Are Americans really logging countless miles on the road? #AmericanDrivers #LongDistanceTravel
Curious about how far Americans travel by car? Let’s dive into the stats and see if the road is truly the preferred mode of transportation for many in the US.
Driving Habits in America
Are long distances a common sight on American highways? Let’s break down the numbers to find out.
– Avg. Distance driven per year
– Popular road trip destinations
– Impact of remote work and online shopping on driving habits
Reasons Behind the Miles
What motivates Americans to embark on lengthy journeys?
1. Commuting challenges
2. Wanderlust and exploration
3. Family visits and vacations
Impact on Environment and Infrastructure
How do these long drives affect our surroundings?
– Environmental concerns
– Wear and tear on roads
– Sustainable transportation alternatives
So, are Americans truly the kings and queens of road trips? Let’s uncover the truth behind the wheel! #RoadWarriors #DrivingCulture
Yes, several of my coworkers commute 90 minutes twice a day.
I have friends in a city that’s 3ish hours away and I regularly drive down for the weekend.
Canadian and yes I would drive 2+ hours to see my friends for the weekend. I mean the city I lived in took an hour to cross it from one side to the other by car without rush hour
We sure do. The old saying is “Americans think 100 years is a long time and Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance”.
yeah, the country is pretty huge in many ways. a 2 hour drive between major cities isn’t really seen as a long distance, and my late grandparents’ home in central Florida was a good 10 hour drive in perfect weather (and I’ve made that drive dozens of times in 2021/2022.)
3 hours on a regular basis? Nah. Certainly not by choice anyway.
That said, having good friends only 3 hours away is on the edge of tolerable, so it’s still close enough that you might make that trip every few months.
I was going to say no, but then I read that you thought three hours was a long distance, so yes.Â
Yeah, we drive crazy distances, and if you don’t have a car and don’t live in a highly urbanized area you’re almost a second class citizen because of it. Need to get groceries? That’s 45 minutes away each way. Doctor? A specialist might be an hour and a half each way. Need to go to the capital of your state for some reason? anywhere from 1 to 7 hour drive depending where you’re at, and in Alaska that journey would be by Bush plane.
Europeans have always lived in it so they take it for granted, but Europe is highly developed, for thousands of years the entire continent has been highly developed and conditioned for human inhabitation. The States have had a few hundred years. We always have more free space to move into so it’s very difficult to get the same kind of dense urban or even suburban areas that exist in most of Europe. The coasts are a little better because they get buttressed by mountains, so they tend to double in on themselves and get more roads, more buses, more intercity transportation, but
in between the Appalachians and the Rockies it’s not unheard of to drive an hour each way for work, and that turns into your measuring stick to see how far away something is for you.
Yes, though 2-3 hours is considered moderately long.Â
An hour ain’t much though.Â
This is also region dependent.Â
Sure. I used to drive 3 hours every weekend to see my parents outside Baltimore. I did that for about 6 years.
We’d also drive 10 hours to Illinois to see my wife’s uncle & cousins once or twice a year.
I have friends that live three hours away. I will go and see them for the weekend. It’s just six hours on the road.
We used to drive 17-22 hrs depending on speed limit at the time every year throughout my childhood
That was one way
we’d drive 13 hours to visit family every summer, 3.5 hours was nothing even for a day trip. we sure do drive a lot.
2-3 hour drive is nothing for a weekend.
You can sit and watch a 2 hour movie right? Why can’t you imagine sitting in a car for 2-3 hours to see family?
I live in Florida and I have a territory with my company that covers about a 5 hour drive / 300 mile radius. Every other week I spend the night 3 to 5 hours away from home. And my parents live 600 miles away which is a 10 hour drive, and I visit them three times a year.
Between business and personal, I put about 45,000 miles a year on a vehicle.
yea, every month my nesting partner and I drive about 3.5 hours each way for an appointment she has
Yeah, over here if your grandparents lived that close you’d probably be seeing them once a month else you’d be a bit of a dick.
Yes, my university is almost an hour away. I make that trip 3x a week. My sister is driving in for a visit next week. That’s about an 8.5 hr drive. 3 hours is nothing.
I used to work with a woman who said she’d drive 4 hours to Gatlinburg, Tennessee just to go shopping. Yeah, Americans will drive a long way for things.
I’m Canadian but same same.
Last month my partner and I went about 1300km or about 12-13 hours of driving for an MRI appointment Becuase that was the closest one. Made an hour and a half drive one way for pizza in the next town over.
3 hours is actually not that far, that’s a day trip!
Think about this: if you are in the middle of texas, it’s about 300 miles in every direction just to get out of the STATE. if you wanted to go to Washington state after that, you have about 1500 miles of desert to cross. The “westward” expansion (Oregon trail etc) is no joke.
We don’t have the rail infrastructure that Europe has, and there’s no way most of us we’ll fly if the drive is less than a certain time. For me, I’ll fly if the drive is 12+ hours. Otherwise, I’m probably driving because it’s so much cheaper.
Shit 3 hours is small fry, that’s nothing
I’ve driven up to 13 for weekend hobby purposes lol
A 3 hour bus ride in each direction was considered normal for many school field trips.
My university is about 350 miles from my hometown (~4.5 hours driving) and my family expected me to visit at least once every month and a half. Taking the train would take 5 hours longer and cost $40 more than just a tank of gas, and flying is even more costly
The average American spends around a total of 3 hours a day driving/working to afford to drive
My family lives about 2 hrs away and we visit approximately once a month. My work commute is 1 hr roundup, which is much better than a lot of people I know.
Three hours? We did that for a day trip. Get up real early, visit, come home real late. Shit, my parents sometimes did 8 hours drives (16 round trip) just to spend one night.
My best friend and her family would drive from GA to CA which was a 3 day trip, just to spend a week.
It’s not that uncommon in the US to commute for an hour both ways, 3 hours for a multi-day family visit is basically nothing.
American here. True story: once I was visiting a friend who had moved to London for work. It was my first trip to the other side of the Atlantic. I had a couple days to kill, so I decided to do a roadtrip to visit Scotland. I have always felt that you only get a feel for a place by wandering all over it under your own guidance. My American ex-pat Brit friends, upon hearing of my plan, gave me dire warnings. “That’s such an aggressive plan,” “you’ll be driving the whole time,” “You’ll have to start early if you’re going to make it all the way back to London for your flight in just a few days!”
Warned in such dire terms, I geared up as for an American roadtrip. Leave early in the morning. Pack a sufficient supply of food and drink to minimize stops. Generally put myself into the roadtrip warrior seige mentality. Then I set off.
Just about the time I was considering when I should stop for lunch, I saw the ‘welcome to Scotland’ sign. I decided to no longer take Euros seriously.
I’ll drive three hours to meet my parents for lunch then drive home after.Â
That’s the halfway point for the both of us.Â
Going to Phoenix this Sunday to see a show and watch a baseball game. It’s 5 hour drive if your speeding from CA.
An hour commute to work isn’t uncommon. And Europeans wonder why we don’t have trains connecting every city.
It took me 2 hours 15 minutes just to get into work today…
I used to drive from dc to New York for lunch then back in the same day
Three hours is considered “up the road a ways” in Texas.
It’s not abnormal in the United States to drive 1 hour to work and that’s in high speed roads, not city roads. So tsar would be a two hour commute which is not abnormal.
Hell, it takes 90 minutes just to get out of manhattan
Part of the difference is that a long drive in the US is often on highways and actually pleasant. Any time I’m in a car for three hours in Europe or Asia, a lot of that is miserable traffic. Three hours on the highway is great. Thirty minutes in urban traffic is awful.
It’s takes about 2 days to drive across Ontario hahaha (Canadian here). We regularly drive 16-18 hrs (one way) to visit family in BC (from SK). 3 hrs is literally nothing to us.
A 3 hour is pretty normal here.
Yeah 2-3 hrs is a weekend trip for sure. I drove all my belongings 16 hours to move a couple times and it wasn’t bad at all
Laughs in Australian. I went for a holiday recently, drove 7000km in a loop, and didn’t even leave my state.
My daily commute to work, one way, is 60 miles (96km) or 70 miles (112km) depending on which route I take. Is that a lot? To be fair, since covid I only go in 3 days a week.
Yeah, do Europeans really use a six hour commuting trip as the excuse to not see the people they love?
My commute to work is 3 hours round trip (at least).
Growing up we had to drive 3 hours to get to a city that had sufficient shopping options for kids clothes, furniture, etc.
I agree with the other comment.
I was going to say no, or course we don’t drive long distances as often as you think and then you said you only saw you’re grandparents a few times away because they are 3 hours away. Yeah that’s lazy.
I can leave at 7am be where I wanna be by 9:40am spend my day in the city or wherever and leave by 6pm and I’m home by 8:40pm. Shower and get to bed by 10. I do this pretty often as I live in a smaller town with the biggest towns both 3 hours east and west from me.
Day before yesterday I drove about 2.5 hours each way just to go to a Micro Center to buy parts to build a PC.
Driving a long distance isn’t really a daily thing for most of us, but it’s also not something we really have any aversion to. Myself, I could’ve just used Amazon and got my stuff in 2 days, but the Micro Center is only 107 miles away so I just decided to take a road trip.
Have you seen a map my dude? This place. Its LORGE.