Driving update for December: Dez

My wife and I rolled Dez's odometer over 49,000 miles on Sunday, so it's time for the driving update I promised in the final footnote of Fiat Chrysler uses the power of The Force to sell cars.

Dez the VW rolled over 48,000 miles on October 8th, exactly 60 days earlier.  That means she drove an average of 16.67 miles per day or 508.33 miles per standard month.  That's more than both the 9.71 miles/day and 296.1 miles/standard month my wife and I drove the car between June and October and the 12.99 miles per day and 396.10 miles per standard month we did between April to June.  It's even slightly more than the 16.39 miles per day and exactly 500 miles per standard month from February to April when we drove to Mount Pleasant.  What changed?

My wife drove to Chicago and back to visit our daughter.  That will probably happen at least once every report, so expect our miles driven to stay high from now on.  Sustainability is a priority, but so is family, and driving while gas is cheap makes keeping in touch more practical.

We are in good company in driving more.  Bill McBride of Calculated Risk reported last month that Vehicle Miles Driven increased 2.3% year-over-year in August, Rolling 12 Months at All Time High.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) reported:

Travel on all roads and streets changed by 2.3% (6.3 billion vehicle miles) for August 2015 as compared with August 2014.

Travel for the month is estimated to be 277.3 billion vehicle miles.

?The seasonally adjusted vehicle miles traveled for August 2015 is 263.3 billion miles, a 3.6% (9.1 billion vehicle miles) increase over August 2014. It also represents a -0.4% change (-1.2 billion vehicle miles) compared with July 2015.

The following graph shows the rolling 12 month total vehicle miles driven to remove the seasonal factors.

As for Pearl's next driving update, that could happen later this month or early next month.  Stay tuned.