Built like a Mercedes (?)

"Dori A Schmetterling" wrote

How about hours per capita/car? One might speculate it would be closer in the EU/US - for instance Inverness to London is around 12-13 hours for

580 miles, which is about what the 800 miles Seattle to San Francisco takes. Generally, the US Interstate system allows shorter times for long trips; even the secondary roads generally allow higher speeds than EU secondary roads.

I agree that some are in a pissing contest - doesn't really matter, since it's a real apples-to-oranges comparison.

FloydR

Having flogged this horse to it's constituant atoms is it now time to compare the price of fuel and bitch about that for a month?

Well, my average miles per year over the last 15 years is considerably lower than average for our area, as the office where I spend most of my time is only 7K from home, and I make that round trip once a day. The local airport is only 15K from home if I need to travel internationally.

My 12 year old van has 334000 KM on it, for an average of roughly

28000 km per year. Over the last almost 3 years, I have put on 58,000 km on the van (20,000km per year), plus several thousand on my wife's car (which really lowers the average, with only 12,000km per year average on it over 10 years) The 58000 km in the last three years has included a quick trip to Florida, one to northern Michigan, one to central New York State, and numerour trips around Ontario. 5 years ago we made a fast trip to Winnipeg and 10 years ago to BC. I travel a lot less than either of my neighbours.

Anyway, whether harder on the car or not, there are DEFINITE differences between the usage a car gets between Wales and Ontario. There are huge differences between the use they get in Ontario and Saskatchewan (where you can watch your dog run away for a week), and even between areas of Ontario. Here, towns are spaced out every,15 km or so, often with villages interspersed between, while in some areas you are litterally 50 miles from nowhere - to get to a town of any size to get something you need could be a 100 mile trip - one way.

Oh yes please! The UK has a bigger gallon and a bigger price per gallon. Suck that! :-)

Huw

Individual anecdotes may be interesting but don't help with a conclusion about driving habits overall.

With all this to-ing and fro-ing I have become almost interested in the subject, i.e. whether North Americans really do drive more p.a. than Brits or, indeed, other western Europeans.

Many British "secondary" (non-motorway, if that is what you mean) roads are actually dual carriageway and pretty 'fast'. They are just not quite at motorway standards (different and fewer access points, no small motorbicycles or pushbikes, e.g.) for a variety of reasons.

Would Germans have a higher average mileage? More motorways, no physical borders (except a small one with the North Sea and Baltic in the north)...

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

Actually, its a little further than that to go from San Diego, CA to Crescent City CA on Interstate 5... but don't let any Californians know that I admitted this :-)

Sounds like AMTRAK. A friend of mine travelled by AMTRAK last year, and told me that they were 20 hours late arriving on the way to their destination, but only 18 hours late on the return trip :-/

I seriously doubt those US numbers. Maybe if that is an average for ALL citizens, including the vast number in New York, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco that don't even own cars... But I don't know. It just feels wrong, based on the fact that my annual mileage is between 20k and

25k, and I have what is considered a rather short commute.

How on earth can you run a railway like that ?

Graham

Listen, if you don't believe the numbers, find your own and cite them or STFU.

FloydR

I discovered that the US EPA uses a figure of 12,500 mi per annum for cars. UK average mileage is certainly ~ 12,000 mi ( commonly accepted figure )

It seems that those who seek to find huge differences are simply mistaken.

I would expect those in the US living 'out in the wilds' to have higher figures but statistically they are presumably a small insignificant minority.

Graham

Here are the figures for the USA which actually shows only 11400 miles per car overall with midwestern states actually posting lower mileage at 10700 miles which goes very much against what has been implied by some posters here, particularly Steve and Clare from Canada. Of course Canada might be at variance but I doubt it. I have always assumed that mileage would not vary greatly from one country to another because it is primarily governed by the amount of *time* people feel comfortable devoting to what is essentially a waste of time.

Here is a reference to a comprehensive and authoritative source

Huw

I have always assumed that mileage would not vary

I should say that I always like to quote machinery use, even cars, by hours of use rather than mileage. I would guess that 'average' use doesn't vary much outside of between 350 to 400 hours per year wherever you are. Now let's see, 400 hours times say an average of 30mph is........ yes 12000 miles which sounds about right. Hell, I should be a transport planner or something, my talents are wasted here LOL. My Land Rover has done 150,000 miles at an average [which I worked out with care some time ago] of 15mph is 10,000 hours over 21 years or 475 hours per year which looks to be about right at about an hour and a third a day, every day. To complete the same 10,000 hours of use my Land Cruiser will average

31mph so will have to total 310,000 miles. At present I complete less than 650 hours per year, which is long enough, to complete 20,000 miles approximately so will need another 10 years of use to match the LR's total use.

10,000 hours is 50 weeks of a full 40 hours solid for five years. Yeeeek!

Huw

If anyone was running it, it wouldn't be like that.

Only one problen, Huw - your "comprehensive and authorative" source is

12 years out of date. In that 12 years many farmers have had to resort to working "off farm" to make ends meet. These farmers need to drive significant distances to and from work - adding to the average mileage. Also, the price of housing has skyrocketed in the major urban centers - and more people are buying homes in the "outlying areas" because that is all they can afford, and/or because they do not want the inner city urban lifestyle. So they spend 5 hours a day commuting, at average speeds just less than 80KM per hour (or 50 M per hour) - or 125 miles each way. It is a HORRENDOUS waste of time, but the high paid jobs are in the city - and the homes and lifestyle these higher earners want are not. One thing that DOES tend to keep the average down is the fact many households have more than one car - and even more than one car per driver - so the "good" car, or the "toy" or the "RV" may get significantly lower mileage. This brings down the average miles per vehicle, but not the average miles per driver. One neighbour's Corolla gets about 50 times the miles his Golf gets, because the Golf sits in the garage most of the time, while the Corolla does the 60 mile (each way) commute 5 days a week. Any winter out-of town trips are on the Corolla - the shiny polished Golf only goes out when the sun is shining and the roads are dry.

.These farmers need to drive

You think only the US have more than 1 vehicle per houshold? You know I can easily get the figures for you if you insist. But first........... Latest US figures for 2001 can be found here. It is easy to work out that the average has risen to around 11850 miles per vehicle Cars average 11400,SUV's 13200, PUtrucks 12100, RV's 5900.

If you must bullshit, you'd better make sure the figures back you up.

Huw

. >

Here we are. In the UK 25% of all housholds have two cars and a further 5% have three or more. That is over 30% of all housholds with two cars or more while 26% have no cars at all. I suspect that the greater number of 0 car housholds are in cities where there is no room to park.

Huw

Hell, if you must bullshit, might as well get 2006 figures if you're going to call it "the latest figures."

Not in this newsgroup... they all seem to live in the middle of nowhere, have multi-car garages and drive 100 miles to get a newspaper...and are proud of it...

;-) DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

I hope you think interesting thoughts to entertain yourself, Huwie...

As I have quite a nice car (and drive very little, 5K mi p.a. tops) I sometimes look forward to a longer trip, e.g. to Manchester or to the Continent. However, after about two hours the pleasure fades...

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling