I think there are a lot of factors that render driving less an impossible choice for a lot of people, such as living in the suburbs and other locations with little or no viable public transportation, obesity and other health matters that make even a few-blocks walk to the corner store a physical impossibility, etc. etc. So they just suck it up and the oil company executives laugh all the way to the bank (in their Bentlys and Benzs- when you're pulling in several hundred million dollars a year in'compensation' who cares how much gas is!).

Maybe something else explains it. Living in America means living in car culture. Driving is a necessity for most of us. It's possible rapid shifts in our driving don't occur because we've already done what we can to reduce our driving. I expect that's particularly true of lower income drivers who are most likely to have already reduced unnecessary fuel consumption. Moving closer to workplaces or mass transit is a longer-term solution for most of us, not something to do next month if gas prices increase. I suspect sustained high prices are necessary to get people to not move far from work because they want newer suburbs and big lots near rural areas, or cheaper houses outside the metro area but within driving distance for a long commute. I know people who move over an hour's drive from work because the housing is so much cheaper. It takes years to see a change in that sort of behavior. We also need to stop putting economic development far from workers and beyond mass transit. Those long and lengthening commutes really drive our increased driving. Against that trend, $4 gas will have no effect.

Drivers won't easily change their habits in response to four dollar a gallon gasoline.

The schools and jobs most people attend won't get any closer. The F350 won't get any lighter (or aerodynamic). And the drive-up dinner dispensery isn't going away, anytime soon.

No, most drivers will put the pump price on the plastic and continue the slide into debt. Until, of course, it all comes crashing down and the need for gas diminishes to zero. (The folks pushing shopping carts along the beachway don't need no stinkin' gas!)

Unless you think most cities (or suburbs) can magically create a BART in the next few years, most folks will drive their cars to oblivia.

Cheers.

Mr. Leonard,

First thank you for your blog. I rarely spend time with technology articles, but yours are particularly compelling and engrossing.

I would like to suggest that psychology is much less a factor now than it was in the 70's.

If this were the 1970's I could afford to live in the city as is my preference. As it is, the only housing I can afford for my family of 4 is in the suburbs, 16 miles away from the urban center. Public transportation comes within 3 miles of my home only twice a day.

I would love to be able to afford a hybrid; I would love to be able to take advantage of public transportation. Let's face it I would love to feed my family the same diet we had two years ago rather than the daily lunches of top ramen necessitated by the huge increase in gas prices. My family lives from week to week, economically speaking (perhaps day to day is more accurate as both my wife and I are self-employed). A large gas tax would be economically catastrophic for us.

The fact is that developers have unwittingly (I pray it truly was unwittingly!!!) created a society that is more dependent on auto travel than ever before, and a gas tax--while admittedly morally satisfying--would be devastating to so many.

The entire structure of our society has been shaped by our petroleum addiction and fixing only one aspect of it will only serve to shift hardship onto others in slightly different circumstances. We need an holistic approach to this, and a usage tax would hit hardest those who can least afford it.

i agree that getting off the gas is hard, but is it possible that some of the extra driving this year is due to a horrible spring? here in ohio, i would normally have been biking most of march and all of april, but we had a downturn in the weather, and i turned to the car (for shame).

maybe i'm overestimating the influence of something like this on gas consumption, but it's just a thought.

I don't have the numbers at hand, but I suspect that when you graph the inflation-adjusted price of gas over time, then $4 today is not too far out of line. Also, behaviour will change in time if gas prices go up and are expected to stay up - buoyed perhaps with a gas or carbon tax.

If you adjust for inflation (see link below), the cost of gas is still less than it was in 1979-80. So, until gas prices increase significantly more, the overall cost is not too bad. Gas has been too cheap for too long, and one could look at the current prices as a market correction.

http://www.randomuseless.info/gasprice/gasprice.html

With the ease of zipping a credit card in the gas machine and record levels of consumer debt/bankruptcies, I think an argument can be made that consumers don't even "know" what they're really paying because they no longer grasp the concept of money anyway.

What they DO know that they have to get where they are going as they always have (which in many cases may not offer non-driving alternatives.) So they put it on plastic then watch their monthly credit balances rise out of control with their gas purchases being only part of their overspending problem.

If they are financially spinning out of control already, what's an extra $50 a month on gas?? Especially if you're talking about $1000s of dollars?

Sure you can blame your own consumption on the oil companies, "their advertising is SO pretty", you can blame it on Ike's interstate system killing the railroads, and GM pulled up the trolley tracks, and Ford's service department will beat me if I don't buy one... but at the end of the day you are the person that controls your actions.

You'll drive yourself nuts trying to control the actions of others. I mean they're driving cars so we already know their brains aren't firing on all cylinders, why try to reason with unreasonable people?

JUST SHUT UP AND PEDAL