christ0ph

A few weeks ago, after seeing a news story to that effect, I visited Wikipedia's web pages on global automobile usage.

htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita

The US stood at around 14th or 15th.. after a bunch of other countries.. Around the same time I also saw a number of news stories about a decline..

But now, suddenly on Wikipedia, the US has jumped from 15th place to second.. after Monoco. This sudden big jump upward.. well.. what do people think? Is it real?

Has the percentage of cars per capita suddenly increased, or are(were) some aspect of the statistics showing that the US's percentage of drivers was (rising)falling faulty, and the real figure now - higher(lower) than its been before, true(false)?

There might be a big news story in there somewhere.. or maybe not.

....sigh....


These are the listed sources in todays revision: (you can see a list of other revisions, Wikipedia pages get changed a lot.)

1. ^ "Motor vehicles statistics - countries compared". NationMaster. https://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tr...motor-vehicles. Retrieved 2009-09-20.
2. "World Bank Data: Motor vehicles (per 1,000 people)". The World Bank. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.VEH.NVEH.P3. Retrieved 2011-08-27.
3. ^ Stacy C. Davis, Susan W. Diegel, and Robert G. Boundy (June 2011). "Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 30". Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy. https://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb30/Edition30_Full_Doc.pdf. Retrieved 2011-08-27. See Table 3.5, pp. 3-9
4. "Energy, transport and environment indicators - eurostat Pocketbooks". Eurostat. 2010 edition. https://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cac...-10-001-EN.PDF. Retrieved 2011-08-27. See table 2.1.1 (pp. 92) and table 2.1.4 (pp.98). The rates were obtained adding the light vehicle motorization rates to the heavy vehicle rates.
5. ^ "Motor Vehicle Census, Australia, 31 Jan 2011". Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2011-07-28. https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/9309.0. Retrieved 2011-08-27.
6. ^ John Sousanis (2011-08-15). "World Vehicle Population Tops 1 Billion Units". Ward AutoWorld. https://wardsauto.com/ar/world_vehicl...lation_110815/. Retrieved 2011-08-27.

myrridin

The highlighted section of your post is the most relevant... If your sincerely interested in the question, then you'll need to do some real research, which despite the "modern" meaning is not the same as an internet search... Wikipedia, is notorious for its susceptibility to being manipulated by folks with agendas (which is generally true of all internet sources).

Caretaker

All cars are motor vehicles but not all motor vehicles are cars.

Statistics for motor vehicles often include, golf carts, trucks, motor cycles, RVs, farm machinery, construction equipment, etc. Inclusion or exclusion can affect whether a country is 2nd or 15th on a table.

christ0ph

The US sources cited *have* risen, with the result that the entire US, including its rising numbers of poor and falling health indicators is now ahead of even Luxembourg (relatively much more wealthy) and Australia (massively spread out). Lots of Western European countries have seen big increases in cars and driving recently, and its immediately obvious. Here, I just dont think the number of cars is rising. Huge numbers of unsold cars, last I heard, were sitting on the docks in Long Beach (you can see many whenever you arrive/depart LAX) and (have not seen them, just heard this) Bayonne.

Llamero

The problem with this is the same problem with any data mining study. There's no one out there determining how many cars are still drivable, let alone being driven. I would love to know people's ideas here on an accurate way to estimate changes in people's car ownership and driving habits. You could, for example, look at the amount of automotive grade gasoline produced and sold within the US, but this will be skewed as cars are much more efficient now than they were. You could look at annual car sales, but this would be skewed by increases or decreases in private sales, or unreported sales by small dealerships. Maybe a really god estimate would be annual road repairs - the more cars drive on roads the more they become damaged, so a drop in road repairs could equate to a drop in driving, but many states have been putting off road repairs for years, and especially so now. So, to sum it up, it is very hard to be objective when data mining with a specific goal in mind, and rather than saying "fewer cars" or "fewer miles driven", they should state exactly what the dataset was that was mined, and what the observed trend was. But that doesn't make exciting headlines, nor does it condense complex problems to black and white factoids now does it?

Smallwheels

My guess is that the number of operational cars in the USA is going down. If there were a way to gather information about registered automobiles throughout the nation the tally could be done.

There will always be broken down junk piles that remain registered. I don't know how that number could be tracked without a door to door survey. Eventually all cars will have GPS chips connected to a government tracking system. Then accurate numbers will be available. I don't know how soon this police state tactic will take to be fully implemented but it's on the way.

gerv 

I see the second link... from the World Bank in 2007 showing the US just behind Monaco (again). Where do you see 17th? Come on... this data is from the World Bank, enslaver of nations. They gotta know.

Also wtf with Monaco? The whole damn country is only two square kilometers. Can't those guys just walk to the grocery store?

christ0ph

If you changed the word cars to people, we'd almost be there already with e911. The phones that dont have A GPS in them already can be located to within a hundred yards by triangulation and timing. iphones also collect a record of everywhere the owner has been, as well as wifi hotsopts the phone has seen, and uploads it to Apple periodically.