New American Driving Survey: Updated Methodology and Results from July 2019 to June 2020
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Summary
The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety conducted the New American Driving Survey to quantify driving risk exposure, a critical component for understanding traffic safety alongside crash data. Motivated by the need for updated national-level data on driving habits, the Foundation modernized its methodology after five years of the original American Driving Survey. This report details the updated methodology and presents results from data collected between July 1, 2019, and June 30, 2020. The study aims to provide accurate estimates of driving exposure, including miles traveled, time spent driving, and trip frequency, while accounting for driver, vehicle, and trip characteristics. The survey utilized NORC’s AmeriSpeak®, a probability-based panel designed to represent the U.S. household population across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Recruitment involved a two-phase process: initial recruitment via USPS mailings and telephone contact, followed by a non-response follow-up using FedEx mailings, enhanced incentives, and in-person visits to improve representation of hard-to-reach groups such as young adults and racial minorities. Data were collected continuously via web (computers, smartphones, tablets) and telephone interviews in English and Spanish from respondents aged 16 and older. Participants reported all travel over a 24-hour period, detailing trip times, locations, purposes, modes, and, for self-driven trips, distance, duration, and vehicle type. Notably, 90% of respondents completed the survey online, with telephone respondents tending to be older. Key findings indicate that approximately 90% of U.S. residents aged 16 or older drove at least occasionally, making an average of 2.5 trips daily. These drivers spent roughly 59 minutes driving and traveled nearly 30 miles per day. Driving patterns varied significantly by socio-demographic factors: middle-aged drivers drove more than teens or older drivers; men drove more than women; married individuals drove more than widowed individuals; and residents of non-metropolitan areas drove more than those in metropolitan areas. Based on U.S. Census Bureau data, the study estimated 246.3 million drivers in the U.S. during this period, who collectively made nearly 225 billion trips, spent about 89 billion hours driving, and drove almost 3 trillion miles. The significance of these results lies in providing a robust baseline for driving exposure metrics, essential for traffic safety research. However, the authors caution that these results should not be compared with previous publications due to significant methodological changes. Furthermore, the study period coincided with the onset of the global pandemic in early 2020, which substantially impacted driving patterns, making this timeframe fundamentally different from prior years. This report establishes a new standard for collecting driving exposure data, incorporating modern recruitment techniques to ensure broader demographic representation.
Key finding
U.S. residents aged 16 or older averaged 2.5 driving trips, 59 minutes, and nearly 30 miles daily between July 2019 and June 2020, with driving volumes varying significantly by age, gender, marital status, and metropolitan residence.
Methodology
survey
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_aaa_foundation on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | aaa_foundation | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-23 |
| archive | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| chunk | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| embed | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-02 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 19 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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- Empirical Findings: observational prevalence
- Methodological Resource: dataset resource