I checked 700 miles. When I was younger, I could do marathon drives (I once drove from Phoenix to my home in the East Bay, starting at midnight and ending at 10 PM the next day, had a light supper, then went to bed and laid awake for an hour before I could fall asleep), but these days I do 550 miles several times a year and know from how I feel at the end of that drive; I could go another couple hundred miles but would consider any more to be grueling (I wouldn’t fall asleep, my limit for staying awake and alert is somewhere between 36 and 48 hours).
As a Southern California driver, I have always picked my cars for comfort and performance in long (in hours) drives. Many people have a utilitarian view (gets them from point A to point B and that’s all you need in a car), but in SoCal, you’re going to spend a measurable fraction of your life in your car, so that time needs to be comfortable- ergonomics, comfort, accessories, climate control, road feel and maneuverability…I’ve found the low end of luxury autos to be the best for me (BMW, Audi, Lexus, Acura, Infiniti).
Depends on age. In my 20s I drove Mobile to Seattle non-stop, no interstates in those days. About 90 hours. At age 50, in about 60 hours non-stop Cincinnati to Oakland. I don’t think I’ve tried to drive overnight since tnen. But to me, I find driving very relaxing, I’ve probablyy driven overnight a hundred times.
Blu-blocker sunglasses are a miracle, probably double your sunny-day endurance.
This. 20 years ago I would routinely drive from northern Washington to SoCal in one long jaunt. Not any more. Anything more than about 400 miles and I’m done in.
What makes distance driving tiring? Monotony on the one hand, which usually implies a familiar route, or else one with difficult navigation, difficult road junctions, frequent turning off to a new road.
Given the above, it is also a question of age. I get tired more easily now, and maybe about 100 miles is the limit for being reasonably fresh on arrival. This is in Europe; what I saw of US roads in the Mid-West and Alaska (yes, they do have a few roads up there) is that driving there is relatively easy by European standards.
On longer journeys I share the driving with Mrs Ded, usually swapping over after one to two hours. I can manage two hours, she often wants to swap after just one. In the past each of us did our usual 500 mile journey nonstop once or twice, with breaks about every 90 minutes, but we certainly were not fresh on arrival.
Nighttime driving is worse, and I prefer to avoid it. On long journeys the taillights in front of you get hypnotic and make you sleepy. After a nighttime journey I just wanted to sleep.
That reminds me of the old joke about “I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather, and not screaming and yelling, like his passengers.”
We regularly drive 350 miles without stopping, normally about 5.5 hours, and that is fine.
When driving to the continent we used to do an 800 mile stretch in one hit (but sharing the driving) and that ends up being very tiring and since the kids no longer sleep in the car very easily we break it up into two stints of 400 and stop overnight at Stuttgart. Those sessions feel perfectly fine, especially the second stint when you drive south-east from Munich and see the alps rearing up.
My Wife and I have done 7-800 miles quite often. We switch off every few hundred miles and just stop for gas, bathroom and snacks. Stopping for a real meal takes too much time.
I drove us nearly the entire way from Madison Wisconsin to Breckenrige CO (central mountains) Right at about 1000 miles.
God, I can’t imagine driving for 3.5 hours at ~40 miles per hour. I can see that making you want to stop, or never start. Those kind of slow speeds seem more tiring. I really hate going less than 60 and for long drive I typically try and average 80mph. Though I once averaged close to 100 mph through Montana and that certainly elevated my stress though mostly due to constantly looking for cops and deer.
I voted 400, but I just realized we typically do a 700 mile trip, straight shot, every year. It depends on when I start. If I’m on the road by 10 am, 700 miles isn’t too tough. Starting after the evening rush and I’m wiped after three hours or so.
Longest solo shot was Alameda CA to Williams AZ, which I’ve done twice. Maybe ~725 miles/13-14 hours. I was in my early thirties at the time and those particular trips were the 1rst day of largely road vacations, which I used to do a lot of. Usually I would stop in a single spot for 1-2 days over the ~two week period, but then once I got on the road again it was typically another 100-400 miles a day.
Those first one day jaunts were a killer and I don’t think I would or physically could do them again twenty years later. One of those was the first and last time I ever took caffeine pills and I was jangly as fuck with a rapid heartbeat by the time I’d settled into my motel that evening. Absolutely awful sensation.
I quite enjoy driving in the countryside with scenery, even “empty” desert scenery (but not I-5 between the Bay Area and LA which can fuck right off). I find it relaxing. So outside of the end of those first sprint days plowing down the 5 and over the Grapevine and through LA traffic, I tended to enjoy those long Southwestern road trips. But I honestly don’t think I could do them as easily anymore and for mostly unrelated reasons I haven’t tried to in ages. These days ~300-400 miles is probably a more realistic upper limit and it could very well be less depending on how I felt that day. For one thing I don’t sleep as well and consistently as I did when I was younger. As I’ve gotten older I think I’m a lot more inclined to just say “fuck it” and find the nearest Best Western or something rather than trying to power through to a goal.
The last time I drove for a long distance without getting burnt out was last year out West where I woke up at 2 am in Flagstaff and hit the Grand Canyon. After almost reaching the bottom, only turning back due to severe lighting and rain which also killed my cell phone, I went back up and drove what remained of the 600+miles to Salt Lake City and I wasn’t particularly tired from either the run or the driving. I did appreciate that I didn’t have to drive the next 2 days though. (And that I was a block or so away from the AT+T store that converted my previously wifi-only Android to a fully functional smart phone.)
“…When driving to the continent we used to do an 800 mile stretch in one hit (but sharing the driving) and that ends up being very tiring and since the kids no longer sleep in the car very easily we break it up into two stints of 400 and stop overnight at Stuttgart. Those sessions feel perfectly fine, especially the second stint when you drive south-east from Munich and see the alps rearing up.”
I find the 500 mile trip plenty for one day, and most of that is autobahn.
Stuttgart? I know it well. We will be driving there in October. From where I live now it is 750 km, or about over 420 miles, but we will have to split it over two days due to taking young kiddies on board. Normally we do it in one shot, and it is a scenic route most of the way, unlike north Germany.
BTW, Wisconsin looks somewhat like central Germany, while Minnesota resembles the Moscow area.
Not sure. The longest I’ve done in one day is 9 hours from S. Florida to Atlanta. When we moved from the SF Bay Area to Seattle we did it over 2 days. I didn’t want to drive 12 hours. So I guess somewhere between there is my limit.
Like others, I think its pretty variable for me and depends on the type of driving. I’m usually the driver in our family, although my weakness is the afternoon. Somewhere around 2-4pm I want to crash (heh) and my wife takes over while I half-doze in the passenger seat. That seems unrelated to the number of hours we’ve driven so far (unless we’re talking about a small sub-hour trip).
If we’re talking the longest, then that would be a straight shot from Davenport, Florida, (near Orlando) to Chicago, about 1200 miles. There is no possible way I would do that today, but back when I was in college, I did it after the three of us caught a spring training game down there. We left at like 3 p.m. and got to Chicago around 9 a.m. It was brutal. I volunteered to drive the entire way for some reason, and, man, once we got to that stretch of I-65 that goes through Indiana it was rough keeping up. The two passengers were out, sleeping, and I’m here popping No-Doz and Mountain Dew doing my best not to nod off. Stupid, in retrospect, but we were college kids. The roughest were the last three hours, when you feel so close, yet so far. Dawn is cracking, we’re getting through Indianapolis, I’m catching my second wind, but every minute feels like an hour. Then, I get home, finally, and am so over-tired I can’t fall asleep for a couple hours.
I picked 700 miles because I do that routinely and am usually still good for some fun and games when I arrive. 71 now and last year drove 1100 miles and it really tired me out. Most of my life I usually limit myself to 1,000 miles per day.
I picked until I get tired, but I tend to think in hours, not miles. I limit myself now to 12-14 hours total time. I’ll usually push it more if I got a very early start, if I have daylight left, or if my destination is someplace I am very familiar with (especially if headed home).
I find interstate driving is fairly easy. Just plug the cruise control on about 82 (Texas highways are generally a 75mph limit and if you are no more than 10% over you are usually okay) and go until you need gas or have to pee (preferably, that occurs about the same time). State highways have added difficulty because every little town is a speed trap and you best not bust the speed limits in the city limits.
Longest single day run was 1450mi back in the mid-oughts. Left Duck, NC at 4am and got into Fort Worth, TX about 2am, 23 hours with the time change.
Most recent long trip was over the 4th of July. Fort Worth to Denver in about 12 hours with pit stops and about my reasonable limit as I get older. Worst part with that trip is boredom. There are several stretches of highway where I could tie a rope around the steering wheel and go to sleep, the road is that straight and flat.