IStock Photo 5827788 © Tim McCaig

Every day, 128.3 million Americans drive to and from work in an exhaust-thickened line of bumpers. Over the course of the year, they spend an average of 100 hours in transit—a total amount of time exceeding the average worker’s annual vacation time (80 hours). It’s no wonder drivers are traffic-crazy. As Dan Rather once observed, “Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn’t block traffic.”

One of those things Americans put up with for the sake of their commutes is apparently a shortened night’s sleep. The largest group of commuters hits the road between 7:00 and 7:30 AM (1 in 6.75) and spends 15 - 19 minutes getting to work (1 in 6.46)—not too bad. Similar numbers have a 20 - 24 minute commute (1 in 6.88), and only a few less have a 30 - 34 minute commute (1 in 7.58). Still, 20% of commuters, or more than 25 million people, drive longer than 35 minutes—and the times extend all the way to the extreme commuters: the 1 in 42.08 who spend 90 minutes or more getting to work. On little sleep, that’s plenty of time to get angry and stressed. This variety of stress is linked to an increased risk of high blood pressure, increased absenteeism from work, and increased stress hormone levels.

Commuting has spawned its own anthropology: it has its manners and mores found in “the zipper” traffic-jam clearing patterns and flouted by road ragers and rubberneckers. It has a cuisine—foods made for one-handed consumption. It has a work life—all the multitaskers distracting themselves and thereby making the commute considerably more dangerous. And it has a toilette, as commuters shave, apply makeup, and fix their hair.

It also has its own infrastructure, one that has never been able to meet demand. Cities, which currently contain 70% of the population, are bursting at their seams, and the roads leading into them were only built for a fraction of the cars that use them. Increasingly, traffic is clogging the bottlenecks into and out of the city, and people are spending more time on the road, and less at work and home.

But is all this congestion really necessary? 1 in 1.25 (80%) of all commuters travel to work alone in cars. A mere 1 in 9.03 carpool, 1 in 20.69 use public transportation, and just 1 in 38.98 walk. More lone drivers mean more cars on the road, more congestion, and more greenhouse gas emissions. Some organizations believe there are ways to control this.

A number of companies have responded by allowing their employees one or more days a week of telecommuting from home. This idea is becoming more and more popular. Today, 44% of commuters are taking their companies up on the offer. Since 2006, the numbers of telecommuters increased from 12.4 million to 17.2 million. The effect on traffic, however, remains to be seen.