We all have those personal occasions we look back on fondly with a cringe and  shudder. I remember, for example, when I was walking home from work over the summer and this fairly large man was about to walk into me; he was clearly in my way, on the wrong side of the sidewalk, and I refused to move to the side – out of principle. It was like a game of chicken, but I was in the right. So when he hit me, and he did, I looked at him with a pointed glare – only to see he was blind. Then the bright orange jacket his dog was wearing made much more sense. As well as his cane. And the fact that, without looking both ways, he had just crossed a dangerous intersection long after the blinking red hand had stopped blinking.

I still wince every time I think about it.

In fact, come to think of it, I made a possibly more shameful mistake, also on my way home from work, that I probably shouldn’t admit to in public. But I will anyway, since this time it was different. A 76-or-so-year-old woman saw me a long way off rushing up the steps to the subway. I was clearly, visibly, in a frantic rush to catch the train, and this time she wasn’t blind. And I really only brushed her elbow. And there was absolutely no reason for her to cry out “Owwww!” so loudly. I mean, she was on the wrong side of the stairs. And it’s not like I shoved her. Actually, I didn’t really do anything wrong at all. Why should I be ashamed that some whiney old hag tried to pull the ‘senior’ sympathy card? And she definitely didn’t have to give me that nasty, moaning, certainly-contrived-to-make-me-feel-bad glare. Damn it, if that cranky bitch—

Okay, I just winced again. I may have basically slide-tackled a frail old woman without feeling guilty. But how could that happen? Who am I? How did I become such a MONSTER?

Well, clearly, it’s a result of the deterioration of the easy American commute. Yes, that’s right, this article is not actually about self-deprecation. As easy as it may be to assume the blame for my own actions, I can’t ignore the truth: both of those incidents occurred during my commute home from work. So really, this isn’t about me. This isn’t even about mistakes (which weren’t mistakes). This is about something much, much bigger. This is about our nation, about hard-working Americans, and about how such hard workers must get home each day after working so hard. With my own eyes and bruises I have witnessed just another example of the goings-to-hell of our society. We’re doomed.

And the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies agrees with me, more or less. According to their “Commuting in America III” report, published in 2006, the average American spends 51 minutes roundtrip commuting to and from work. Think about that for a second. That amounts to nearly 9 whole days each year, all devoted merely to getting to work and back. That would be like spending your entire spring break, morning and night, just riding on a jam-packed subway or driving in rush-hour traffic. Every year, until you retire. And that’s the average.

Even worse, over 10 million Americans had roundtrip commutes of more than 2 hours, and a third of those had commutes of more than 3 hours. That’s an incredible amount of time to spend simply on the road between home and work, especially when you have another 8 hours—not including lunch, of course—of actually working on top of it.

And it’s not like our commutes are getting any shorter. In fact, it’s the opposite. In 1980, the average roundtrip commute was 43.4 minutes. It increased only 1.4 minutes over the next decade to 44.8 minutes in 1990. And by 2000, we’re at 51, an increase for the decade of 6.2 minutes (the report is based on data for the year 2000). That’s pretty much exponential.

Actually, that’s not quite true, since the report acknowledges a bias in the 1990 data, requiring an adjustment. But if not exponential, the adjusted results are still very much linear in growth. Based on those 3 (statistically significant, of course…) data points, it looks like our commutes are growing at a rate of almost 2 minutes every five years. Wow! Good heavens! Ok, I admit that wasn’t quite as dramatic as I had hoped. Let me try rephrasing for greater impact: every five years, we add another 8 hours to our annual commuting times. Extrapolating enormously here, after 15 years, we’re just giving away another day. Now, that does kind of suck.

But I should stop playing with the numbers like that (I really hope there aren’t any statisticians reading this) because the data alone, without any inappropriate regressions, are alarming enough. The fact remains that today, I’m averaging a 5 minute walk to class—or a 10 minute total commute, if you can call it that—and the rest of America is doing 51. And “commute” is only defined as the roundtrip travel time between home and work. It doesn’t include hitting the snooze button four times, then taking a shower, then getting dressed, then eating breakfast, then finding your keys, then finally leaving your place before running back inside to grab that last thing you always forget. It probably does include stopping to a get a cup of coffee on the way, but still, when are these people waking up?

The report doesn’t say, but the wise reader might ask when Americans are beginning these ridiculous commutes, and the report does have an answer to that. As expected, the peak start times are between 6:00 am and 9:00 am, with 64% of workers falling in this range. But here is where I’m completely shocked: over 11% of workers have to start their commutes before 6:00 am. 6:00 am! And they’re merely walking out of their doors, fully dressed and ready to go, by this time. I thought 9:00 am classes were bad, but 11% of all American workers are probably waking up before many of us are even going to bed. Moreover, that figure compares with maybe 9% of workers leaving by 6:00 am in 1990 (that being my best calculation based on some confusing, indirect data provided by the report), so naturally things are only getting worse.

And what kind of article would this be without some international comparative statistics to show just how bad we really have it? While Americans are averaging 51 minutes, Germans are averaging 44, the French are at 36, the Spanish have 33, and Italians are enjoying a mere 23, all roundtrip. In fact, the entire European Union is averaging just 38 minutes. (The source for this data, if it interests you, has an impressively long name: The Fourth European Working Conditions Survey by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, or as I like to call it, the FEWCSEFILWC.)

We can at least take some relief in the fact that we’re not alone – the UK has it 3 minutes rougher than us with an average 54 minutes, according to the RAC Foundation. But that’s just because more of them use public transit – specifically, about 14% of workers in the UK take the bus or rail (the one-way travel times of which can average between 36 and 61 minutes) whereas only about 4.5% of Americans do so.

Still, as a recent New Yorker article published, workers in Japan commute for an average 90 minutes each day. And in Bangkok, one of the worst cities in the world for commuting, citizens are averaging two hours each day. Well, that does make me feel a little better, actually.

You would think, though, that with the advent of technology and computers and everything else, these numbers would instead be improving. We have better cars, better forms of public transportation (SEPTA isn’t getting any worse), and even better traffic control systems. We have all the accessible information we could need, with GPS displays in our cars and Blackberries in our pockets. I would think every one of these things would be working in our favor.

Plus, with the internet and the rest of improvements in communication, more Americans are working at home (in fact, 4.1 million Americans did so in 2000, versus 3.4 million in 1990, and only 2.1 in 1980), so these people don’t even need to commute… every little bit helps, right? Why, then, are things getting worse? Why are commutes getting longer? Why do Americans have to leave for work so much earlier?

Well, there are plenty of good explanations. As “Commuting in America III” suggests, some of this is due to a trend of Americans seeking to simply avoid the rush hour, with more and more workers beginning their commutes before 6:00 am or after 9:00 am (the 64% of working Americans falling in this range was 67% a decade before). Some of it is also due to an interesting movement where many Americans are starting to live in cities and work in the suburbs, rather than the other way around. Then there is always population growth, another decent explanation, and with that comes the issue of traffic.

Traffic, actually, is a rather good explanation, and it’s easy to complain about. The Texas Transportation Institute produces an annual “Urban Mobility” report that measures all the extra time we have to spend in traffic – that is, the additional time we spend on the road solely due to congestion. For the “average peak period traveler” (so, only looking at workers driving during rush-hour) in 2007, this added up to an extra 38 hours of traveling each year. That’s over one and a half days, above and beyond usual travel times, just because of traffic. They also went a step further and calculated how much it cost us: 26 extra gallons in fuel, adding up to $710 per traveler in 2007. To determine these figures, the study looked at 437 specific U.S. urban areas that ranged in population. If you just look at those areas with populations of more than 3 million, that figure jumps to 54 hours. Among them, the Philadelphia urban area retains the national average of 38 hours. Based on this national figure, that’s still adding another 9 minutes to the daily commute of drivers.

For whatever reason things are getting worse, though, it’s worth questioning why we are accepting it. Don’t we care? Couldn’t we take a closer job, or if not, at least move closer to work? We have people in the cities working in the suburbs and people in the suburbs working in the cities – that makes no sense. Why don’t they switch homes? Or jobs?

The best explanation I’ve read, honestly, is that people are just, kind of… too dumb to notice. A little while ago, economists Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer of the University of Zurich published a report titled “Stress That Doesn’t Pay: The Commuting Paradox.” It was a psychological study seeking to determine how people value their commutes relative to compensation. The results showed that, if you were to increase your commute time from zero to an hour each way, your salary would have to increase by 40% to satisfyingly make up for it. That implies that those who commute should be receiving significantly more compensation than those who don’t, but this simply isn’t happening. Hence the “Commuting Paradox”: people are commuting even though it’s terrible. They’re simply not realizing they need to be paid more for the unhappiness of it.

Now, there may be plenty of other good explanations, but already I’ve provided an abundance of statistics, and you’re probably wondering exactly what my point is. You could be thinking I want to encourage my fellow Americans to recognize their nonsensical habits of commuting. Maybe I want everyone to take a closer look at their situation and decide if their own commutes are really worth it. Maybe I have some great ambitious plans to fix traffic, commuting times, and early wake-ups. Maybe I’m trying to warn the rest of the student population about life after school. Or maybe I just get some sick pleasure out of alarming anyone who will listen about the inevitable impending doom!

Well, if you were supposing any of those things, you were wrong. Really, this is all one big elaborate rationalization for those two previously described incidents that took place during my own commutes home from work. Clearly, in the horrible times we are suffering, these things are bound to happen. My commute at the time was far above average, 90 minutes each way. Of course I’m going to be in a rush, and it’s just common courtesy to give me more space. So the next time some old lady gets in my way, I’ll tell her, “Sorry, times have changed. Now move it.” And as for that blind man – well, okay, maybe I still don’t have much of an excuse there. If you’re reading this, sorry about that.