Daily Fuel Economy Tip

Why We Like Driving Solo

Picture your typical afternoon commute.  If it’s anything like what most of suburbia has to deal with, you’re probably visualizing being stuck on a major highway, surrounded by slow moving vehicles being piloted by angry looking drivers.

Now - look a little closer at this picture in your head.  Are most of the cars that surround you filled with more than one person?  Chances are, probably not.

According to a recent poll on GasBuddy.com which asked, “What percentage of the time you are in a car with other people?” (not sure this is worded correctly, but I think you get the point), much of the time we’re in a car, we’re driving by ourselves.

Here’s the breakdown of the poll:

• 37% of respondents stated that they drive with other people between 0% and 10% of the time.
• 29% of respondents stated that they drive with other people between 10% and 35% of the time.
• 15% of respondents stated that they drive with other people between 35% and 65% of the time.
• 9% of respondents stated that they drive with other people between 65% and 90% of the time.
• 7% of respondents stated that they drive with other people more than 90% of the time.

Long story short, 66% of us do at least two-thirds of our driving by ourselves.  I know this is akin to Yogi Berra’s “90% of baseball is half mental,” but I think it’s easy to see that most of us do most of our driving by ourselves.

Why is that?  I mean, we know that we should carpool because it’s less wasteful and helps ease traffic, but this knowledge doesn’t seem to be enough.

The main reason comes down to convenience.  It’s simply more convenient for us to just hop in our own car and get to where we need to go (work, the store, drop the kids off at soccer practice) than it is to try and coordinate our schedules with other people.

I think this is also the main reason why people don’t take advantage of mass transportation as much as they should.  It tends to be inconvenient to mold your schedule around when the bus or train can take you to where you’d like to go.

That being said, it doesn’t have to be that difficult or put you out that much to drive around with other people in your car.  If you live with someone, ask them if they want to go to the store with you to save a trip; if you know co-workers that live in or near your neighborhood, seek them out to see if they’d be interested in carpooling a couple of days per week.

Even if you can decrease the percentage of time you drive alone by 10%, you’ll be making a pretty big difference.

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