2010 Car Usage

I had so much fun reporting on car trips in 2009 that I decided to do it again for 2010. For the year, I took 80 trips totaling 252 legs, plus was a passenger on 58 other legs, for a total of 310 legs, or less than one a day. (Remember that a leg is any time I go from Point A to Point B, so if I take the kids to the zoo and gas up on the way, that's three legs driven; or if my friend gives me a ride home from the ballgame and we stop by his rental to check on something before dropping me off, that's two legs ridden.)

This doesn't count out-of-town trips. Not surprisingly, I was well over one a day in car-oriented places like the Bay Area and the Jersey Shore, and didn't even step foot in a car when I went to places like Baltimore, Harrisburg, DC, and Manhattan.

You can see from the monthly chart above that there were two spikes up: March and June. I don't quite remember why March was so car-intensive - it was when Amy was taking night classes, so I would do double school drop-off and pick-up one day a week, but that was true in January, February, and April, as well. We must have gone to Please Touch Museum a lot that month. June was when Amy sprained her ankle, so there was more shuttling via automobile that month.

Tracking and then monitoring car trips is surely a good way to be mindful of how much you drive. I encourage you to do the same. But you may not find as much pleasure as I do in nerdily making charts to display the results.