I'd say there's probably a lot of towns here in the UK where 10 miles at 40mph covers the vast majority of intra-town commuting, errands and school runs. The kind of thing that I do/did, where the journey's are so short the engine never reaches temperature and fuel economy is a fraction of what it should be. The government stats tend to back this up with the majority of journeys being shorter than this.
I've spent a lot of time cycling instead of driving recently, and I've come to the conclusion, having mostly not driven at all for 15 months, that it's about time we not only reduced our dependency on fossil fueled cars (for obvious reasons), but also just our dependency on cars full stop. My attitude to cars and driving has noticeably shifted, and I think if more people took a step back from their cars they might start to see how ridiculous things are getting. I understand that there's a great many instances where people must use their cars, but for a lot of the one's where a hybrid would be suitable, I think people should just leave the car at home altogether. People need a better option for local mobility than 2 tonnes of metal taking up 9 m² of space, that's often the second most expensive thing they'll buy.
