January 21, 2004 - Drivers Wanted

It is a common belief that too many people, driving too far, too often is the root cause of many of today’s problems like oil dependency, smog, traffic, accidental deaths, and talk-radio addiction.  In the perfect world, we wouldn’t be getting in our car so much, and if we did, we wouldn’t be doing it alone.

Yesterday, the dedicated staff of edhat.com went out to research this problem. Specifically, we were interested in how many people were driving in their car alone.

EDHAT.COM UPDATE 1. The Santa Barbara gas price map - data was updated last night. The cheapest gas in the area is $1.67 /gal at the Exxon station on Fairview & Calle Real 2. Correction in yesterday’s newsletter - we incorrectly stated that Ed found more than twice as many women as men on the ski slopes of Alpine Meadows. In fact, he found more than twice as many men as women.

We chose to gather our data in the morning because most trips at this time are non-frivolous - people don’t drive at 8:00 in the morning unless they really have to!

The edhat.com staffers, armed with coffee, glazed donuts, and click-counters, parked their green cars next to Trader Joe’s on Milpas with a nice unobstructed view of the roundabout.  The roundabout is dear to the hearts of edhat.com staffers because one of its dedicated members is on record as being the very first person in the entire history of mankind to use the words “Milpas” and “roundabout” in the same sentence. It was back in 1991, and the sentence was an innocent “Hey! We could put a roundabout at Milpas?” In fact, this particular staffer is so enamored by his brush with fame that he feels it is his right and his duty to drive *his* roundabout at unreasonably high speeds.  To him, there is great personal satisfaction whenever he can enter and maintain 30 mph for a full revolution of the circle.  Being able to do so is hands-down proof that the roundabout works … a testament to his creative intellect and bold outside-the-box thinking.  For the rest of us, we can only pray that we are not unfortunate enough to be the one entering the roundabout at the same time that he is.

So, at the roundabout we were … counting cars according to how many people were on board.  In all, we counted 600 cars and found that roughly 75% of them had a driver and no passengers.  20% had just one passenger. The rest had 3 or more.  Some quick math determined that the average car had 1.3 people on board (we actually saw quite a few dogs, but we did not count them).  SUVs were the runaway winner among types with 85% of these vehicles containing only a driver.

The commercial says that “on the road of life there are passengers and there are drivers.” Apparently there are significantly more of the latter.

Edhat.com subscribers were all over the map in guessing the percentage of solo drivers.  The range went from 32% up to 97%. The average guess was a little high at 79%.  The winner of the contest was edDane who guessed 73% and who now is the proud owner of two free movie passes.  This pun seems too easy ... Traffic?

Want to get instant fame and cool prizes? ... enter today’s contest

We want to hear from you ... tell us what you think of this tidbit