Americans & Their Cars Part 2

January 12, 2010

Interview with Anne Lutz Fernandez, author of the book Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives

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Mike Carruthers:
Having a car gives you freedom, freedom to travel the open road – but that’s not how most of us spend our time in the car.

Anne Lutz Fernandez:
More American’s are getting set up with the kind of driving that we usually do because it’s now more than ever spent in traffic.

Anne Lutz Fernandez, co-author of the book Carjacked, says rush hour in most places stopped being an hour a long time ago.

Rush hour has expanded to 6, 7 hours each day. That’s because people are trying to avoid rush hour and so each morning and evening we’ve made rush hour a couple of hours long.

Now you might think that commuting to work is the big reason for all the traffic congestion, but actually 3 out of 4 car trips are for things other than going to work. In fact in her research Anne found that…

The busiest hour on our nations roads was Saturday at 1:00pm and that reinforces the notion that we’re driving a lot of extra hours to shop.

When you add it all up it costs a lot more to have a car than most people realize.

We found that the average American family is spending $14,000 a year to own their cars. The costs are spread out here and there, we have bought our car with cash and the insurance bill maybe comes every couple of months and repairs come now and again – but we total up how much it’s costing us to own our cars.

 For Part 1 Click here

 To hear the complete unedited interview, click here