Me and my partner are having a debate. She says that 40 minutes is a long drive. I consider 40 minutes to be a fairly normal to short drive. I commute 40 minutes everyday for work. I consider anything under an hour a relatively short drive. Then an 1 hour to two a medium drive and anything over 3 a long drive. Thoughts?
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highly depends where you live in the world. its going to be much shorter for non-americans
20 minutes or less is a “Short drive”.
An hour or more is a “long drive”.
I live in rural America. It’s almost a 40 minute drive to one of my job sites. A three hour drive isn’t impossible, a four hour drive is long.
Depends on what the purpose of the drive is. A road trip for fun, I don’t mind driving all day.
Driving to work? Anything more than 30 minutes is a long drive.
I live in the Midwest so like 3+ hours lol
Anything more than 20 mins becomes a medium drive.
40 mins is the long drive mark.
Anything longer than 20 minutes is a long drive. By then I’m tired of being crammed into a car and would rather at least get out and walk around a bit. And sooner or later (not every 20 minutes), I’m gonna need a restroom and/or food and drink.
Longer drives leave me exhausted at the end, even with stops along the way. Especially if it’s a two-way trip.
I drive 34 miles one way to work. A drive doesn’t feel long to me until it hits the 300 mile mark. And that is a medium long drive. I used to regularly do 700+/- one way on three or four day weekends regularly.
40 minutes to go out of town for the weekend is a short drive. 40 minutes every day to work is a long drive.
It varies a lot depending on personal practices and context.
To me, a long drive is over 8 hours. A long commute driving is over 1 hour.
I’ve driven Boston to DC or Ocean City, MD in a day. That’s a long drive. I’ve driven Boston to NYC and back within a day. That’s a long day but a medium drive each way.
Living in California and everything being so spread out, I say a long drive is 2 hours or more.
5-6 hours.
I live in Alaska.
How far is your commute though?
I live in Texas, so a long drive is like an hour to me
Rocky Mountain area of the United States: there are many towns and areas that require a 3-4 hour drive to the nearest decent (non-tourist) shopping area. Currently the closest Target or Home Depot to me is 2.5 hours one way. There are grocery stores and small local shops / tourist shops here, but anything else is a trip. That’s just the way it is, no one is bothered.
Used to live on the east coast. I had hundreds of restaurants, shops, everything within ten minutes. Depends entirely on where you live.
For me personally, anything over 4 hours better be a vacation!
30 minutes is short, 60 minutes is long.
Depends on if you mean commute or road trip. One hour commute is long for me, but two hour road trip is really only like a medium drive. I think a long road trip starts at maybe the 3-4 hour mark? Of course, my wife and I regularly make a 12 hour road trip (over 2 days) to visit her parents, so maybe we’re not the best judge on that.
I wouldn’t drive 40 minutes to work
30 tops otherwise it’s a long drive
I think it totally varies on the destination. 40 minutes to get groceries? That feels like a long time to me. 40 minute commute? That sounds about medium to me, but I live in the city. 40 minutes road trip to somewhere you’re staying or enjoying like an amusement park or family? Definitely a short trip, wouldn’t count as a road trip
I put the over / under at 45 mins.
It’s not a stupid question, but it is a hard one.
For me, an hour was always a long drive. Where I grew up, it was an hour to two hours to get anywhere important.
If you grew up in Ohio, 2 hours was common. Texas and out West it’s even more.
And then there’s vacations. I regularly drive 10+ hours to get from home to the regular vacation site, or 8 to Chicago for work.
As an Aussie, 45 or 50 minutes+ one way is where I start to consider whether the destination is worth it, so I’d say something around there
When I lived in the UK, 3 hours was a long drive, but now I live in Australia 3 hours seems pretty short.
I believe it depends on the time you get tired, if you get tired after 1 hour, then it’s 1 hour, if you get tired after 3 hours, then It’s 3.
At the most for a daily commute, 20 min is fine for me, beyond that, it is annoying. However, I also now live in Michigan with my parent in Maryland, so I also have no problem driving 8 hours to visit. I also moved from Laguna Beach, CA to Dallas and did it in a 21 hour stretch, including gas and snack stops.
I think it depends on the destination. Big move, visiting family, not a problem…. Need to be up in time to get ready and reach work at 6am and getting home to chill…. As short as possible.
I’d say over 2 hours. I’m an hour and a half from the closest major city and the beach. It feels like nothing to pack up and go whenever we want.
honestly anything over 20 minutes is a hike to me, but i live in a very populated suburb where everything you need is less than 5 miles away.
In southern Ontario, Canada, a long drive to work every day to me would be 40 minutes, but many people commute well over 60 minutes twice a day for work.
For a day trip, over 2h driving in one direction would be a long drive.
If I was staying overnight at my destination, over 3 hours would be a long enough drive to stop for a quick break, but if I was in a rush, I wouldn’t absolutely require it. At 5h I definitely stop for a break.
My extended family lives in the UK. They seem to think 3h is long enough that you need to pack or stop for a full meal.
About 300 yards.
EDIT: oh sorry, wrong sub
I was a field technician for a couple years, so a short drive to me is like 2 hours and a long drive is probably 6+
I have been working from home for five years.
Anything over about four miles is a long drive for me.
For me a long drive is 6+ hours. If it takes less than 8 hours to drive somewhere, i drive rather than fly.
An hour and a half to go 24 miles in LA traffic.
After work commute is longer.
10 miles or 20 minutes.
Context changes everything imo. for work anything more than 30 with no traffic is far. Going out to spend the day by myself, from 30-59 I start to think about it if I really want to go, 1-2 hours I’m taking a trip, and I’m not really ever going anywhere 2+ hours by myself. Going out and spending the day with people, less than an hour is close, 1-2 hours is kinda far, 2+ hours is far
3hrs plus
I can drive for 24h at highway speed and still be in the same province, so it’s all relative.
An hour would be a long drive for work. 6 or 7h would be a long drive for “a weekend trip”.
Last year I dropped my wife off at school, that was around 16h which was a looong drive (Ottawa to Thunder Bay).
I say this mostly depends on the kind of trip. 1 hour commute to work, that’s a long drive. 4 hours to get to a vacation spot that’s nothing.
It depends on if my 3 year old is in the car.
If she is, 30 minutes is long
If she’s not, 90 minutes is long.
It’s on the shorter end of long, anything over an hour starts to exceed the “normal” drive for me
30 minutes + is too long for normal activities (job, groceries, visiting friends and family, etc.).
Really depends on the location and reason for driving.
I’m in the south east US in a rural area. If I’m going out for date night or fun with friends, 1-2 hour drive is pretty normal to get to anything worth doing. If I’m going to a special event, like a concert, I’d drive up to 3 hours one way without getting a hotel. Anything over 3 hours I feel requires spending the night in most cases, since that’s 6 hours on the road in a day plus however long the event takes, food breaks, etc. For a week long vacation, 10 hour drive is about my limit, anything longer and I’m flying. Or just not going.
4+ hours
2000 miles.
I consider anything more than an hour without traffic to be a long drive.
I think an hour crawling in traffic isn’t a long drive compared to an hour of monotony on the freeway, so it’s more about hours of active driving than just time or distance.
And 100 miles is a long drive inside a car
200 miles is a long drive inside a car
300 miles is a long drive inside a car
400 miles is a long drive inside a car
500 miles is a real long drive in a car
600 miles is a long drive inside a car
700 miles is a long drive inside a car
800 miles is a long drive inside a car
900 miles is a long, long, long, long ways in a car
And 1000 miles is a long drive inside a car
1100 miles is too far inside a car
40 mins is the amount of time it takes me to get from JFK to Upper Manhattan. That’s within the same city.
1 to 2 hours is fine. Can do a round trip like that and be fine. For example, I was in San Diego and drove up to Disney, a hour and half drive and drove back to San Diego later that night. Not a big deal
For me, a long drive is anything after 3 hours. That’s my standard for “I’m staying the night there before I go home.”
We just use miles, kilometers or travel time instead of saying short, medium & long.
I have never heard the term “mist people” in my life but it sounds terrifying
Can mist people drive? Being somewhere between a gas and a liquid, how do they turn the week and work the pedals?
40 minutes is a long commute and a short drive for a weekend away.
Long drive to me??? Anything that is longer than 4 hours. Maybe 5.
Depends where you lived. When I learned to drive I was rural. 20 mins to school/grocery store. 45 mins to larger town with general shopping (department stores, Walmart, etc). 75-90 minutes to nearest “city”. Grocery was short, larger town was medium, city was long.
Now I live in a much larger city than that city was. 5-15 is short. 15-45 is medium. Over an hour is long. Depending on my mood and tiredness 45-60 could be long or medium. Anything 90 minutes or over is a “trip” usually requiring stops.
Edit to add: under 5 is basically walking distance.
For me it’s about the traffic and the drive. I love to drive and have driven 2 hours had lunch and drove home the 2 hours but that was all highway driving.
2 hours of open road is fun 2 hours of heavy traffic sucks and is a long drive.
What difference does it make? Two people have different opinions. It’s not as though there’s a correct answer.
I don’t have an issue driving an hour to go somewhere, but my husband hates it, because he commuted over an hour each way for 35 years.
I only had a commute like that for about 10 years a long time ago, so it’s a whole different thing.
It’s just two people’s differing experiences that form their opinions.
Yea 40+ would be long.
Anything under 15 minutes is short and over 15 minutes is “please god please I’m so fucking late why did you make things so far away god I just want to be there already god this is literal hell.”
5 hours or more is a long drive in general. When a daily work commute hits 1.5 hrs or more 1way then it’s a long drive.
40 minutes non-stop driving is long drive.
I agree.
I think lots of urban folk getting confused since 40 minutes in their head is like 18 minutes driving and 22 minutes traffic and parking, so they think its normal short drive.
But 40 minutes doing highways speeds is long drive.
Why fly? It’s only a 16 hour drive! – Average Midwesterner
More than 10 or 15 minutes, and I go nuts. Maybe it’s different when you’re the driver and have to pay attention to things.
In the US, it depends on where you are. When I lived in Wyoming, a hour to a store or to work was nothing. When I lived in southern Wisconsin, people thought I was crazy for living 30 miles from work.
When I lived in south Dakota, we were three hours from everything. Three hours to the airport, to target, to a medical specialist. My town had the only Walmart for 100 miles and it was the freaking state capitol. People thought nothing of driving three hours to the “city” for shopping and then driving home. When I lived in Southern California, 20 miles was a significant distance.
For me, now, between two and three hours is a long drive.
It depends s on where you live and the lengths of drives you have to do regularly.