I drive I am not on anyone's list. I buy my gas with cash and pay for the motel rooms with cash too. The only thing that gets me are the plate cameras at the tollbooths, and the cell towers when I leave my phone on.

I'm not paranoid. I don't think anyone is out to get me. But driving is the closest thing we have to feasible anonymous travel nowadays -- you need id to board a plane, you even need id to buy a train-ticket - even though the people who 'check' the id wouldn't know a forgery unless it had "FAKE" stamped across it in big red letters. And don't even think about walking a couple of thousand miles, that just isn't going to happen.

Osama bin Laden has turned this country into a nation of cowards. There is not much I can do about it, but at least I still have the luxury of opting out of the herd of sheeple.

Error analysis

[Luzumsuz Lazim]

It is amazing that how news reporter are so illiterate when it comes to math and science. The figures they report indicates no conclusive reduction (change) in driving habits at all. When we measure a quantity there is always some error in that measurement. Driving habit is pretty much a random event when average over millions of people. Thus, a good approximation (I don't claim it to be the most accurate) of its associated error is 1/sqrt(x), and thus x +- x/sqrt(x) is a proper way for indicating the average x. In this specific case, it is 13600 +- ~110. Thus the change (~50) is smaller then a sigma away from the average. The proper way to report this would be: Americans don't care about the environment, and they have the money to burn the same amount of fossil fuel as they did last year.

As a different post pointed out...

[wasted]

2004 was a leap year, so it had more days, which makes the difference even less meaningful. Someone else caught it before I did, though.

Re:I definitely drive less

[KiloByte]

5 miles whips you into shape? I barely feel warmed up in 5 miles on a bike. I ride 25 miles to and from work a day, with about 700 feet in elevation change. And I don't feel that's enough to keep me in shape.

Is it uphill both ways?

Offset by lardarses

[Bogtha]

Americans are wasting a billion gallons of fuel per year by being so fat.

Lose some weight. It's good for you and it's good for the environment.

Re:Offset by lardarses

[Ranger]

Americans are wasting a billion gallons of fuel per year by being so fat.

Lose some weight. It's good for you and it's good for the environment.

Those asses could be turned into assets. Since fat can be turned in biodiesel, they could use liposuctioned fat. So instead of driving around on our fat asses we could drive around on our assfat.

Americans CAN'T Drive Much Less

[Inexile2002]

The vast majority of cities in North America (I'm including Canada here) are designed around driving. If we did a poll of /. users, I bet that the majority don't have a store within reasonable walking distance of their house that carries more than the basic essentials. (Sure you CAN walk to your local grocery store, but could you really do it all the time?) When you have to drive to buy bread and milk, you can't really not drive all the time.

More over, a house in suburbia is seen by enough people as sort of a birthright and enough people are just generally hostile to the idea of living in higher urban density areas even though it's really the only way to really reduce dependency on cars. People talk about transit which doesn't work well in suburbia because the spread out population means lots of buses that are mostly empty or else living too far from the bus routes for the bus to be useful. Metros and street cars are even less viable in spread out suburbs. Home delivery solves the problem to some degree, but you really can't organize cities around the idea of home delivery.

So basically, people HAVE to drive. Sure they can drive less, even much less, but there's sort of a basic minimum amount of driving that will always have to exist in a city that is designed around driving. Either the culture needs to change, and in some places that seems to be starting, or automobile efficiency needs to be greatly improved.

Or else we can just accept that at some point we're screwed.

Re:Americans CAN'T Drive Much Less

[stewbacca]

The design of most medium sized cities in America requires people to drive. It is not always an issue of "lazy Americans". Mid sized towns don't always have a good public transportation infrastructure and the sprawl is usually too vast. For example, I just returned from Pensacola, FL and it would have been impossible to rely on public transportation, and everything was separated by miles, not blocks like I see in Europe. The nearest supermarket to our hotel was at least five miles away, and the closest bus stop was over a mile away.

I live in Harrogate, UK now and judging by the traffic, these people are just as, if not more, dependent on their cars (albeit tiny little cartoon cars) as Americans are.

Why all those big engines

[Anonymous Coward]

My question to the american public would be:

Why the need for those big engine?

The average sedan in the US seems to be a V6 or V8 engine car with a capacity of +4L. While the average european sedan would be a -2.4L car (in belgium for example taxes go way up for +2.4L cars). So if the average american would deside to set his pride and ego aside and buy a car that has a somewhat lighter engine fuel consumption would be reduced by a significant amount in contrast to the absurd numbers in the article.

And don't start with arguments like: I need my big engine SUV to haul around my home redecoration material. If you need that big a car for it, half of europe wouldn't be able to redecorate his/her home or garden. All excuses to drive a big car with a big engine. Granted, some people need it but certainly not the majority of the US public.

It's time to set aside your pride and think about the money you save and above all the environment and squashed pedestrians. Bigger is not always better.

gas demand inelastic?

[doom]

As something of a tangent, the reason that gas taxes are a non-solution is that the demand is inelastic because the basic infrastructure of the country forces the existing level of consumption.

This can't possibly be right. Try looking up "traffic evaporation" some time. Driving has an illusion of being "free" -- the roads aren't toll roads, gas prices are kept cheap -- yes, even now, no one thinks much about the per-trip risk of crashes: so most of the costs seem like sunk, fixed costs -- so people do a lot more of it than they might if they had to pay the actual costs of a trip on every trip.

If gas prices suddenly tripled, people would compensate (to some extent) by making fewer trips to the supermarket, go out to dinner less, order DVDs instead of drive to the google plex, and so on.

Yes, it would take some time for them to try to find work closer to home (or vice-versa), to bug their local government to fix public transport, to put in better bicycling facilities, and so on... but that's not the only ways to compensate.

Why on earth would you do that?

[blorg]

No, because that would be basically impossible without massive and expensive privacy invasion by the government (mandatory GPS tracking, anyone?) And besides, what's the advantage, emissions-wise? With regard to road maintenance, etc. well that is called a toll road.

Comparitively, tax on gas is simple and as an added benefit encourages the development of vehicles with better fuel economy. Compare the sort of vehicles generally driven in Europe (with high gas tax) to those in the US. Your average car in Europe will have far better MPG figures. Throw in some sort of tax break at the point of purchase linked to low emissions and that's not a bad system.

Americans don't know much about fuel ecconomy.

[d3vi1]

In the US, only Mercedes is trying to get educate the crowds in the advantages of Diesel fuel. In Europe, Diesel is actually popular, but in the US there is a stereotype that Diesel means slow and sluggish. I've recently visited the autos.yahoo.com website and I was completely baffled by the comments over there. Everyone seems to be surprised by the great fuel economy that the Mercedes-Benz 320 CDI offers and also the incredible acceleration on a highway. In Europe this would be taken for granted.

Let's take another car right now: the Honda Accord. In Europe it also has a Diesel option with the following fuel economy values: Hwy-53 mpg, City-33 mpg. It delivers 140 bhp with an immense torque of 340nm and a maximum speed (in the manual) of 136 mph. Should be taken into consideration that the values for Hwy in Europe are generally taken at a speed of 80mph, which is the recommended or imposed maximum speed on highways in most of Europe. Considering that in the US it ranges between 65 and 75, the values could be better for highway. The same applies for city values. European cities tend to be a lot more crowded and the traffic to be a lot worst than that of a US city (San Francisco does resemble an European city somewhat due to it's smaller streets and it's hills).

Our car is a Renault Megane (Renault is the "other half" of the Renault-Nissan corp.). It has a *1.5*L diesel Engine (3 year old engine) that delivers 110 bhp with an imense torque. It's mpg at 100mph on a hwy is 42 as reported by the on-board computer. That gives-it a 600+ miles range on one diesel fuel fill (15 gallons) at a higher than legal speed. If you only drive legally on hwy (less than 80mph), you could actually cross Europe on one or two fills.

Even more surprising is that the engines that are found in the US have worst performance in any given aspect than the European ones for the same volume. In Europe, for a 2L Gas Engine you can get 200 bhp at some manufacturers.

It's my fault

[PopeRatzo]

Um, I think I may be responsible for these new statistics. About 18 months ago, my daughter made some remark about the extra few pounds I've put on in the last couple of years and I pulled out my beautiful old road bike and started riding the 25km to work every day.

I live in Chicago, and the weather here can sometimes be inhospitable to cycling, but I decided I was going to ride every day if possible. I didn't realize the enormous benefits I'd reap. Yeah, I lost the few pounds and got into better shape, and my health has improved. I smoke a lot less (I don't smoke in the house, so my car was an ashtray). I tried smoking and cycling for a while, but I caught my reflection in a store window and realized I looked stupider than usual with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth, pedaling along.

And yeah, I've saved a ton of cash. We have another vehicle my wife uses, so I went ahead and sold my car. I've bought a new Core 2 Duo based Digital Audio Workstation and midi keyboard with just a little of what I saved from the car, gas, maintenance and insurance.

But the real benefit was the 90 minutes (45 each way) that I spend on the bike instead of in traffic every day. For that hour and a half every day I'm like a child, blasting Stooges or Buzzcocks or Muddy Waters or whatever in my earbuds and checking out what's actually going on in my city. Dodging SUVs and not thinking about much of anything.

I spent a few hundred on really warm and dry clothes and stuff, and the weather really doesn't bother me at all any more. Today it's 26 degrees F and freezing rain, and in a few minutes (it's 6:30am here) I'll be on the road, comfortable under my North Face shell, rocking out to some Clash or whatever, singing at the top of my lungs.

It's been a revelation. I'm probably a little less than at the middle of my lifespan (unless I get hit by a bus on Ashland Avenue this morning) and giving up the car for the bike has been one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me.

Re:It's my fault

[recursiv]

they should really allow bikes on sidewalks, like Japan (and some European countries) do.

What countries are you talking about? Riding on the sidewalk is far more dangerous.

Stats

The road with traffic is actually the safest place to ride, contrary to your intuition. This is consistent with my riding experience.

Some insightful, some clueless comments (as usual)

[sgtrock]

The following post has little real direction. More my random thoughts than anything organized.

People here on Slashdot slam SUVs and minivans out of hand, which I find unfortunate. I'll grant you that there are plenty of people who buy these larger vehicles who really don't need one. There are places and times when they are absolutely an appropriate choice, though. For example, ever see a soccer mom trying to jam 5 or 6 kids into a Honda Civic after practice? :)

Someone else also commented that people with varied and complex lifestyles may choose these vehicles in order to meet all of their needs with a single vehicle. Many families (like mine, for example) might have one smaller and one larger vehicle.

I don't pretend to speak for everyone in the US, but I think I can shed some light on why SUVs are popular in my neck of the woods. I live in Minnesota, where we have rotten driving conditions seven months a year. 4x4s are most definitely /not/ a luxury item here. Before you ask, no, front wheel drive is not sufficient to meet all conditions. Having traction on that second axle has helped me out more times than I can count, and I spend 95+% of my time in commuter traffic.

Personally, I don't own an SUV. I own a ten year old 4x4 Ford 1/2 ton extended cab pickup with the small gasoline V8 and 5 speed manual transmission. I bought it used back in '96. It had been on the road for 6 months and already had 12,000 miles on it. The original owner couldn't keep up the payments for some reason.

It now has nearly 235,000 miles on it. I've gone through one transmission replacement, but I'm still on the original engine and clutch. (What can I say? Dad taught me how to shift by paraphrasing that old TV show, _Kung_Fu_: "You must drive as if shifting on rice paper. You have learned how to do it well when the paper is not torn." :) )

Why do I drive it? Well, for one it's been paid off for nearly 7 years. :) For another, I love to spend time in the woods, hiking, hunting, and fishing. Having an old 4x4 1/2 ton pickup means that I can get back into the brush a ways while towing a trailer or boat without worrying about it getting scratched up, also knowing that I can get myself back out again. This truck also acts as the family hauler for everything from trips to Goodwill to moving my sisters to you name it.

Granted, with the number of miles that are on it I'll need to think about getting it replaced in a couple of years. About that time it'll have close to 300,000 miles on the engine, after all. I think I'll have gotten my money's worth out of it. ;)

My dream replacement vehicle would be another 1/2 ton extended cab pickup or 1/2 ton SUV with a manual transmission. My engine choice would either be diesel or a hybrid for the improved mileage. Unfortunately, hardly anyone seems to know how to drive stick shifts any longer so none of the big 3 even offer a manual in a 1/2 ton anymore. Also, in this country diesels aren't being offered in anything smaller than a 3/4 ton pickup and hybrids are only now being offered in 1/4 ton SUVs. :( Anyone know of something something like my dream vehicle in the works from anyone?