Do you use every seat in your vehicle?

Question

The average number of occupants per vehicle on the road in North America is 1.2; that means that only one in five cars has two or more occupants. Do you car pool? What do you do personally do to minimize mpg per seat? Anything? Do you even realize that driving a near empty vehicle is wasteful no matter how good it is on gas? That goes for public transit as well.

Answer 1

I generally commute on public transit. This time of year (winter, school's in) the bus and train are usually pretty full.

I sometimes drive around by myself on weekends: shopping, errands etc. I try to combine as many as possible into one trip to minimize the number of trips.

On trips out of town, usually all five seats are occupied.

Answer 2

Well, this is much more than one question but here it goes
1. Do I use every seat in my car? not always.
2. Do I carpool? I would if it were possible but it isn't.
3. Driving a near empty veh wastes gas? I don't think that's true. The extra weight from other people makes the MPG drop so it's most likely about equal, unless you are talking about those other people also driving their own cars.
4. Are you suggesting that public transportation be cancelled if they can't fill every seat on every trip???

You'll drive yourself ( you gotta love that pun here ) and everyone else crazy if you're going to get fanatical on every little point when it come to MPG or any other environmental issue for that matter.

Do the best you can with what you have and don't get your panties in a bind over every little thing.

Answer 3

I have 2 cars myself. One is my usual everyday sports sedan. With that I'll run the usual errands. But I also have a truck which I use whenever I'm doing remodeling in any of my rental homes, or renovations in my own home.

Very rarely will I have another person in the car with me. Usually I meet up people out and about to sign contracts. Luckily I'm not stuck in hours worth of traffic to get to a job so that helps.

Now because it's my own business, of course I deduct the expenses of both vehicle because a majority of it is used for business purposes. And of course, fuel, insurance, maintenence, etc are all deducted from my business taxes.

I've never commuted. Really never knew anyone that went anywhere remotely to where I needed to go. And I don't tolerate most other peoples driving. There's only a handful that I trust.

Public transit? HA... Except for New York City, majority of cities have a poor transit system, many of them operating in the red. Closest bus line to me is about 2 miles walking distance cutting between golf course and lakes. In the blistering Florida heat, I can tell you there's no way I'll stand outside waiting for a bus, when I have meetings that I must look clean and comfortable in.

Hope this helps...

Answer 4

My vehicle has 1 seat. I sit in that seat when i drive. so yes, i use EVERY seat every day. do i use it to its full potential?.. not all the time.. usually its 2/3s full. i drive a pickup, and i get less than 12 MPG. Bite me

Answer 5

We use 4 in ours.... my family of 4.

Answer 6

Usually 3 out of 5
I carpool to church and such, so I'm not too bad. ;)

Answer 7

Are you Al Gore?

Answer 8

My car won't start, so I'm sitting at 0.0 right now.