• SuperDuper@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Years ago I learned that it’s vastly better for my mental health to take a route that’s 25% longer but has significantly less traffic.

    Nowadays my commute is non-existant.

    • Pulptastic@midwest.social
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      11 months ago

      I take “the back way.” It takes about five minutes longer (38 mins vs 33 mins) but I see more wild animals than cars. Most of it is along a lakeshore. I also get about 20% higher fuel economy going 45-60 vs 70.

    • msage@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      I took a route 3 times as long with 0 traffic instead the shorter one, both were the same time. Even the gas was almost the same.

    • jadero@mander.xyz
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      11 months ago

      When we moved from the city to the middle of nowhere, our commute went from 8 km to 22 km each way. It still took about 20 minutes. But “rush hour” was the occasional herd of deer or elk instead of a bunch of drivers who were either too aggressive or too passive. A “traffic jam” was one vehicle, ours, waiting for a piece of farm equipment to move out of the way a few times a year instead of the weekly transformation from roadway to parking lot.

      Even when I switched over to driving school bus, I could count on one hand the number of other vehicles I interacted with each week.

      It’s impossible to express how much that improved our mental states.