Speaking as a child subjected to routine 2 hour road trips each way (often coming back the next day, once in a while the same day) and occasionally much longer road trips:
Stop the damned car and let your family out for fuck's sake.
Just because you can drive >4 hours nonstop doesn't mean you should drive 4 hours nonstop (I did on a solo road trip earlier this year. I forgot a piece of equipment and didn't realize until I was 5 miles out of town, so I had to 'make up time'. It was still a mistake.) Complaining that you can't drive 6 hours nonstop is some form of insanity that I am not qualified to diagnose.
" they just don't want to be feeling they are making no progress."
I think you may have just convinced me to use Waze instead of Google Maps. I'd much rather relieve the stress of driving a bit than save a few minutes of time.
Well, actually, I'd rather not drive at all. But seeing as that isn't really an option, I'll settle for making it less stressful.
"On average, Americans drive 29.2 miles per day, making two trips with an average total duration of 46 minutes."[1]
For how many of those 46 minutes do you think they are enjoying control and adrenaline? I would guess approximately zero, and once you tell them that they can spend that time instead surfing the internet, or eating breakfast, or videochatting with their family, they will.
As someone else said. It's interesting that the negative responses to this are all incredibly extreme. Someone who likes to drive 1000 miles per day with a 10 minute stop in total. Someone who drives through the Siberian winter. The vast, vast, vast, majority of the population, even the rural population, isn't doing this.
You hate being almost run over. (oddly, you think narrow streets will... give you more space???) You hate the weather enough to spend 20 minutes in it (10 plus 10 is 20) rather than just 15 minutes in it.
Pardon the suggestion, but it seems you'd rather be in a car.
People spending 6 hours a day driving, I can't imagine that being good for anyone. I'm trying to find a way to say this without sounding obnoxious (it's their choice, after all), but the reasoning is so strange for some of these ("I drive 6 hours a day so I can run on the beach"? Just drive to the beach to run then?)
1. I want to visit a friend. He lives an hour away by car. New speed limit changes it to two hours. I lose an hour of life in the car.
2. Auto plant needs radiators. Truck delivering them takes longer to get them there. Costs $x more. Car costs more. Car buyer has to work longer to buy car. Car buyer wastes y hours of life.
>doing something more pleasant than driving a car.
Driving is, for me, one of my favorite things to do. You're right, it's not productive, but I don't want to be 100% productive 100% of the time, I want to take some down time each day as well. What kind of car do you drive? Perhaps you could upgrade, and/or take a more scenic route.
I don't think you'd ever want to take a road trip with me. One of the big reasons I bought a VW TDI is that I can go for 8+ hours without stopping at all.
And what if I want to drive on roads that are not one of the handful of major highways?
And what if, unlike you, I can manage to sit down for more than 2-3 hours?
The mental gymnastics are so weird to read. It's like .. for a horrible analogy, you're trying to defend a power drill which no longer drills, by saying "well hey, it works just fine, as long as you want to use it as a hammer and not as a drill, and hey, having to rotate it manually to actually screw something in is actually a good thing because it's good exercise".
I hope you are exaggerating. Otherwise I don't think I want to be on the same highway as you either.
People like you are a hazard on the road. Driver fatigue is a real thing - and saying you can go 8 hours without stopping isn't a testament to how awesome you are - it's a testament to how little you care about others sharing the road with you.
Some people think they have super-human reflexes, or are immune to fatigue, or have trained themselves to task with a phone and driving. Most of these people are wrong. Chances are, you are just an ordinary driver - and there is nothing wrong with that.
I'm more than willing to admit I'm an average driver - and so I will take breaks, or forgo using the phone, or drive slower to compensate for that. Yes, sometimes I do drive poorly (sleep deprived, stressed, or in a rush) - but I'm never going to claim I can go 8 hours without a break. That's going a bit far.
Ugh, I don't even want to drive 200 miles in a day if I can avoid it.
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