The Oil Drum: Hurricanes increase driving, gas prices decrease it

So the Federal Highway Administration has been catching up, after a long hiatus, and now has put out October numbers as well as September numbers for vehicle miles traveled. This allows us to see that the combination of hurricanes and high gas prices had an effect, with miles dropping 1.6% from October 2004 to October 2005. October was even below the 2003 number for that month (although that last looks particularly high). It will be interesting to see how much of a recovery there was in November and December as gasoline prices have moderated somewhat. Here’s a plot of Percentage change between monthly VMT in 2005 and the same month in 2004, by state, for five hardest hit and five most favored states.
Graphs, charts, and thoughts after the jump to The Oil Drum.