(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Memorial Day weekend marks the start of the summer driving season. It's the weekend of the Indianapolis 500, and -- if you happen to be in the jet set -- of the running of Formula One's Monaco Grand Prix. There's no better time to take measure of the state of America's love affair with the automobile. And no better way to celebrate that with a roadtrip. In the United States more than 31 million Americans will hop into their cars for a getaway this weekend, with the average trip adding nearly 700 miles to the odometer. For folks staying closer to home, a common destination will be the auto dealership. Dealers forsee big sales this weekend, with the industry on track to move 15 million cars in 2013, up 6%.
All told, over the three-day weekend Americans will drive on the order of 25 billion miles. In doing so we'll burn through about 1.25 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel. We'll shell out a collective $4.6 billion for all that go-juice.
Gasoline might still seem perennially expensive to anyone who remembers paying less than a buck a gallon back in the 1980s. But today's average nationwide price of $3.67 for a gallon of unleaded is 4 cents cheaper than a year ago. California, with its mandated ultra-low-emissions gasoline, naturally pays the highest price at $3.95 a gallon. Surprisingly, the second-highest is the Midwest, at $3.87, up 24 cents over this time last year due to a series of refinery outtages.
Americans reduced their driving by about 10% during the recession, but appear to have bottomed out. Total miles driven in the past year is expected to be up .13%, or about 3 billion miles, to 2.9 trillion. That's barely changed from a decade ago.
What has changed, however, is how much gasoline we're using. A lot less. According to the Energy Information Administration, the average daily demand for gasoline in January and February of this year was 8.3 million barrels per day (about 350 million gallons). That is way below the all-time high point of 9.6 million bpd in July of 2007. To find a two-month period when we used less gasoline than that, I had to look all the way back to early 2001.
Refiners however, are keeping their plants operating at capacity. So the result is that the United States has what can only be called a gasoline glut. We've got enough gasoline left over that the U.S. is now exporting the stuff at an unprecedented rate of about 500,000 barrels, or 21 million gallons, per day. What's more, we're meeting more of our supply needs with domestic oil supplies, having slashed crude imports in half. That's keeping tens of billions of dollars a year from flowing out of the country.
And it's going to get even better. Americans drive 240 million cars and light trucks. At current sales volumes of 15 million units a year we'll replace the entire fleet in about 16 years. And because cars keep getting more fuel efficient, by the time we've done so U.S. gasoline demand could be slashed by a further 25%. According to the Michigan Transportation Research Institute the average car sold this year gets 24.5 miles per gallon. That's a record, and up 20% over 2007.
Fuel efficiency standards are only going higher. The Obama administration has finalized new rules that will mandate 54.4 mpg for cars and light trucks by 2025. That's double the efficiency of the average car today. What's more, these more efficient cars will be a great hedge against rising oil prices. Given that the average driver logs 13,500 miles behind the wheel each year, if your car gets 20 miles a gallon then you're burning through 675 gallons of gas and spending roughly $2,500 (at current gas prices) for the pleasure. Trade for a car that does twice the mpg and gas would have to cost more than $7 a gallon before your budget noticed the difference.
One ironic drawback: as our cars become more efficient, our highways could become crummier and crummier. That's because highway improvements are funded primarily through money collected in taxes on gasoline -- currently 18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline and ethanol and 24.4 cents for diesel. The fewer gallons we need, the less is collected in taxes, and the less available to pay for the roughly $45 billion a year we spend on highway construction and repair. As a result, the Federal Highway Trust Fund is going broke. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the account will rack up a $6 billion shortfall in 2015, growing each year to a $92 billion hole by 2023. Congress has been, and can continue to direct money to fill the gap. Increasing gasoline taxes will not be politically palatable, considering that it is a regressive tax, inflicting the most pain on lower income families with less fuel efficient cars who live farther away from work. But the cash gotta come from somewhere. So every time you crunch through a pothole this weekend, think about what makes more sense: charging higher gas taxes or slapping a hefty federal sales tax on high-end luxury cars?
Higher taxes aside, it's not only getting cheaper to drive, but safer as well. Unless you're a stupid teenager. A recent headline fretted that highway deaths increased last year by 5.3% to 34,080, the first increase since 2005. The increase was enough to push up the motor vehicle fatality rate from 1 death per 100 million miles driven to 1.16 deaths. Some blame attention-addled youths, figuring that texting while driving causes as many as 3,000 deaths a year, more than drunk driving. The deadliest state to drive in, with 2,500 car and motorcycle fatalities: Texas.
Any highway death is terrible, and if the recent fatality rate trend doesn't reverse itself concerned citizens might end up pushing for more draconian laws on cell phone use in cars. But there's truly no need to get too worked up about highway deaths. It's clearly never been safer to be in a car. The most dangerous time to drive was way back at the dawn of the automotive age. Consider that in 1921 two dozen people died per 100 million miles driven. Though more and more people died as car ownership expanded (peaking at more than 54,000 dead in 1972), what matters is that the fatality rate per 100 million miles driven has plunged, down to 1.16 per 100 million miles today. With computer-aided breaking and even driverless cars, that rate will fall further.
The best way to stay safe on the highway this summer? Stay in your car. Motorcyclists make up a disproportionate share of highway fatalities -- 15% of the total, or 5,000 last year. Per mile traveled, motorcyclists are 30 times more likely to be killed in a traffic accident than are car passengers.
The death toll is no doubt heightened by the fact that 31 states have no helmet laws. As a civil libertarian, I'm no advocate of such laws -- if people think it's worth dying to enjoy the thrill of the wind in their hair and bugs in their mouth, that's up to them.
Motorcyclist Philip Contos might wish he hadn't been so stubborn. In 2011 he was riding bareheaded during a protest of New York's helmet law when he lost control of his bike, hit his head on the road and died from a skull fracture.
So there you have it -- plenty of stuff to argue about on that long roadtrip. Your talking points:
-- Ain't America great! We've got oodles of gasoline and thanks to efficient cars we'll be using less and less of it in the years to come.
-- How to fix the Federal Highway Trust Fund? Higher gas taxes or taxes on luxury cars? Discuss.
-- Whatever happened to the good ol' days when teenagers died from drunk driving instead of texting?
-- Should the government protect people stupid enough to ride motorcycles by forcing them to wear helmets, or let them be free to kill themselves?
-- What's better: Indycar or Formula One?
Enjoy the ride!
