- Nationally, men drive 29.8% more daily miles than women (25.5 vs. 19.6 miles/day).
- That gap is not constant across a lifetime. Among 16–17 year olds, girls actually drive more than boys (8.2 vs. 4.9 miles/day, 67.9% more).
- The pattern flips hard just two years later: at 18–19, men drive 83.1% more than women, the single largest gap of any age group.
- The gap nearly disappears in the 20s, then reopens from 35 onward, reaching its largest gap at age 75+, where men drive 104.1% more than women, about double.
01 Introduction
Ask most people whether men or women drive more, and they'll confidently say men, and nationally they'd be right. But that single national average hides a much stranger story underneath it. Using the 2022 National Household Travel Survey's trip-level data, cross-referenced by age and sex, the real pattern isn't a constant gap that holds throughout life, it reverses, swings, nearly vanishes, and widens again, all within the space of a few decades.
FHWA/BTS, 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use person file, variables R_AGE and R_SEX.02 The National Average: Men Drive 29.8% More
Averaged across every adult in the survey, men drive noticeably more than women in a typical day, in both distance and time behind the wheel.
Calculated by this site: FHWA/BTS 2022 NHTS person file (perv2pub.csv, R_AGE, R_SEX) joined to the public-use daily trip file (tripv2pub.csv) by household and person ID, summing TRPMILES and TRVLCMIN for personal-vehicle (TRPTRANS 01, 02, 03, 04, 06, car, van, SUV, pickup, or RV) trips where DRIVER=01, weighted by WTPERFIN. Restricted to ages 16 and older.| Group | Avg. Daily Miles | Avg. Daily Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Men | 25.5 | 47.8 |
| Women | 19.6 | 41.9 |
| Difference | +29.8% | +14.2% |
Men drive substantially more distance relative to how much more time they spend driving, which on its own suggests men's trips skew toward longer, likely higher-speed driving (highway commutes, longer errands) while women's trips are more time-intensive relative to distance, consistent with more, shorter, in-town trips. That distinction becomes much clearer once the data is broken out by age.
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Use the Calculator03 The Full Picture by Age
The national 29.8% gap is an average of nine very different age groups, and no single one of them actually matches it. The chart below shows average daily miles for men and women across the same age brackets used elsewhere on this site.
FHWA/BTS 2022 NHTS person and trip files, cross-referenced by this site, weighted by WTPERFIN.| Age | Men (mi) | Women (mi) | Men (min) | Women (min) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16–17 | 4.9 | 8.2 | 12.0 | 18.3 |
| 18–19 | 24.7 | 13.5 | 37.4 | 36.8 |
| 20–24 | 17.6 | 17.3 | 32.9 | 37.6 |
| 25–34 | 23.4 | 22.9 | 47.3 | 47.0 |
| 35–44 | 32.8 | 21.4 | 56.7 | 47.1 |
| 45–54 | 29.6 | 24.6 | 53.9 | 51.2 |
| 55–64 | 27.8 | 20.5 | 54.3 | 42.5 |
| 65–74 | 25.0 | 19.3 | 48.8 | 40.6 |
| 75+ | 17.2 | 8.4 | 34.7 | 21.3 |
Four distinct phases stand out. First, at 16–17, girls drive more than boys, 8.2 vs. 4.9 miles a day, a genuine reversal of the national pattern. Second, at 18–19, the pattern doesn't just flip back, it overshoots: men jump to 24.7 miles while women stay near 13.5, the widest percentage gap of any bracket except 75+. Third, from the 20s through the 30s, the gap nearly closes (17.6 vs. 17.3 at 20–24; 23.4 vs. 22.9 at 25–34) before reopening. Fourth, from 35 onward, men consistently drive more at every single age bracket, and the gap is wide again through retirement, peaking at 75+ where men drive about double.
Calculated from the table above: percentage differences by bracket, FHWA/BTS 2022 NHTS person and trip files.04 Why the Pattern Might Exist
NHTS doesn't ask people why they drive the amount they do, so the following is this site's own interpretation of a documented pattern, not a separately published government finding. The 16–17 reversal is plausible if girls in this age range are, on average, somewhat more likely to already be licensed and independently driving themselves to school, work, or activities, while boys of the same age more often still ride with a parent or another driver. The 18–19 overshoot lines up with the years right after high school, when young men more often commute solo to a first job or start commuting long distances for work or school, while young women in the same age range are, on average, more likely to still be living at home or attending a local school with a shorter commute. From the mid-30s onward, the gap likely reflects a combination of commuting patterns (men are still somewhat more likely to hold jobs with longer commutes) and vehicle-owner conventions within a household, where the primary long-distance or work vehicle often defaults to one person. The 75+ divergence may also partly reflect that women, on average, outlive men and are more likely to have stopped driving or lost a driving spouse by that age, which this survey cannot fully separate from a pure "drives less" effect.
This paragraph is this site's own interpretation of the pattern shown in Section 03, not a finding separately published by NHTS or any federal agency.05 What This Means
A single "men drive 29.8% more" statistic is true, but using it to estimate any individual's driving cost by sex alone would be a mistake, since it papers over a pattern that reverses twice across a lifetime. Age is doing far more explanatory work than sex on its own: a 20-something man and woman drive nearly identically, while a 75-year-old man drives about double what a 75-year-old woman does. Anyone estimating their own or a family member's driving cost, insurance exposure, or fuel spending is better served by this site's age-based license-rate data and their own actual mileage than by a single national average for their sex.
06 Data Sources
- Federal Highway Administration / Bureau of Transportation Statistics: 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use person file (variables R_AGE, R_SEX) and daily trip file (variables TRPMILES, TRVLCMIN, TRPTRANS, DRIVER). nhts.ornl.gov
- This site's related analysis: Driver's License Rate by Age in America, How Many Hours Do Americans Spend Driving Each Year?, and Urban vs. Rural Driving: Who Actually Drives More?.