How many miles driven per year?

[roomtempmayo]

The BTS says that the average driver in the US drives 14,500 miles per year (2017 numbers).

How do you and your household compare?

I phrased the poll above as the average for all drivers in the house to try and smooth out some noise, like one person doing 90% of the household driving. 

I found it interesting that 45% of miles driven trips are for "shopping and errands," while only 15% are commuting.

Here's the summary, and you can find the data in the link on the left: https://www.bts.gov/statistical-products/surveys/national-household-travel-survey-daily-travel-quick-facts

Geographic variation is interesting to me, but also probably as expected:

[RWD]

Over the last four years we've averaged 1,700 miles per driver per year. I work from home, my wife can commute by bike, and we go grocery shopping once a week. The only reason the miles are even that high is because of periodic road trips.

[NotJen]

Well, as of the beginning of the month, I've owned my car for 10 years and I have 111k miles, so average 11,100 miles per year.  Plus maybe 500-1000 in rental car miles per year.

Post-retirement with no daily commute should have cut that number down, but it didn't because I chose to drive 4,000-5,000 miles RT for fun summer work for the last 2 years.

ETA more details:

My commute miles were approx 3,600/yr when I was working (32% of total).

Otherwise, I was a pretty inefficient 1-person household, with very little "carpooling" for shopping or activities.

[roomtempmayo]

Looking at the map above again, it's clear that there's a general rural/urban split.

But all rural areas don't drive equally.

The plains states from North Dakota down to Texas set the curve, but their even less populous neighbors to the west drive less.  For example, both Arizona and New Mexico drive significantly less than their neighbors in north Texas.

In spite of California's reputation for driving and traffic, only a handful of areas in California rack up the miles of a typical driver in the Oklahoma panhandle, or many other areas of the plains.

Looking at Wisconsin and Michigan, the more densely populated southern areas of both states drive more than their less densely populated northern areas.

Any guesses about why there isn't more of a correlation between density and mileage?

[Michael in ABQ]

Looking at the map above again, it's clear that there's a general rural/urban split.

But all rural areas don't drive equally.

The plains states from North Dakota down to Texas set the curve, but their even less populous neighbors to the west drive less.  For example, both Arizona and New Mexico drive significantly less than their neighbors in north Texas.

In spite of California's reputation for driving and traffic, only a handful of areas in California rack up the miles of a typical driver in the Oklahoma panhandle, or many other areas of the plains.

Looking at Wisconsin and Michigan, the more densely populated southern areas of both states drive more than their less densely populated northern areas.

Any guesses about why there isn't more of a correlation between density and mileage?

In west Texas it could be 20-30 miles to larger town, or 50+ to get to a city that has more than a handful of stores. But you're probably driving 50-70mph the whole time with essentially no traffic. In a big city it might take an hour to drive 10 miles. There was a family that went to our kid's school, and they drove 45 miles each way as they lived on a farm out in the country. So just to get their kids to and from school was 180 miles a day of driving. Now it's only 130 miles a day as they moved to a high school that's a bit closer.


On a normal day if I drop the kids off at school, go to work, then go home it's just under 50 miles (90%+ on the freeway). If I go back and pick up the kids from school and then go home, it brings it up to about 80 miles. Our kid's school is about 25 miles away but it's a straight shot on the freeway so if we don't leave too late, I can average 70-75 almost the whole way and get there in about 25 minutes.

School/work commute is definitely 90% of our miles. Other than that, it's one or two trips on the weekend to church and someplace like Costco - both about 10 miles away.

[bacchi]

I've seen other data sets where some of the empty, larger, western states (like MT) have the most miles per driver (per vehicle?). The BLS results use a survey and I wonder if the other results pull from the DMV.

In any case, this year it's ~2000 miles per driver. That includes inter-city travel to see family, errands, and regional sports events. Last year was many more miles because of a road trip.



Eta: The FHA VMT does show, per capita, more miles driven in WY than any other state. By far. However, the data collection makes any conclusions difficult.

The reports are based on individual state reports on traffic data counts collected through permanent automatic traffic recorders on public roadways.

Obviously, a state that draws a lot of tourists will have more VMT "per capita."

[mspym]

Our car just hit 21,000km at 7 years so averaging 3000km/1865m p.a.

[Zikoris]

Neither of us have ever had drivers licenses or cars, so zero. I think setting up your life to be car-free is a great health and environmental choice.

[Fomerly known as something]

My personal car is driven about 6,000 miles or less a year.  My work car is another story, but work has a car for me to drive for a reason.  Overall I’m probably above average.

[Dave1442397]

I work from home and have put 449 miles on my car so far this year.

My wife commutes, and drives around 8k miles per year.

My daughter drives to school some days, and to work, etc. I think she does maybe 3k miles per year.

[Blue Skies]

I WFH and DH commutes by bike most of the year.  However, we still average about 16,000 miles per year.  Family on both sides live several states away and we drive there several times a year. 

[sonofsven]

I'm just under 20k, I used to be over 25k but I've been working closer to home.
My (self employed) business miles are deductible, my ratio is around 80% business/20% personal.

[BlueMR2]

My wife seems to run around 6,000 miles a year now between commuting, shopping, and trips to visit family.

Me, I'm probably going to hit around 2,000 for this year, but the amount of driving I do dropped drastically back in May.  I'm just short of 400 miles on my car since the oil change early July...  Maybe 400 miles on the motorcycle all year.  I'm probably going to be the 1000 mile a year camp moving forward.

Back in the day I was doing 25k+across 2 vehicles and was doing oil changes every 6 weeks or so...  I had a lot of fun with all that driving, but it was so very expensive.

[mizzourah2006]

We are probably about 14k across two cars and two drivers, but that nvolves at least 4 700 mile round-trips to visit family. I put about 4-5k on my truck per year, but I have a hybrid work situation and bike to work many days. My wife drives more because she has to take the kids to daycare and school as well as drives to work and we use her car for road trips because it gets much better gas mileage.

Ive had my truck since July of 2013 and it has 47k miles and we've had my wife's since November 2015 and it has about 75k miles.

[MaybeBabyMustache]

We're about 6,000/year, and we have pretty close commutes & two kids in lots & lots of activities. One of our teens just got his license, so interested to see how this changes. Our kids have previously biked to school (about 8 miles, roundtrip) & no bus service is provided. They now drive, so small bump on mileage there.

[chemistk]

Looking at the map above again, it's clear that there's a general rural/urban split.

But all rural areas don't drive equally.

The plains states from North Dakota down to Texas set the curve, but their even less populous neighbors to the west drive less.  For example, both Arizona and New Mexico drive significantly less than their neighbors in north Texas.

In spite of California's reputation for driving and traffic, only a handful of areas in California rack up the miles of a typical driver in the Oklahoma panhandle, or many other areas of the plains.

Looking at Wisconsin and Michigan, the more densely populated southern areas of both states drive more than their less densely populated northern areas.

Any guesses about why there isn't more of a correlation between density and mileage?

I personally know many of those areas in MI, as well as the same types of areas in PA. Many of those counties are full of very low density not self-sufficient housing - lots of ag but even more 3bed ranchers and 2,3,4,5,and 6+ bed cabins -> woods mansions on 1-10 acres of property. I know, personally, quite a few people who will commute 50-100 miles each way per day (at least pre-Covid) living in those areas.

And even if they're not commuting to work, any retail at all other than gas stations and dollar general is usually a 30 minute drive in any direction.

Conversely, especially in the upper part of the lower peninsula of Michigan (and I assume is true elsewhere), the people who live in those areas work on their property or are relatively close to work. Many people in those areas will be self sufficient on food for a month or more at a time, so when they do go shopping at larger retailers, it's a huge trip. There are also many more general stores in those super rural areas which carry enough essentials that those people don't need to make a 45 minute run somewhere to buy more ibuprofen.

[Just Joe]

We have a grown offspring that probably drives 10K just because they like to drive. Back and forth across town to work and to socialize. Not many out of town trips.

We have a HS age offspring that probably drives 3K-4K optimistically. We're ten easy minutes from school, all other trips are simply for fun in our small town.

DW and I are homebodies these days. We also carpool. We probably drive 6K-8K in a year. Trips to see family are a couple of hours each way.

We've stayed home alot since the beginning of COVID. In the coming months I want to get out and travel a little. Little weekend trips like we used to do when we were first married. Camping, sightseeing, etc. Its been easy for us to just spend the weekends recovering from work and assisting our HS offspring with their HS activities. DW is also active in local community events. Meanwhile I'm the resident maintenance guy - yard, cars, house, etc. By the time all that is done, we just want to sit and veg.

[Photograph 51]

The BTS says that the average driver in the US drives 14,500 miles per year (2017 numbers).

I found it interesting that 45% of miles driven are for "shopping and errands," while only 15% are commuting.

How is this possible?  Fifteen percent of 14,500 is 2175.  A full time worker needs to get to their job about 240 days per year.  That would mean that the average person lives 4.5 miles from their job (9 miles per day.)  I know there are many people working from home, retired, unemployed, homemakers, using non-car forms of commuting, etc., but that still seems low.  Many people have massive car commutes and many more have 10, 20, or 30 mile commutes.  I have a hard time believing that 4.5 miles is the average commute.  It seems like it would be higher.

[simonsez]

I do a fair bit of driving for family members in their vehicles often times when we're together somewhere away from our houses (1k-4k).  E.g. I just recently drove 120 miles in my grandfather's van coming back from hunting.  I work from home and don't have a commute (0k).  Wife's commute + any household errands we run is another 8k-10k.  Also, it varies quite a bit from year-to-year how many miles are put on our vehicle for leisure (3k-10k).  E.g. Driving to Glacier NP one year but flying for a trip somewhere in another year can be 4000 miles difference all told even if you held the number of trips in a year constant (which it certainly isn't anyway).  Also, some vacations have zero driving beyond the to-and-fro whereas others might have quite a bit. 

Still, even in a driving-heavy year I can't imagine across all vehicles where the miles driven by the two of us would exceed the per person average referenced in this thread.  Must be lots of long commutes and those that drive while working (semis, uber, food delivery, etc.) that really drive up the average.  Perhaps the median is a bit lower than the mean.  For us I guess we'd be somewhere between 6k and 12k on a per driver basis with <9k happening much more frequently than the >9k years.  It was higher when we lived in DC (wife's commute was longer and we'd drive across the country to see family and friends multiple times per year).

Not all driving miles are created equal.  We will continue to work on reducing our miles for work and errands but don't have much worry about leisure driving miles and that's to say nothing of ICE MPG or EV or how-the-overall-electrical-grid-is-powered considerations.

I agree @Photograph 51 that it sounds weird but the link (which is from 2017 and says it references 2001-2002 data BTW, unless they have some misleading formatting and the 2001-2002 reference is only for the Men Vs Women miles driven statistic at the bottom which is already a bit wonky as it has miles for women but minutes for men listed) says trips and not miles.  They define a trip as going from one point to another on a single day.  If you have a 30 mile commute (2 trips) and also go back out to the grocery store, library, and post office (4 trips) that are all within a mile of your home, you can see that the majority of miles could still be commute-related but the % of trips are mostly not commute-related.

[shuffler]

The BTS says that the average driver in the US drives 14,500 miles per year (2017 numbers).

I found it interesting that 45% of miles driven are for "shopping and errands," while only 15% are commuting.

How is this possible?  Fifteen percent of 14,500 is 2175.  A full time worker needs to get to their job about 240 days per year.  That would mean that the average person lives 4.5 miles from their job (9 miles per day.)  I know there are many people working from home, retired, unemployed, homemakers, using non-car forms of commuting, etc., but that still seems low.  Many people have massive car commutes and many more have 10, 20, or 30 mile commutes.  I have a hard time believing that 4.5 miles is the average commute.  It seems like it would be higher.

It's a misquote.  The link says (emphasis mine):  15 percent of daily trips are taken for commuting

So one might imagine that it's ~5 trips per week per commuting adult.  If you can find another ~28 trips through the week (like taking kids to/from school, or groceries, going out on the weekend, etc) then that'd be 15% of trips going towards commuting.

It may also be worth noting that it's really talking about "travel" and "trips" in general.  It doesn't mean car-commuting exclusively.  So these trips may be made by bus, or bike, or foot.

[AMandM]

Our one car averages about 10,000 miles per year, so 5,000 per driver if I understand the way OP phrased the question. This is despite the fact that I mostly WFH or walk to work and DH mostly commutes by bike. But we drive my elderly father all over the place multiple times a week.

[roomtempmayo]

It's a misquote.  The link says (emphasis mine):  15 percent of daily trips are taken for commuting

Good catch.  I must have been reading quickly between the mileage stats and trips stats.  I'll see if I can edit the original post.

[401Killer]

Average of 22,000 miles a year for the last 3 years (after moving).

So glad my car gets crazy good gas mileage at 50-60mpg in a diesel manual.

[roomtempmayo]

I personally know many of those areas in MI, as well as the same types of areas in PA. Many of those counties are full of very low density not self-sufficient housing - lots of ag but even more 3bed ranchers and 2,3,4,5,and 6+ bed cabins -> woods mansions on 1-10 acres of property. I know, personally, quite a few people who will commute 50-100 miles each way per day (at least pre-Covid) living in those areas.

And even if they're not commuting to work, any retail at all other than gas stations and dollar general is usually a 30 minute drive in any direction.

Conversely, especially in the upper part of the lower peninsula of Michigan (and I assume is true elsewhere), the people who live in those areas work on their property or are relatively close to work. Many people in those areas will be self sufficient on food for a month or more at a time, so when they do go shopping at larger retailers, it's a huge trip. There are also many more general stores in those super rural areas which carry enough essentials that those people don't need to make a 45 minute run somewhere to buy more ibuprofen.

This ^ makes lots of sense to me.  Sorta-rural areas drive a lot to get places.  Truly isolated areas don't have as many places to drive without it being a major lift and so tend to be more self-sufficient.

I suspect there may also be a class divide as well.  Lots of the sorta-rural areas of the eastern half of the country are full of new, reliable cars and people with money to provide their care and feeding.  In the genuinely isolated areas, it seems like there are lots more cars in questionable running order.

Also, to @Michael in ABQ makes a good point about freeways making it easier to drive large distances.  On the map at the beginning, you can see bands of higher mileage going east-west along the I-94/90/80/70 across ND/SD/NE/KS.

[Radagast]

Looking at the map above again, it's clear that there's a general rural/urban split.

But all rural areas don't drive equally.

The plains states from North Dakota down to Texas set the curve, but their even less populous neighbors to the west drive less.  For example, both Arizona and New Mexico drive significantly less than their neighbors in north Texas.

In spite of California's reputation for driving and traffic, only a handful of areas in California rack up the miles of a typical driver in the Oklahoma panhandle, or many other areas of the plains.

Looking at Wisconsin and Michigan, the more densely populated southern areas of both states drive more than their less densely populated northern areas.

Any guesses about why there isn't more of a correlation between density and mileage?

I personally know many of those areas in MI, as well as the same types of areas in PA. Many of those counties are full of very low density not self-sufficient housing - lots of ag but even more 3bed ranchers and 2,3,4,5,and 6+ bed cabins -> woods mansions on 1-10 acres of property. I know, personally, quite a few people who will commute 50-100 miles each way per day (at least pre-Covid) living in those areas.

And even if they're not commuting to work, any retail at all other than gas stations and dollar general is usually a 30 minute drive in any direction.

Conversely, especially in the upper part of the lower peninsula of Michigan (and I assume is true elsewhere), the people who live in those areas work on their property or are relatively close to work. Many people in those areas will be self sufficient on food for a month or more at a time, so when they do go shopping at larger retailers, it's a huge trip. There are also many more general stores in those super rural areas which carry enough essentials that those people don't need to make a 45 minute run somewhere to buy more ibuprofen.

This ^ makes lots of sense to me.  Sorta-rural areas drive a lot to get places.  Truly isolated areas don't have as many places to drive without it being a major lift and so tend to be more self-sufficient.

I suspect there may also be a class divide as well.  Lots of the sorta-rural areas of the eastern half of the country are full of new, reliable cars and people with money to provide their care and feeding.  In the genuinely isolated areas, it seems like there are lots more cars in questionable running order.

Also, to @Michael in ABQ makes a good point about freeways making it easier to drive large distances.  On the map at the beginning, you can see bands of higher mileage going east-west along the I-94/90/80/70 across ND/SD/NE/KS.

I think a lot of this is the "rural"-"frontier" split, which I think is largely down to whether local climate and geography can support intensive agriculture. The difference is when you leave a town do you see farms and human habitations, or wilderness? Rural people are low population density, but they are uniformly spread out to work the fields, and thus rurals must drive a long distance (in the modern era) to a population center. Post-agricultural areas tend to retain this property. Frontier areas are even lower population density, but they are more clumpy. Economic activity is centered in discrete population centers based on centers of commerce or mineral deposits, but outside town there is little of economic value so there are essentially no people there, hence less need to commute. I recently saw a graphic about the woes of rural places which contained the phrase "country roads" and included Alaska and Nevada, but that is not accurate because most of the land area in those two states simply doesn't have roads.

And no, cars aren't in questionable order at a higher rate in far away places. I'd actually say it is the opposite: people who live in the far middle of nowhere can't afford the questionable rides that city people can get away with.

[Radagast]

We put on about 7,500 miles per year per vehicle for two vehicles. About 10,000 of that is commuting, 2,000 errands, 3,000 fun/road trips if I had to guess. When we went to two vehicles to support two commutes the 7,500 value simply doubled.

[roomtempmayo]

So one might imagine that it's ~5 trips per week per commuting adult.  If you can find another ~28 trips through the week (like taking kids to/from school, or groceries, going out on the weekend, etc) then that'd be 15% of trips going towards commuting.

Yeah, even framed as trips the ratio seems off to me, but maybe I'm just out of touch.

In a two parent, five day a week commuting household, that means they're taking 66ish non-commuting trips weekly.  That seems like an incredible amount of running around.

However, two parents both commuting five days a week seems to be increasingly rare, even if I still think of it as normal (children of the Reagan era raise your hands).  So maybe if there are only four commutes happening for two parents each week, the numbers start to seem more reasonable.

And no, cars aren't in questionable order at a higher rate in far away places. I'd actually say it is the opposite: people who live in the far middle of nowhere can't afford the questionable rides that city people can get away with.

I wonder if we're envisioning different sorts of rural places.  In the ungentrified rural West outside of the economic halos of cities, where there aren't legions of Tacomas pulling drift boats, I still see lots of 20 year old GM cars on the roads.  Perhaps not more than you see in the core of an urban area, but more than I tend to see in exurban bedroom commuter communities.

[Michael in ABQ]

I think a lot of this is the "rural"-"frontier" split, which I think is largely down to whether local climate and geography can support intensive agriculture. The difference is when you leave a town do you see farms and human habitations, or wilderness? Rural people are low population density, but they are uniformly spread out to work the fields, and thus rurals must drive a long distance (in the modern era) to a population center. Post-agricultural areas tend to retain this property. Frontier areas are even lower population density, but they are more clumpy. Economic activity is centered in discrete population centers based on centers of commerce or mineral deposits, but outside town there is little of economic value so there are essentially no people there, hence less need to commute. I recently saw a graphic about the woes of rural places which contained the phrase "country roads" and included Alaska and Nevada, but that is not accurate because most of the land area in those two states simply doesn't have roads.

And no, cars aren't in questionable order at a higher rate in far away places. I'd actually say it is the opposite: people who live in the far middle of nowhere can't afford the questionable rides that city people can get away with.

Here in New Mexico, there is literally nothing between most towns and cities. You can drive 50+ miles on an interstate or highway and you will not pass a single house or farm because there's no water and no reason for anyone to live there. In the eastern part of the state, you'll get a few isolated ranches, but they could stretch over 100,000 acres with just a handful of people. There are also very large areas with no roads.

I recently took a bus to central Kansas and through the Texas panhandle and especially once we were in Kansas there was literally a town every 5-10 miles and roads running everywhere between farms. Those towns might only have a couple hundred people (and a grain elevator) but there were some houses and people between the towns as well. Also, everything in between was usually being farmed - either with crops or livestock. If you lived in one of those towns and wanted to get gas the nearest station might be two towns over as there's little or no commercial activity aside from the grain elevator and a feed store in most of them. If you wanted to get to a Walmart or equivalent, it might be 50 miles away.

[Radagast]

I wonder if we're envisioning different sorts of rural places.  In the ungentrified rural West outside of the economic halos of cities, where there aren't legions of Tacomas pulling drift boats, I still see lots of 20 year old GM cars on the roads.  Perhaps not more than you see in the core of an urban area, but more than I tend to see in exurban bedroom commuter communities.

I've spent a large amount of time in the ungentrified rural west, and essentially none whatsoever in gentrified or commuter exurbs. But admittedly, I've lived in the richest ungentrified parts where median household income is higher than most exurbs, so probably some bias there. It can be astonishing how poor eastern Oregon can appear for example. Still, I don't think poverty or vehicle reliability are the reason why people in New Mexico drive less than people in rural Texas.

[Radagast]

I think a lot of this is the "rural"-"frontier" split, which I think is largely down to whether local climate and geography can support intensive agriculture. The difference is when you leave a town do you see farms and human habitations, or wilderness? Rural people are low population density, but they are uniformly spread out to work the fields, and thus rurals must drive a long distance (in the modern era) to a population center. Post-agricultural areas tend to retain this property. Frontier areas are even lower population density, but they are more clumpy. Economic activity is centered in discrete population centers based on centers of commerce or mineral deposits, but outside town there is little of economic value so there are essentially no people there, hence less need to commute. I recently saw a graphic about the woes of rural places which contained the phrase "country roads" and included Alaska and Nevada, but that is not accurate because most of the land area in those two states simply doesn't have roads.

And no, cars aren't in questionable order at a higher rate in far away places. I'd actually say it is the opposite: people who live in the far middle of nowhere can't afford the questionable rides that city people can get away with.

Here in New Mexico, there is literally nothing between most towns and cities. You can drive 50+ miles on an interstate or highway and you will not pass a single house or farm because there's no water and no reason for anyone to live there. In the eastern part of the state, you'll get a few isolated ranches, but they could stretch over 100,000 acres with just a handful of people. There are also very large areas with no roads.

I recently took a bus to central Kansas and through the Texas panhandle and especially once we were in Kansas there was literally a town every 5-10 miles and roads running everywhere between farms. Those towns might only have a couple hundred people (and a grain elevator) but there were some houses and people between the towns as well. Also, everything in between was usually being farmed - either with crops or livestock. If you lived in one of those towns and wanted to get gas the nearest station might be two towns over as there's little or no commercial activity aside from the grain elevator and a feed store in most of them. If you wanted to get to a Walmart or equivalent, it might be 50 miles away.

Exactly! In Kansas there might be a Walmart every 40 miles, while the average customer lives 15 miles away. In New Mexico there might be a Walmart every 60 miles, but the average customer lives 10 miles away, to throw out some made up numbers which I think illustrate the concept.

[Arbitrage]

We only own one car, and I e-bike everywhere unless I'm taking the family (or the kayak).  Both WFH now.  I do most of the errands, though my wife does drive around our small city a fair amount for kids' stuff or seeing friends.  Probably 5000 per year, cut it in half for two drivers.

[JLee]

I drive a lot, averaging nearly 24k miles a year across all vehicles. I had a 6500mi road trip last year, and many 500+ mile round trips to see family & friends (and one road trip of nearly 1k miles driving a new-to-me car home).  My SO barely drives at all, as we typically take my vehicle anywhere we're going together. Adding her to the average would nearly cut it in half, as she's also almost exclusively WFH.

[kanga1622]

We've owned our car for 8.5 years and put on just over 60,000 miles. So roughly 7,000 miles a year. We live in a town of 10,000 so do have a Walmart/gas stations/grocery store but all family is 45+ miles one way as well as the "city" for clothes/school shopping. We are a one car family have have been for about 20 years.

[GuitarStv]

Since covid we've been just a little over 3000.

[YK-Phil]

We are both retired and do not really need a vehicle, but we do a long-ass road trip in our campervan every year from Northern Canada to Mexico where we settled last year, taking our sweet time to visit places along the way. Once we are there, we rarely if ever drive except to do a weekend camping trip to the mountains or a stretch of wild beach. Overall, we clock about 12-14,000 km per year which is still an f-ton of money in our gas-guzzling van.

[cheaplynn]

I'm jealous of everyone's low numbers! DH has three children, living in two different states, and all of our custodial time (at least two weekends a month) takes place in their home states. (Don't get me started on airbnb's new mercenary 'dynamic pricing,' either...) Add on to that a summer vacation road trip (again, with all three children, including pick-ups and drop-offs) and we're looking at a cool 25k miles a year. The only real bright spots are that most weeks I drive 0 miles (I take the bus or walk to commute), and that come next fall, the two older children will be in college and we'll only have ONE state to drive to on a regular basis.

[Sibley]

I have limited sense of how many miles I put on the car. It's got 25k miles, and I bought new in later 2019. But 2020/first half of 2021 had REALLY low mileage for obvious reasons, and easily half the mileage was a couple of trips to my parent's house. My guess is somewhere around 6k a year, but I could be off.

Edit: 25k miles, not 15k. Clearly I don't look at the odometer frequently.

[volleyballer]

Really rough numbers, 18k total mileage, of which 10k was reimbursable work related driving.
Maybe another 10k for DW?

[K_in_the_kitchen]

DH and I drive under 5k miles per year, except for long road trips, but that can vary widely from year to year -- in 2022 we did one long road trip of about 1400 - 1500 miles, but our in town driving was significantly lower, at most 3k miles.  We'll call it 4500 miles total, and that's generous considering there are many weeks where the only driving is 6 miles round trip to the store, and 2 miles round trip to church.

College kid A drives about 2k miles per year + in 2022 the round trip to out of state school (3600) miles, but the trip back next spring will be the last one.  Still that choice will have added 7200 miles to the car over 2 academic years.  For 2022, 5600 miles.

College kid B just got a license this year, and drives 160 miles per week when in school, plus some other driving around that isn't excessive.  I estimate that their driving will be around 6-7k miles in 2023, but for 2022 it'll be about 2700 miles.

So for all of us in 2022, it'll be 12,800 miles, or an average of 3200 miles per person.  I don't find it best to smoothe it out between all drivers, however, because some households our size have 1 or 2 drivers, and some have 4, like us.  In 2019, pre-pandemic and also pre the kid heading to out of state school, we had three drivers and drove about 7k miles per year, which included lots of driving to races. In 2020 we didn't even drive 3k miles.

[Blackeagle]

I’ve owned my current vehicle for seven years and put about 70,000 miles on it.  This is despite not having a commute for half that time due to living within walking distance of work and/or working remotely.  Lots of long-distance road-trip miles.

[Channel-Z]

I've been consistently hitting around 4,500 miles per year. My commute is around 70% of it.

[Sandi_k]

I've put 51k miles on my car in 38 months. So 1350 miles per month?

[FIRE Artist]

Since covid normalized WFH, <1000 per year. I have maintained my stacking destinations driving practices and am not a fan of road trips so expect this to stay the norm. I used to have drive nowhere Sundays, now I try to only drive my car on two days per week.  I can do this because I am SINK so no shuttling tiny humans around.

[NorCal]

I haven't tracked it closely, but made some guesstimates for my emissions budgeting.  This is for our family of 4.

2020 was about 7,000 miles because pandemic.
2021 was our year of family roadtrips.  I'd guess about 16.5k miles, which included drives from CO to CA twice, a camping trip to Yellowstone and Glacier, and few weekend trips to places like Moab and Steamboat Springs.
2022 was around 13-14k, with probably half of that being roadtrips.  The kids also started playing Rugby, which had games spread out an hour away on a number of weekends.

I'm a stay-at-home parent, although I do some consulting work that takes me 30 miles a way a few times a month.  My wife works from home two days a week, and bikes to a train station most other days.  But she has to drive to a more remote office maybe 4-5 times a month.

[Acastus]

Post FIRE, my driving has really dropped.

2020-2021:  5k miles total due to covid restrictions.
2022:  5k including community college commuting last winter and driving my son to college twice this fall.

[FIPurpose]

Been averaging about 8-9k per year the past few years for the family. In that time we did 2 cross country trips. WFH, so we don't need to drive too much and our car seems to need major repair every 3k miles so I think we've avoided most big things like that.

We did a trip to Dallas a while back. That place is so poorly designed, you can't get anywhere or do anything without driving at least 30 miles round trip. The West is much better at designing their cities to be more conducive to a lot fewer miles in the car.

[use2betrix]

Our “regular” weekly driving is what I would consider pretty minimal. I have a 24 mile round trip commute, which is currently 5 days/wk but dropping to 3 days/wk next year. My wife is a SAHM and just drives typical errands within around a 3-5 mile radius.

We do, however, do a lot of vacations by vehicle. We did a 2400 mile round trip this summer and are doing another in two weeks. Every couple months we’ll typically do a trip to a nearby city that’s around 300-400 miles round trip.

[GardenBaker]

About 12K - 13K per year. We live rural and I commute into town for my job.

[redcedar]

As others, it’s so so so very particular to me.

I work from home. My truck is not as functional on easily 75% of our road trips (AT backpacking, multi city brewery trips, etc) compared to her suv. I invite friends over and cook/grill/smoke while she goes out with friends. And on and on.

So 3-6k feels right. But again it’s very particular to me.

[SpareChange]

I do about 11k a year in north tx. About half that is the trip I take about once a month to see my mom a few hours away.