booze and cake
probably out cycling
Indeed.
The model American male devotes more than 1600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1600 hours to get 7500 miles: less than five miles per hour.
(Ivan Illich, Energy & Equity)
Wow that really is a rubbish rate of return isn't it. For a comparison I just had a look at my most recent years ride data. Since the beginning of 2016 I've cycled 1691 hours, so I've got nearly 3 years worth of cycling from about the same time investment as the average US motorist does in 1 year. And I've cycled 24,476 miles in that time, so I've cycled further than the average driver too. And that's nearly all in super-slow London with umpteen million traffic lights (that I do always stop before anyone pipes up


The savings have been somewhat offset by the fact I've bought 3 bikes in that time

I was also surprised the average US mileage was 7500 per year, for a such a huge country with an equally huge car dependency, I thought they'd drive more. We drive more than that on this poxy little island.
Its a good job they don't count watching car adverts as part of the figures, would car adverts on Cyclechat mean we are contributing towards our yearly driving mileage? That would be messed up..... Imagine if time spent on bike forums was factored into cyclists average speed, some people would be down to average speeds of your average glacier, remember them......
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