I recently read this in a Bill Bryson book (so I’m not treating it as holy writ).
He states that the USA is now so pedestrian unfriendly that no one walks anywhere. Ever.
How can you possibly only manage 1.4 miles a week though?
I must walk at least that a day, and I’m no fitness fanatic, simply walking to and from stations etc.
So is it true?
“simply walking to and from stations”
That implies you take some kind of mass transit.
I drive to work. So my walking commute is down the stairs into the garage at home, and then from the parking garage at work up the two flights to my desk. I suspect in a lot of the US, this isn’t uncommon. Only large cities have mass transit, and only some large cities have decent enough systems in which many people participate.
So I’m not surprised. Although, I think with the walking to the water fountain, bathroom, cafeteria, and to others’ office, I should probably get at least a mile in a week, but I’ve never checked it out.
I know the average American isn’t a student, or teacher… Just about every student (and teacher) I’ve seen walks a lot. We have to (I’m a student… Poor me) just to get around campus etcetera (did I spell it right?). The amount of people on school grounds walking around must bring that to at least 10 miles a week… C’mon… Right?:rolleyes:
What about walking just to walk? The large outdoor mall near where I work is maybe a quarter mile away. We usually walk over at about 15:00 and walk around it just to get out of the office for half an hour.
Sometimes I’ll walk around the block (okay, several blocks) before work. Distance: About 1.6 miles. Although I’ve been lazy lately, it was a daily routine. (And now that I’ve stopped logging on in the morning, I’ll have time to start it up again.)
Obviously I’m not the only one who gets “out and about” on foot. As mentioned before, there are students out there who walk all over the place. My friends in New Orleans walk just about everywhere. Kids run around a lot while they play. I find it hard to believe that the average American only walks 1.4 miles per week.
I can believe it. First of all, there’s a lot of more or less homebound people. Esp. the very elderly. Suff like that skews the stats easily. Throw in some kids under 1, etc. and you’re Mathematically halfway there. There rest from …
I walk over a mile a day for exercise. I routinely see people pulling up to their driveways who stop, in their cars to get their mail, and then finish pulling in. These are people in their 20’s and 30’s who don’t want to walk the length of their short driveways. Extrapolate that kind of mentality to all day long and .2 of a mile per day seems about right.
To me, walking is one of the simplest exercises most people can do. Esp. as you get older, it helps avoid a lot with circulation problems. My motto is “walk or die”. Learn to walk everywhere when young so it’s second nature when older.
In Southern California, walking rarely does you any good. I walk a fair bit, because I have no car, but I’m fortunate enough to live within walking distance of both my work and my school. There are students here who live where I do (two blocks from campus) and still drive to class every day.
owl, I’m not surprised at all. When I didn’t live withing walking distance to work, I had to find time to walk. That’s not an easy thing when you’ve got a family with young children and you’re not getting home until after 6:30 in the evening. Dinner sure as hell ain’t gonna make itself!
Now, I walk about a mile and a quarter every work day. When we move from downtown I’m sure that will decrease dramatically, though. Hopefully, we’ll move close enough so that the drive home will be short. If I get home at a decent time, I’ll walk after work.
I’m doing my bit to raise the national average. I do two miles a day on the treadmill. I go at lunch on work days and to the gym on weekends. Takes about a half-hour a day. But I don’t walk much otherwise so I can see where the average could be pretty low.
I can believe coming up with a figure of 1.4 miles a week if you include those who can’t walk- but that would make it an utterly useless statistic.
But
I may be unusual, but even though I drive to work, I estimate I walk more than two miles a day just getting to and from the car, making trips to the copy machine,fax machine,restrooms, other offices, and then doing chores when I get home. Or was Bryson’s statistic not counting that sort of walking, only out on the street walking?
1.4 miles/week = 1.4(5280) = 7392 feet/week
7392 feet/wk = 1056 feet per day
1056 feet ~ 352 steps. (assuming 3’ per step)
352 steps, per day? No way that the average American is not walking more than this just moving around their own house in 16 hours of being awake. I can believe that the average is low, but not this low.
As you might guess, I’m very fond of walking.
From time to time, I wear a pedometer just to keep track of how active I am being. This is actually a very good fitness awareness program ---- looking at the count at the end of the day is a good wake up call to tell you if you’re not doing enough.
A popular general fitness program challenges people to fit in 10,000 steps a day. For a lot of people, this is a good bit more than they usually do.
Before jumping right up to 10,000 steps, the program recommends that you wear the pedometer for a few days just to see what your “baseline” activity gives you.
Mine, with no intentionally added walking or exercise (I took it off for those) is around 4,000 steps per day or so. This is just the walking around the house getting dressed, fixing meals, doing general household stuff, plus general walking around the office at work.
When I try to guesstimate my mileage equivalent at the end of the day, I generally give myself credit for a mile for every 2500 steps per day (since a mile is 5280 feet, and my stride length is around 2’)
Unless the average is skewed by a LOT of homebound elderly, I would say that 1.4 miles per week is just way too low.
I’m doing my part to skew it to the other side — I average around 14,000 - 18,000 steps per day.
Well this little owl does about 3-4 miles walking daily even after the walking done on my new job (yay!). I made it a point to exercise with a good brisk walk after work (often still in my business suit and heels), and I’m gonna continue my regime.
I feel good. And better about myself.
I walk probably 2-3 miles a day, sometimes more. But I walk a lot more than most people I know, so yeah, I can believe that average.
You can believe that the average american takes fewer than 500 steps a day? You walk 2-3 miles a day, we are talking 400 yards here, in a whole day. And that’s every day of the year. Unless, as someone suggests, this number is counting all the babies and elderly (and even then I doubt itk) I can’t believe it is true.
owlstretchingtime - since we’re a bit in doubt, does Bryson provide any detail about that statistic? [i.e. if it includes infants, housebound, etc.]
Clearly we know that there are some lazy and/or immobile people out there, but as YWalker says, just moving about the office should give us some distance every day.
–scout, who runs ~30-35 miles a week - does that count???
Interestingly, I just found this statistic from the APMA:
“According to the American Podiatric Medical Association, most Americans log 75,000 miles on their feet by the time they reach the age of 50. Serious Striders – those whose professions or lifestyles involve using their feet more than the norm – reach the milestone much sooner.”
Cite: http://www.apma.org/75M.htm
If that’s true, assuming you start walking at 1, that’s about 1,531 miles per year. At 365 days a year, that comes out to 4.2 miles per day.
Woah, that’s a big difference. Curious…
Okay, one last time from me.
From the Dept of Transportation: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/safety/fourthlevel/pdf/Case15.pdf
Annual walking miles averaged across Americans 5 and over: 88-190 miles per year, or 2-4 miles per person per week. (figures are for 1991)
[this is on page 15 of the study The Environmental Benefits of Bicycling and Walking, just in case the link doesn’t work]
I can think of an interpretation of the statistic under which it could be correct, but even that’s doubtful. Instead of averaging across all Americans, one could obtain the statistic by looking at demographics, constructing a portrait of the average American, and seeing how much they walk. Not quite what we’re expecting, but I don’t think it’s incredibly misleading.
Okay, I lied, because I forgot to add:
They specifically excluded the short, unquantifiable trips to and from parking lots, in and around the office, etc. I guess because they probably couldn’t figure out how to measure it. So that would be in addition to the 88-190 miles.
Even without it, though, they’re coming up with a figure higher than Bryson’s.
Okay, I’m really going to stop now, because it’s time to go out for a run… 
Also, Bryson’s figure may only take into account walking as a form of transportation when other options are available. So walking around the house or the office wouldn’t count.