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.

Comments

Re:Work close to where you live as a priority

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty damn easy more than it isn't. If there's only one employer in an area that would be a real limitation, but for most people that's not the case. "The job" is where you take it. If you can't plan ahead, expect to die on the road.

But don't pretend you have "no control" over that, most people do whether or not they're willing to sacrifice something to eliminate commuting long distances. If you can't figure it out, sucks to be you I guess.