Driving

Since 2014, Americans have collectively increased the amount of time spent behind the wheel. On Wednesday, AAA, reported the results of a study showing that Americans spend 20 more minutes on average driving than they did in 2014. Americans spent 70 billion hours driving in 2017, the latest year...Read More»

The fate of the automobile is already sealed, as is your legal right to drive one — both of which will be confined to history books and country clubs in two decades time. The culprit of such a transformative shift in society: self-driving cars. That’s the official prognostication of...Read More»

Nearly a decade and a half ago, Queen Elizabeth II took the late Saudi King Abdullah for a spin in her royal Land Rover. Just this week, Riyadh police issued a warning to all women in Saudi Arabia that they cannot yet legally drive, despite royal decree just last month that the long-standing ban on...Read More»

With lots of wide-open spaces and a sprawling (though crumbling) system of roads, America has been an ideal country for cars. But a new study from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute suggests that our long, national love affair with automobiles may be coming to an end. It...Read More»

According to the US. Department of Transportation, the average American drives 13,476 miles per year. That works out to 1,123 miles each month and about 37 miles per day. That's in keeping with statistics we've seen before--statistics that automakers have relied on when developing electric cars...Read More»

Summer is long gone, meaning that nearly all of us have returned to our daily freeway commutes, which are often full of clogged construction zones. Want a tip to make the drive go faster? Use the "zipper merge" whenever possible. The funny thing about the zipper merge (aka "the late merge") is that...Read More»

Everyone likes a carnival. Some people like the funnel cakes, some like the totally-not-rigged games, and Saudi Arabian women like the bumper cars. Scratch that: they love the bumper cars. Saudi women are prohibited from driving--not by law, but by tradition and by conservative Muslim clerics. In...Read More»

The fewer vehicles you have in your household, the more likely you are to put some serious miles on each of those wheels, right? Actually, that’s not at all the case. U.S. households with four to six vehicles are likely to put more than 20,000 miles annually on just one of their vehicles. And...Read More»

When Shakespeare wrote about Italians and Spaniards, he tended to make them a little crazy. Too much sun makes the blood boil, went the thinking at the time. Four-hundred years down the road, we know that most Renaissance medical theories were pure hogwash, but could a new study about driving in...Read More»

We've been told time and time and time again that young people just aren't that into cars. Apparently, that's the good news. According to a study published by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the U.S. Department of Transportation (PDF), the U.S. population...Read More»

Back in May, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) published a study that showed Americans are driving less. The PIRG study made a number of intriguing claims, all of which pointed to the fact that driving in the U.S. peaked in 2004. And due to a range of factors -- notably, the increased...Read More»

During the Great Recession, researchers noticed a curious trend: Americans were driving less. Analysts devised numerous theories linking the economic downturn to our driving habits, but according to a recently published study, the two have very little to do with one another. The study was conducted...Read More»

Poll parents with teenagers at driving age, and probably, you'll find they don't think their kids have been trained adequately to drive defensively on the road. Some teenagers might even admit the same. Our own driving experiences run the gamut. Without giving away the ages of our editorial staff...Read More»

On November 17, 2006, Douglas D. Bahl was pulled over in St. Paul for allegedly running a red light. Ordinarily, a driver in that situation would've provided a license and other documents, chatted with the police officer, and maybe gotten off with a warning. (Or not.) That's not what happened. Bahl...Read More»

Journalists who cover the auto industry drive a lot of cars. Which means we like to think we know a little more about driving than other people. Not you, of course. Statistically, you know you're a better driver than most other people on the roads. We're talking about those other ones. But each of...Read More»

In the early part of the 20th century, it was unusual to see women behind the wheel. But as viewers of Downton Abbey know, that began to change during World War I, when women were permitted to do things previously deemed "unseemly". Case in point: Gertrude Stein learned to drive so she could...Read More»

The grass, it seems, is always greener on the other side of the highway median. Ask any U.S. driver about his commute, and you’ll likely get a lengthy tirade about the abysmal traffic conditions on his daily drive. Whether you live in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Spokane, New York or even Orlando...Read More»

We've all heard about Baby Boomers and how they're hurtling toward retirement. We've also read numerous studies that show older drivers are more accident prone when they get behind the wheel. So, should we fear the thought of this massive generation tumbling into senior-citizendom (joining their...Read More»