Road trips actually suck and you've been tricked.

So the other week I went with my wife and two dogs to visit our in-laws. It’s important to note that we are a little less than 600 miles from each other.

Now, because of my constant obsession with not driving and taking mass or public transportation, the missus and I live in a transit hub city. There is an Amtrak station, a regional airport, and a couple bus stations that go out of town if you’re feeling squirrely. All of this is within five miles of our home, gove or take a mile.

The In-laws live in a city where owning a car is a hard requirement. The closest train station is about 100 miles away and the closest airport is about 60 miles away. Driving, we figured, was the most reasonable option to get there. Well, it’s an 11 hour drive, each way. According to Google Maps, it’s about a 9.25 hour drive, but that’s not factoring the reality that humans are making this trip in vehicles, and both need fuel of some sort eventually. Not to mention, a break.

Perhaps a useless piece of trivia for a trip like this: The US Army does not allow someone to drive 8 hours straight without getting a hotel. Something about being bad for you physically and mentally.

Let me get to the point: US Americans have been fooled into thinking road trips are “fun” or “good”.

They aren’t. Oh, by all means you can have fun with them, I suppose. Have a bunch of fun friend or family conversations. Eat a bunch of overly salted and high cholesterol snacks.Enjoy the sights as you zip by them on the interstate and/or freeway. So on, and I am sure, so forth.

Here’s the thing: If you enjoy road trips, you’ve been fooled. For every PRO to a single roadtrip, there is an equal if not more damning CON. Let’s go over a couple: PRO:

1. It’s cheaper than flying.

2. It’s faster versus taking X form of transit.

3. We have more freedom on the road.

4. We can stop and buy the food we want

5. I already own the car to do it.

Cool. Those are some fine PROs. Let’s get into the CONs in order of each PRO:

CON:

1. Yes, when you factor in PURELY THE COST OF FUEL for most road trips, gasoline is going to be cheaper to purchase. Let’s say you have a car that gets 30 miles to the gallon on the highway and it has a 15 gallon tank. At an average cost of $4 per gallon, you would need to fill up about 5 times. That’s about $420 to make it from one end of the United States to the opposite end at 3,000 miles. It’s going to be near non-existent if you use an electric or hybrid car. All of this is true…so long as absolutely nothing goes wrong. Now, for most people, probably nothing will go wrong. But car accidents and breakdowns are not only possible on a long road trip, they happen more often than people want to admit. Most people, in an effort to possibly avoid anxiety, do not like looking at the statistics for car accidents. Well, I like stats and I don’t want to hide from them.

It’s a little over 42,000 people a year (in 2022), in just the United States, die by motor vehicle accidents.

This is more people that die per year by motor vehicle than the number of people that die by firearm in the USA, which is 38,000 (in 2022). This is taking into account that, compared to guns, cars are heavily regulated and we still have a high loss rate. You wanna know why that plane ticket is more expensive? Because in 2022, 158 people died out of 32.2 MILLION FLIGHTS. Yeah, jet fuel is expensive and the regulations are extensive, but you are way more likely, by orders of magnitude, to make it to your destination via plane than car. It’s sort of madness when you look at the raw data that says that we let cars exist at all.

Ok let’s not catastrophize. What’s the cost of a tire blow-out while traveling? The cost of towing? What about a non-fatal wreck? Car wrecks are, of course, way more common than car deaths via wreck. How about if it has a simple mechanical issue while you are traveling? Lots of factors go into the cost just to get upfront, as well. How much is the car? How much is insurance? How much is it to maintain? All of those thousands of dollars of costs have been passed on to YOU, so that you feel a sense of “freedom.” So yes, if you only look at the cost of gas, driving is cheap. That’s as silly as only looking at the cost of home ownership and saying “well, the mortgage is cheaper, so clearly that’s the better option” while ignoring every single over-detail about homeownership (taxes, upkeep, maintenance, etc).

2. Similar to the above CON, if you only look at a map on Google Maps and say “well this is faster” then…sure. Maybe. Depends. First thing first: I don’t love air travel either because I frankly think it is way too cheap for how much pollutants it puts in the air. That out of the way, I hear the argument of “once you factor in airport security and going from an airport and connections, driving is faster.” This, in my opinion, is sort of a “driving 1 mile to work is faster than walking there.” K. Cool. Awesome. Driving probably 2-3 minutes is indeed faster than walking 19-20 minutes.Or biking 5 minutes As noted with the possibility of wrecks, deaths, mechanical failures, etc, is “faster” actually “safer” or more cost efficient once you factor in all of the costs. Trick question: the answer is it’s not.

Speed =/= Safety

3. This one is...interesting to me. Americans have a weird desire for “road freedom.” It also completely contradicts point #2. If you want to make a bunch of random stops on a road trip, then speed is not a factor. I’ll be honest, the classic American Road Trip wins in the category of just doing random stops at random places. It is a purposefully inefficient way of going from A to B, so no argument there.

4. Ok, I legitimately hate #4. The food you typically buy on a road trip is not good for you. It’s garbage. I know this, because the offerings, depending on where you are traveling, are slim and dumb. You almost need to pack your own food beforehand if you want to eat something that doesn’t have three times your daily recommended dosage of salt and sugar. Not ideal. If you believe that being able to pull over somewhere to eat cheap food is a bonus, I got nothing for you.

5. The last point is fun. Proclaiming that you own a car and thus it makes the road trip more efficient from a cost saving perspective is sort of taking the perspective of “I already paid XXX money for this and it’s my right to put what I might need to use for my livelihood at risk with the rest of my family and friends inside of it.” If you feel comfortable with that without the fear of an errant semi-trailer truck removing everything you love and hold dear from the world because the driver was too tired, then I suppose that is your prerogative.

Well, you might ask, what is your solution if you’re so smart.

I might have said this a couple times, but I will again be maybe even more clear: ANYTHING. Literally any other form of transportation is safer than driving a car. I am not daft enough to say you should bike maybe 600 miles. If you are in the USA and taking the Amtrak is an option, do it. If you can fly, seriously consider that. If you can take a bus, maybe play with that option (I have been on nationwide buses like Greyhound before. If someone says they don’t want to take one…I get it.)

All of this is situational. I have a personal rule of thumb that says “If Google Maps says it’s 4 hours by car, look at plane tickets.” Also obviously, not everyone can afford plane tickets. Most everyone can actually afford Amtrak tickets, if available in your area dn depending on where you are traveling.

Long rat is long: Build more trains, USA. I know you can do it.