Nate Silver: The End of Car Culture

This is surely one of the signs of the apocalypse: Americans aren’t driving as much as they used to.

In January, according to statistics compiled by the Federal Highway Administration, Americans drove a collective 222 billion miles. That’s a lot of time spent behind the wheel

This is, historically speaking, highly unusual behavior. If there have been two seemingly immutable trends for the American consumer, they’re that he’s eaten more every year and driven more every year. The late 1960s are sometimes assumed to be the height of car culture. But in January 1970, the average American drove only about 393 miles in his vehicle, or about half of what he drove every month until recently.

The one thing that has sometimes caused Americans to put on the brakes is higher gas prices. Although driving is a relatively inelastic activity