Reach for the stars - the American way

I love obscure statistics but I think many people just read or rattle off numbers without any comprehension of what they mean. So when I was perusing the latest figures from the Beureau of Transportation, ostensibly to find out how many people drive cars in the USA (answer: 191 million license holders) one figure stuck in my mind:

In 2003 American drivers drove an estimate total of 2,880,000 million miles.

The first time I read that figure I incorrectly translated the multiplier to mean a total of 2.88 billion miles, but no, its 2.88 trillion miles and that's a very long way, in fact it seemed almost astronomical! A quick trip to Google proved that yes indeed it is astronomical: 2.88 trillion miles is 0.49 light years. That's about a tenth of the way to the nearest star, Alpha Centuri which is 4.4 light years away. Talk about reaching for the stars - Americans are driving themselves to them!

Note that 2003 was a vehicle miles record for the USA, 3% up on the 2000 figure, 34% up on the 1990 figure, 89% up on the 1980 figure, 160% up on the 1970 figure and a staggering 300% more than the 1960 figure. Now isn't that what you call progress? These figures tie in nicely with a great graph from the Senate energy bill that shows historical and predicted oil consumption (see below) with transportation demand and future output from the ANWR drilling. When you look at that you'll realize what a teeny tiny impact digging up ANWR will have and what a massive impact our driving habits have. By 2020 if we'd all just drive 5% less, or our cars used 5% less gas ANWR drilling would be rendered completely superfluous.

Perhaps it is time for everyone to check out The End of Suburbia and get a clue as to what all those miles we're driving mean for society.