It’s been said that prison is years of mind-numbing boredom punctuated by sudden moments of extreme terror. I feel that way about commuting. Despite driving’s many pleasures, the daily commute gradually erodes all sense of joy. All those repetitive miles, one barely distinguishable from the next. The same old CD’s in the changer, the same dumb ‘morning zoo’ antics on the radio, same streets, same turns, same times. You eventually lapse into semi-consciousness; unaware, unable to recall the last five, ten, maybe fifteen miles. Until your autopilot slumber is rudely interrupted by, say, an oncoming tractor-trailer drifting over the center line.
For the first long second, the truck seems like some sort of a hazy mirage. You don’t even react. Then, as your heart suddenly palpitates from the adrenaline rush of imminent death, the truck drifts back. No sweat. You don’t even mention it to anyone later. Why would you? It’s all part of the deal. As are the deer. Based on the zeal with which these ruminants throw themselves into the teeth of oncoming traffic, you’d be forgiven for thinking there are 72 doe-eyed virgins awaiting each of these cloven-hoofed speed bumps upon their earthly demise. Sorry; Bambi has exhausted my patience and gets no sympathy. Having suffered thrice by the whims of the herd, I now root for the hunters.
Anyway, commuting teaches us a great deal about our place in the world. Actually, make that our micro-world. If you really want to get to know a car, spend a couple hours each day locked in its confines, subject to its every fault and foible. No car can live up to this examination. No driver can stand the punishment. I’ve commuted to various jobs from various home locations over the years. Most of my commutes have lasted a half-hour or less. But the thousand-yard stare I have now? It’s the product of an eight year, 40-mile commute. That’s 3800 trips in one direction or other; tedium unmatched in modern times. Except by my fellow commuters, of course.
It was a pleasant-enough drive at first, with reasonable traffic and acceptable scenery. It was long, sure, but who’s in a hurry to get to work, anyway? Then they took my sports talk off the air and replaced it with waiting room quality jazz. That was the first of many slights that beat this commuter into submission. Months of winter snow and ice rendered a lengthy journey even longer, slower and more stressful. Summer months offered little respite, as flagmen and orange barrels replaced inclement weather as my personal bane.
Niggling events and inconveniences became maddening personal assaults. Why, for example, is this corridor so important that the county feels obliged to send a half-dozen patrol units down it each morning; and yet so unimportant that they can’t dispatch a single snow plow? Or why must the window malfunction take the form of an inability to work during warm weather, but not cold?
Even if car and driver survive a close encounter of the endless kind, they won’t be friends when it’s over. One of my longer-term mules, an import family sedan of remarkable unremarkability, did its level best to transport me without committing offense. And yet, after a thousand trips or so, I hated it. Hated it right down to the frame. Even after 250,000 miles of partnership. Even after the car absorbed hit after hit-– deer, curbs, potholes, falling branches, a mailbox and even a hydrant (do NOT loan your car)– it kept on ticking like the proverbial Timex. What did it get in return? Disinterest. Disrespect. Disloyalty. Just . . . dissed. Hey, that’s how it goes in the commuting game.
After a while, I accepted the reality. I quit racing the clock and began sneering at those white-knuckled fools risking everything to pass, to gain one better place in the endless parade. What’s the point? We’ll just be back again tomorrow. That was then. Thankfully, I don’t commute any more. Life has allowed me to trade that worn-out 40-mile drive for a fresh, four-minute walk. Some days (I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this) I don’t drive at all. And when I do get back behind the wheel, I’m happier. I actually look forward to those days when I have errands to run and thus a reason to take my car. The time away from my former commute has given back something I’d lost: the joy of driving.
These days, driving brings back the feelings I had as a teenager, when jumping into a car meant endless possibility rather than endless responsibility. So I’m recovering day by day. It’s a shame that so much of the driving we do today is rote commuting. Our cars deserve better, and so do we.
Mini-counter point — my 33-mile schlep is the best part of my workday, both coming and going.
Granted, I average about 90mph the whole time, but… Oh, and like, get an iPod.
Just started working from home myself this year and you really nailed it. Now when I get in my car I start dreaming about taking to the highway for a week, or going the long way to my destination so that I can hit some canyon roads. Thoughts like this never even crossed my mind when I was a daily commuter.
I have a 54-mile round-trip commute on a rural 2-lane. It’s usually clogged with semis, and there aren’t many places to pass. When I see an opportunity to get around a trailer or two, I have to take it. After two and a half years of doing this, I don’t really remember how my car handles. I only know how long it takes to go from 50 to 80 MPH, and how much I hate the AM radio reception. You are absolutely right, Bryan. This kind of familiarity can only breed contempt.
Well, Bryan, I think you’ve just confirmed my fears.
As a high school student, I recently got my first car (a turbocharged Toyota Supra w/a 5-spd stick). So far, I love it, but on Monday, I start classes over the summer.
I’ll commute early in the morning to Cupertino for some classes (a good 30 miles or so). Then, I have a short little 20 mile jaunt up to Palo Alto for some classes at Stanford University, then another 20 mile or so commute home in the heat of commute traffic.
I’ve been warned by everyone in my family that this would curb my love for driving (and manual transmissions :-) )
Its kinda sad. I hope its not true….
3 points…
Definitely true on familiarity breeds contempt! I’ve been in the same Honda for 12 years now, and the thing just won’t stop – it won’t even hit me with an exorbitant repair bill – it just keeps on going. Would love to upgrade, but just can’t justify the fun of a new car for the wife.
On the joy of driving, someone called the cartalk guys last year and asked why Italians can drive so aggressively but not be offended by each others’ driving? The cartalk guys had no idea, but someone wrote in the following week that it’s because they like driving. Americans are presumably always in a rush because they need to be someplace – like work – and so when people cut them off or whatever, they take it as a personal affront. Italians, on the hand, seem not to care about being on-time, and drive fast for the love of the road. Thus, when they get cut off, it’s not so big a deal.
So I guess commuting, driving 90, whatever – it depends on your needs and your perspective.
Last, props to the site – I will not buy my next car without reading its review on TTAC!
Chadillac–I just graduated from college after commuting from home for four years. Yeah. So here are a couple things I learned:
-Almost every day, you will encounter at least one car going slower than you’d like. Just pass it, when safe to do so. If you follow him for 10 minutes, you will just get more and more angry about it, and even if you don’t explode, it’s unhealthy to keep this kind of attitude up, day after day after day…. If you can’t pass, just follow safely.
-Get an mp3 player. If you’re like me, you flip through radio channels too fast, and sooner or later you’re gonna be watching the radio instead of watching the road. Just put on some music and go.
-Yes, it’s true, I came to dislike my car, and dislike my commute. But I had to separate “commuting” from “driving.” “Commuting” is something you have to do, “driving” is not. If you keep an alert (but unemotional) mindset while commuting, it goes by faster. On those occasions when you can just “drive” you’ll enjoy that time even more.
-One regret I have is not carpooling more. Take the effort to find people taking the same route and see what you can work out, even if it’s only one or two days a week.
-Clean the inside of the rear windshield to reduce glare. You do NOT want glare right when you want to pass slow traffic, but can’t see anything behind/beside you.
-My commute to school in the morning was 100% the same every day, but coming home, about 1/3 of the time I took a 1 mile longer route through some curvy roads. Good for stress relief, and this is the most surprising, even when driving at legal speeds. What you will find if you have an older car, the faster you go, the more you must concentrate on driving. This is extremely wearing day after day after day after….
-Honestly, looking back, I didn’t like the way I drove when I was rushing. Even worse, I didn’t like being in a rush. If you can help it, leave a little early every day so you don’t have to rush on the road. This will keep the pressure off the road. You can take out your pressure somewhere else.
-On those rare occasions that you know you will be late, just live with it. Bad things might happen, but we’re young, we can handle it. Don’t fool yourself into thinking “I’ll make up the time on the road.” ENNH, wrong. If you leave late, you’ll never get there early. Just get there late, and apologize.
-The most important thing of course is attitude. The more you drive, the more bad drivers you will see, and the more bad driving behaviors you will witness. Watch how people act, note how it is wrong/improper, then let it go. You got a life to live, so get where you need to go, then live it.
Here’s a shmuck from my work that supposedly has a 372 mile round trip each day: http://milwaukee.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2006/04/10/daily41.html
(if you ask me, he hates his family)
I’d rather be shot out of a cannon with a parachute strapped to my back. Can’t stand the every day commute in my Xterra. Luckily, I have my weekend car to help rekindle my love for the road.
I purchased my last car with my 45 mile commute in mind. I knew I was going to spend a lot of time in that car, and I plan on trading it in in 4 or so years. I looked at a lot of cars. My taste was for a Toyota Avalon, but my budget had me buy a ford 500. Yes, one of those ‘gutless’ 500’s. I didn’t buy it to drag race, I bought it to commute. When I sit in that car, everyting feels right: The center console is just the right height for my right arm, I can adjust the seat up and back to accomidate my long legs, and it has that oh-so important lumbar support.
Being that I saved money on the car purchase, I splurged on the ‘extras’ that make my commute more comfortable, like my 6 disk changer, and my pioneer nav system with touch screen stereo controls, and satilite radio. I look forward to my commute every day. It gives me a chance to unwind before coming home to my kids.
I have to admit, my commute is pretty low stress. I have some great mountain scenery to review every day, and I have 4 lanes of light traffic to deal with every day. If it weren’t for the truck doing 25 passing the truck doing 20, then my commute would be perfect.
–C. Alan
“I grew up sheltered, the closest I ever came to doing drugs was listening to a Jimi Hendrix album.”
Year: before I was born, road unknown, state: why not New Jersey?
So what is it?
Mistercopacetic:
Those all sound great. I’ve noticed them even since having my license. It really is true that when you let other people who are idiots on the road get to you, it really can mess up you’re time on the road. I did put a new stereo in when I got the car, and have already loaded up a CD with MP3s that I use all the time. (Actually, I’m kind of a weird teen, I prefer to leave cars mostly stock, the less you change, the less squeaks, rattles and problems to develop-but the radio was broken when I got it). The worst part about the commute: The only part I’ll really hit serious traffic (like dead stop n go) is on the bridge on my way home from Stanford. No way to get around that. Maybe I’ll find something to do in Palo Alto before I head home and let the traffic die down a little. Oh well, que sera, sera-or however that’s spelled.
Well Bryan, your essay reminds me of when I told an editor I worked with, back in 1998, how I liked to leave the vehicles I tested at home, when I commuted within the city, oftentimes just taking the bus; since getting into and out of downtown Seattle, or over to West Seattle (where the magazine’s offices were located) was easier by the dreaded diesel-driven bus. And bus travel then wasn’t so bad really, since it had not been taken over yet by guys with cell phones telling their friends, you and most of the people around them that, “Yeah dude! I’m on the bus, Whazzup? What are you doing (right now)?” Alert the media, indeed.
But I digress. I liked to take any vehicle I had, out late at night, or some other time when I had a clear shot on the freeway, or through the twisty road going through the University of Washington’s arboretum.
But my dim-bulb of an editor said, “That’s not how most people drive those cars. You should drive them in traffic.” (I know he said that, simply because he wouldn’t be caught dead on a bus.) So I started to drive in traffic, anytime I needed to, or sometimes, just to see what a vehicle the size of a GMC Yukon – which I drove a very limited amount recently – might be like in traffic.
I admit it changed my perspective. I made me feel that anyone who drives a SUV based on a 3/4 ton platform, in the city, as their sole means of transport, is a vehicular idiot (and of course, if “An Inconvenient Truth” is correct, an enemy of the earth and all humankind.) I began to request smaller autos from manufacturers’ reps. I began to see the benefits of autos such as the new Hyundai Accent (nice) or the KIA Reo 5 (even more nice).
But mainly, I began to think telecommuting is our last hope to stave off gridlock. Don’t even get me started on the “bullshit of ALL bullshits” (to borrow a character’s rant in “40 Year Old Virgin) which is Sound Transit, being pushed down our taxpayer throats by pols who will never ride the damn thing themselves, save for a photo opp.
The Word is Quiet, and comfortable. I’d imagine something like a Cadillac deville would be a great commute shuttle. Infinetely quiet and comfortable. A car so soft in every way you don’t even know its there. Bonus points if you can get someone else to drive it.
Right now I scum along in a 98 saturn SC1, and the only thing that keeps me from plowing into sound barrier in despair (and hopefully taking the ass in the sunfire next to me as well) is blasting European power metal so loud that I can’t hear the sputtering engine and the worrying sound of the manual transmission clunking beneath my feet.
You think you guys have it bad, then my day would drive you all crazy. I spend about 80% of my working day in the car. 3 hours driving to a client site, 15 minutes to an hour or so working on the equipment, then another 2-3 hours driving to the next client site. All throughout a hurricane Katrina devestated state that can’t handle the new influx of traffic. Some days, it takes me 2 hours to go 12 miles. That’s 12 miles in an average trip of 50 or so. And that’s just one trip of the 5-7 I have to do per day. And because I’m a glutten for punishment, I do all of this in a 6-speed manual 350z. If you hate driving in traffic to your office, just imagine if driving in traffic WAS your office, like me. Then you’ll feel better.
It really just depends on the commute. My commute is an easy 50 minutes where there are no kids screaming at me or wife nagging me and I think of it as me time. If I was in bumper-bumper traffic then yes it would suck. You can also take a couple of alternate routes to work to break up any tedium. Lastly what you commute to work in can have a profound affect if you normally enjoy driving. I plan on switching from a very comfortable but boring to drive Nissan Murano to a 03 M3 and it will make a world of difference. Every turn will bring excitement, every chance to pass a thrill of 333hp.
Another way to liven things up is ride a motorcycle on nice days. Your commute is what you make of it.
I don’t commute, other than the 15 feet from bedroom to office, but when I have to drive among the commuters on an occasional trip to Manhattan, I find that one thing that really pisses them off is courtesy. Stop and let the guy make the left turn in front of you. Let the lady into line from the side street. Alternate-merge. Boy, does that get to them…I love it.
Stephan Wilkinson
I used to commute by motorcycle, largely because I didn’t have a car. I took alternate routes to and from work. I avoided the freeway. I still got sick of my commute.
Because there are only so many ways to go to and from my office, and I knew them all. If I took the freeway, the wind noise drove me crazy. If I took the back roads, it added twenty minutes to the trip. And I live in Southern Ontario (where the back roads are just as straight as the freeways), so no riding joy there.
I haven’t even touched on the misery of sitting in traffic (and trust me, there is no way to avoid traffic on my commute, no matter which way you go) in humid, hundred-degree weather wearing a helmet, gloves, heavy jacket, pants, and boots. Or the additional time it takes to put on and remove all of said equipment. Or the need to stop at the gas station every second day, because the motorcycle’s fuel efficiency is more than cancelled out by its small gas tank.
I used to really love my bike, but a summer of trying to ride it to work has me seriously considering selling the damn thing and buying something with four wheels and air conditioning. As it is, I’ve been borrowing my father’s car, and I’ve discovered that there’s a lot to be said for “cages.” If you’ve gotta sit in traffic, an armchair beats a saddle every time.
One of the smartest things I did after moving to the Atlanta area was park my 6-speed Corvette in the garage and start taking the commuter bus to and from my office downtown. Not only am I saving wear and tear on the left leg and clutch, I’m saving over $150/month that I would have spent on gas and parking. I use the time to nap, listen to the latest podcasts from here and a few other sites, or entertain myself watching the really dumb things people do while driving.
But the best part is being able to say to the boss (since my organization strongly encourages using public transportation) “Gee, I’d love to stay late to work on that, but I have to catch my bus. I’ll get to it first thing in the morning.”
I’ve had the worst commutes ever. Used to drive from Northern New Jersey into Manhattan, then across Manhattan, out the other side to Queens and down into Long Island City. I have no idea what I was thinking at the time, the commute alone should have justified looking elsewhere for employment. When the stress attacks started, I changed jobs and went from a 2 hour drive to a 25 minute ride. And Long Island City is where they’d stick the thermometer if the US had a fever.
Now, I work from a home office and don’t have to commute. Now when I travel, it’s by car, to reps somewhere between Pittsburgh and Omaha, and Sioux Falls to Tennessee. Maybe one or two nice long drives a week, up and out before dawn, no rush hour if I time it right, in a 97 Intrepid with 98K miles on it. I also have an 03 Maxima, but that beast is the most uncomfortable car I’ve ever owned and an hour is my limit. So I just set the Intrepid’s cruise control at the speed limit plus about 5 mph, hang out in the right lane, and watch the morons try to run each other off the road as they race to who-knows-where. It’s really a driving experience every time, and I never get sick of it.
But the commuting thing – I still have nightmares about it. There is no way imaginable to deal with it long term. Going nowhere fast, surrounded by frustrated people, breathing fumes, etc., etc., trust me, find work that will allow you to get out while you still have what’s left of your health and your sanity. You can’t find a car good enough, or music good enough, or radio of any kind that’s good enough, or a ride sharing buddy interesting enough, to make up for the cruelty of that daily trip.
And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
3 letters: L.I.E. – my last job involved a 1-2 hour commute from manhattan to long island. I lasted 6 months, then had to quit because I knew sooner or later, my luck would run out and I would be the one of the 4-8 accidents that I passed every day. Not to mention the stress of sharing the road with some of the worst drivers ever. Oh yeah 99% of those accidents I saw were all rear-enders due to tailgating.
I’ve got to agree with BarryO, eventually the commute will get to you. For several years, when I used to live in the Atlanta area I lived by the airport (south of town), but worked in the Norcross area (north of town). Door to door (one way) commute was 40 miles and at least 1.5 hours of some of the worst traffic on the East Coast. God help you if a thunderstorm blew through the metro area. You could count on doubling your one-way travel time.
I moved back to the Midwest (for a number of other reasons) and on the days my wife and I carpool, I drive a total of 22 miles one way. The difference? Even when the locals bitch about ‘bad’ traffic, we rarely if ever come to a dead stop on the freeway because there isn’t the volume of traffic and there are pretty good alternative side roads. Plus, midsize-city drivers aren’t quite as aggressive as their big city cousins. It’s almost bearable. I’m even considering getting a manual transmission car again!
Like BarryO said, a long drive through big city traffic will eat your soul. I’m a lot happier here, even with the feet of snow that accumulate in January. Besides, if I get a day off, I can go skiing!
I live in National Capitol Region (NCR), on the Virginia side, roughly 20 miles south of Washington, DC. If I can sum up the essence of my commute in a single word, that word would be Hell. Hell in the most pure sense, seriously. Imagine a roadway clogged full of every conceivable vehicle, from military, to Mercedes sedan, to motorcycle; and every sonnofabitch operating said vehicle thinks his/her commute is the only one that matters ? damn everybody else! This problem is only exacerbated by the fact that the NCR sees so many ?newbies? and ?outta-towners.? More so than other places I feel, and these people do not really know the rhythm of the road, or at least the way around. Finally, all that mess is compounded by the construction within my area. I will just put it this way: there is enough construction in the NCR alone to yank the country of Chad right out of the third world and into 2006. So yes, fun times abound for the rush period (I cannot even say rush hour ? hour implies only sixty minutes, not 3.5 times that). When I hear AC/DC?s ?Highway to Hell,? I imagine slaloming geysers of fire, tickling the right side of the speedometer, and generally avoiding death as something more proactive? not dozing off from traffic induced boredom, and meeting the business end of a long-haul diesel.
The car with which I run this gauntlet is my 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX. I bought it new, fresh out of college in August of that year. Man I love that car. I have even added a few choice modifications. Equal-length headers, re-tuned engine mapping, upgraded up/down pipes, stiffer springs, and wider seventeen inch rims and tires. Like I said, I love that car, it is fast everywhere. Except in traffic, that is. Unfortunately, I too have become disenchanted with the whole experience of driving. Where I live, one cannot disassociate driving and the commuting, they are one and the same, because there is traffic EVERYWHERE. All the performance, all that money and work installing the go fast parts, it simply does not mean anything on the road these days. It is sad when all I have to hope for is a break in the right lane traffic in order for the chance to use enough positive boost to pass the moron ahead of me, who is clogging the left lane. Maybe I will get lucky and finding an empty exit ramp. Is that all I have to look forward to, passing Ford Exploders fumbling their way through the ?fast? lane on my way to an exit ramp? It turns out the answer is, mercifully, no.
All that time in traffic has given me the opportunity to think about the real truth about cars. Since I live fifty miles within a major urban area, it simply doesn?t matter how badass my car is. For me, traffic is so stifling; I will never get to enjoy what my car can do for more than a (scant) few five second bursts of time during a drive. The truth is I?m better off on a motorcycle. My bike cuts road time to a third of what I would normally see in my WRX. It effectively distills the road going experience to just the fun stuff, it strings all those five second bursts together, and adds to that! I still love my car, and there is no denying its performance and the inherent goodness of A/C on a hot day. That notwithstanding, their is also no denying actually enduring a Monday morning commute and arriving to my destination feeling better off than when I departed.
I used to commute 45min a day on a 2 lane highway, I would get to work and ask myself if I stopped at red lights. I was on some kind of auto-pilot. Quite scary to think back about how many near misses I must have had. Now my commute is 15 by car to work and 30 min home (I go to work before most people wake up but leave when everyone else does) but in the summer I ride my bicycle and my commute is 25 min each way and I actually get home sooner than if a drove(plus exercise). I purposely have decided to live close to my work and live in a city where I don’t have to commute hours to get anywhere.
Unfortunately I can relate to your radio horrors, I used to live near a large US city with every variety of radio station (talk to rock to sports to newsand everything in between) and now I live in a smaller Canadian city with only 5 FM stations to chose from. Thank goodness for my iPod, I can only handle so much country and classic rock.
AllStingNoBling:
In re: DC region traffic, they say people drive like crazy here because with so many federal workers, everyone thinks he is working on The Most Important Thing In The World, and sometimes, they’re right.
Meh, I’m not looking forward to my Summer Job so much anymore. Gonna be on the most crazy road in the local area for 80% of the time. I love my car now, but I’ll hate it in 6 weeks.
Good article nonetheless.
So we talk about the hell of a commute, so how does one make it better?
Com-mute? What is this com-mute you speak of? When I don’t ride my bicycle, 3 minutes for me to get to work, 1.5 miles away (and in the winter, this is Ohio). On the bike it only takes 10 minutes or so, booyah!
Thanks for taking down the teal comments boxes, they were blech.
is this the “freedom that automobiles provide” that i hear so many people speak of?
The picture was taken in 1962. The location: Dallas. Anyone recognize the road?
FYI: I commute from my attic to Starbucks and back on foot, live five minutes from my daughters’ school, avoid the malls and the rush hour, and drive like Hell whenever I can.
mistercopacetic:
I happen to be one of those Federal Employees, and I’ve been in the game long enough to know that if it’s really that important, I’ll take the bike. Hey, what can I say, nothing punches through Beltway slag like a Buell!
Three words for Bryan, and anyone else with commute in an auto – GET SATELLITE RADIO. You will once again actually enjoy listening to radio, because you will have many choices. Whether it’s Stern, NPR, ESPN, Opie and Anthony, or any music you can think of – it’s there. I personally have both (Sirius is my #1, XM came free with the car) and even though my commute has decreased from 45 to 10 minutes with a new job, I still love it.
And for those of you on public transit…an MP3 player is your best friend.
Commuting sucks, but it’s better than actually living in the big city where my job is located. The problem is not moving to where my job is, but trying to find a job close to where I live.
At least where I live, that is why all the new jobs are being created in the suburbs – no one except singles and gays want to live in the city. I quit working downtown in a heartbeat if I could.