Keep an eye on your mailbox: soon, the Federal Highway Administration will send its National Household Travel Survey to 130,000 households across the nation.

Check your mailbox! @USDOTFHWA has launched the 2016 National Household Travel Survey: https://t.co/6lqlnQ0y44 pic.twitter.com/Lew3nDSFJi

— TransportationGov (@USDOT) April 6, 2016

“Beginning next month the FHWA will start the 2016 National Household Travel Survey, a year-long data collection effort to help us better understand the needs of the American driver.” 

Not the needs of the American traveler (even though it’s the National Household Travel Survey), not even the needs of the American commuter (which obviously isn’t an ideal word choice but at least it doesn’t have a modal preference). No, evidently if you’re not the driver of a motor vehicle, the FHWA isn’t interested in your needs.

So what does the American driver need? Well let’s consider a few facts:

• cars and light trucks account for roughly one-fifth of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions
• the average American driver spends an extra 42 hours a year sitting in a vehicle because of congestion, which is linked to obesity
• 170,000 people have been killed in traffic in the last five years in the United States — roughly the population of Fort Lauderdale, Providence, or Chattanooga — and 2015 was the most deadly year since 2008
• traffic crashes cost Americans $871 billion a year, according the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The survey might find that American drivers want cheap gas, smooth roads and free parking, but what does the American driver need? With so many deaths, so much wasted time, and all the economic and environmental costs associated with automobility, maybe what the American driver really needs is to stop driving.