Average Miles Driven in a Year in 2024

The average car racks up anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 miles per year. To find your vehicle’s average car mileage per year, divide the number on your odometer by the car’s age.1

By State

Collectively, people in the U.S. drive a total of over 3 trillion miles, according to the most recent publicly available data from the Federal Highway Administration. See annual mileage by state below, which we calculated by dividing the total annual miles driven by the number of licensed drivers per state.,

States Whose Drivers Drive the Most

Wyoming leads the nation in average miles driven per driver at 21,589 miles annually. Indiana follows closely behind at 20,560 miles, while Mississippi rounds out the top three with 19,517 miles. Other states with high annual mileage include Missouri (18,514 miles), New Mexico (17,786 miles), and Alabama (17,523 miles). These states significantly exceed the national average of 13,596 miles per driver, likely due to factors such as longer commutes, rural landscapes, and less developed public transportation systems.

States With the Most Driving 

• Wyoming
• Indiana
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• New Mexico

States Whose Drivers Drive the Least

The District of Columbia has the lowest average miles driven per driver at 6,694 miles annually, less than half the national average. New York follows with 9,548 miles, while Washington state comes in third with 9,819 miles. Other states with low annual mileage include Rhode Island (9,903 miles), Alaska (10,510 miles), and Pennsylvania (10,950 miles). These areas tend to have more compact urban centers, better public transportation options, and shorter commute distances, contributing to their lower average miles driven per driver.

States With the Least Driving 

• Washington, D.C.
• New York
• Washington
• Rhode Island
• Alaska

What factors affect how much you drive? It’s not only your work commute, but also your age and sex, according to the hard numbers.

Commute

Commuting miles are the distance someone travels to and from their workplace. In 2022, the last time the U.S. Census Bureau posted this data publicly, the average one-way commute was 26.4 minutes, or about half an hour. However, the plurality of commutes, 16 percent, were between 15 and 19 minutes long⁵.

Learn more in our 2024 report on commuting in the U.S.

The longer your commute, the higher your annual mileage is likely to be.

The more miles you drive per year, the higher your insurance premium will be. However, unless you’ve signed up for a usage-based insurance program, mileage is not the only factor auto insurance companies take into account when determining rates. It’s just one factor, combined with your driving history, home address, vehicle type, and more. Still, how many miles you drive per year will have an effect on the cost of your car insurance.

What’s Considered Low Mileage?

Since most people drive about 10,000 miles annually, low mileage is around 7,500 miles or less.

Low-Mileage Discounts

If you’re a low-mileage driver, you can get discounts by enrolling in a usage-based insurance program. With some of these programs, you’ll get a discount just for signing up, plus bigger discounts if you have low mileage and drive safely.

When enrolled in one of these programs, your mileage will be tracked with either an app or a physical device installed in your car. Along with mileage, some of these programs track driving behaviors like hard braking, rapid acceleration, and distracted driving. The less you drive and the safer you drive, the more you’ll save.

Along with usage-based programs, there are also insurance companies that run entirely on a pay-per-mile model, such as Metromile and Root. Thanks to this structure, these insurers have the lowest average annual prices of any company we’ve tested: $782 and $984, respectively. Always compare auto insurance quotes between providers to find out how much you can save by driving fewer miles.

So, what is your mileage? There are a few ways to find out.

1. Track your mileage for a month. Track your mileage for a month using your odometer, then multiply the number by 12 to get your annual mileage. Of course, this result could be a bit skewed if you took any vacations by car in the past year and consequently drove more than usual.
2. Check maintenance records. Compare your mileage on your car’s scheduled maintenance reports a year apart from each other.
3. Calculate backwards. If you know how many miles your car had when you bought it, you can divide your total mileage but the number of months you’ve had the car. So let’s say the car had 50,000 miles when you bought it three years ago, and now it has 80,000 miles. That means you’ve driven 30,000 miles in three years, or 10,000 miles annually, or about 833 miles monthly.

You can lower the cost of your auto insurance by driving less, especially if you participate in a usage-based program. Learn more about average miles driven per year in our frequently asked questions below.