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Has the Love Affair With Driving Gotten Stuck in Traffic? (washingtonpost.com)
America's love affair with the automobile and those dreams of roaring off on open highways are on the wane as the nation grapples with too much stop-and-go traffic and too many hours spent behind the steering wheel. From a report: Those findings are contained in a report to be released Thursday by Arity, a technology research spinoff created two years ago by Allstate Insurance. Arity underscored the growing disillusionment by using an illustration: Americans, on average, spend more time in their cars -- mostly driving to and from work -- than they receive in vacation time. Arity researchers said most people average 321 hours in the car each year and get 120 hours of vacation [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; an alternative source was not immediately available.]. "To me, that really crystallizes the issue," said Lisa Jillson, who leads Arity's research and design department. "I get a certain amount of vacation time, and I spend almost three times that in my car just getting back and forth to a job."
Her research showed a notable difference between millennials and baby boomers. Unhappiness with driving becomes more pronounced, with 59 percent of millennials saying they'd "rather spend time doing more productive tasks than driving," while only 45 percent of baby boomers make that same statement.
Her research showed a notable difference between millennials and baby boomers. Unhappiness with driving becomes more pronounced, with 59 percent of millennials saying they'd "rather spend time doing more productive tasks than driving," while only 45 percent of baby boomers make that same statement.
Sounds pretty damn easy for you. But when advancement can only be had by changing jobs every 2-3 years, trying to move with every job means paying rent forever. Unless you think anyone can work anywhere they want? Otherwise most of us schmucks have to go to where the job is.
Sadly, for some reason, a lot of people, particularly the younger ones, don't think of a car as something that can be 'fun' or 'exciting'...it is merely a commodity, or necessary evil to get from A->B.
Not me...I've owned nothing but 2 seat sports cars all my life...I worked and saved before HS so I could get one in HS, and have saved and traded up since then (kinda like I did with my stereo)....
I too love to hit the gas and down/up shift on stretches of road when no one is around.
But sadly, not as many people appreciate that anymore.
Hell, it is getting nigh impossible to find a new car with a manual transmission anymore.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It was 1.5 hours from my house to the shop in Calle Ocho. Through the worst of miami. 2nd gear crawling most of the time.
Then I got a better job, closer to home. I actually get to enjoy my car now. I floor the first 3 gears then lazy-shift up the last 3. Nice, flowing traffic -- fast, mind you, but easy.
There's those who love to drive, and those who hate driving and hate cars. Guess who there's more of. Yeah. This is why cars are maybe 5% of the cars out there, and the rest are lumbering land-cows called "SUVs" and "Crossovers."
And of those 5%, maybe 1% of those are sports car. What the hell happened? What's with all the land cows?
Leave the driving to those who love cars. The rest of you, for all that is holy, get your self-driving podmobiles already!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I"ve live all over the south east and south central areas of the US mostly, but also in other states, some out west.
Sure, there is rush hour, but I've never been stuck in traffic for an hour or more as a normal thing.
Most of my commutes have been in the 10-15min range each way avg.
I did have one job, that had a 35min commute each way, but that was not due to traffic, but the job was a good one that was a bit farther than usual to where I lived, but it wasn't too bad, I'd just throw on some tunes and jam down the road...I bought my first corvette for that one, so I got there and back pretty fast.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Lower your expectations: buy used cars, don't renovate your damn kitchen and toilet every 2.5 years to keep up with the Joneses (20 or 30 year old appliances work fine), don't switch phones/laptops/iPads every year, buy a small house with a small yard, or better yet, a 2-family where some other schmoe pays your mortgage.
Then you won't need a second income or to job-jump to "advance" every 2-3 years.
Why do we live like this?
Because, on the whole, people like cars and governments like (gas) tax revenue.
Public transit takes both of those things away. Electric cars help with the pollution, but costs government the gas tax revenues, hence the sometimes "innovative" proposals you are starting to hear about how to tax electric car owners for their utilization of road infrastructure.
Still, in practically every city, outside of the places where there is simply no possible way to increase road capacity, people will prefer increased road capacity to any public transport solution.
It has been shown that it's nearly impossible to build enough roadway in high traffic areas because as soon as you add more roadway it gets filled to capacity *immediately*.