We buy cars to save time. We pay often extortionate sums for the convenience of point-A to point-B mobility, convinced that a 50 km/h average speed is a victory over the 5 km/h pace of a pedestrian. But what if the clock doesn’t start when you turn the ignition?
According to a recent analysis by the Clean Air Action Group, once you factor in the hours you spend working to pay for the vehicle, fuel and maintenance, the “social speed” of a car in Hungary, where the study took place, drops to a staggering 8.2 km/h. This figure is thought to be globally representative.
The formula of “social speed”
The concept, first popularised by philosopher Ivan Illich in 1978, argues that a vehicle’s true speed isn’t found on the speedometer. Instead, the idea behind “Social Speed” is that if you have a very expensive car that allows you to drive fast, but you have to work 60 hours a week just to afford the monthly payments and insurance, you aren’t actually “saving” time.
When we look at a modern example—a four-year-old Suzuki Swift—a hidden “time-tax” emerges that most drivers ignore.
Breaking down the time-debt
Using the 2025 Hungarian median wage and current petrol prices, the analysis highlights three layers of time loss. First is Direct Time, the driving, traffic jams and the roughly 20 hours a year spent just searching for a parking space. Secondly is Labour Time; the “invisible” commute. To cover fuel (351,000 HUF/year, or around 90 EUR – a very conservative estimate), insurance, tax and the purchase price of the car, the average driver spends roughly one-quarter of their total working hours just to afford the vehicle that takes them to work.
Lastly is Externalised Time: This is “External Costs” such as the amount that car users pay to the state, such as fuel tax, car tax, road tolls. It also includes “the cost to society of creating and maintaining the necessary infrastructure for driving, as well as the environmental and health damage caused by driving”, such as air pollution, noise pollution and accidents. At this point, the driver is spending over 40 percent of their working life on their car.
A love letter to trains
Given the context, the practicality of train travel really should take a “front seat” here.
Simply board a train, typically from a station in the middle of a city or town, whip out your laptop to catch up on work, or simply enjoy leisure time.
In most cases, taking the train is far less emission-intensive than driving a traditional car, especially if you’re travelling alone.
And with growing investment, international train routes across Europe are popping up all the time and becomming a popular option for sustainable holidays, too.
(Image:
Hem Poudyal, Unsplash license)
How does the calculator work?
The Clean Air Action Group’s Excel calculator serves as a straightforward and accessible personal reality check for drivers. Simply input values such as net income and working hours, as well as information about car-related costs like fuel and insurance, and the tool establishes a personalised “time-value” for every Euro spent on your car. It also accounts for the invisible drains on your life, such as 20-year depreciation, technical examination fees and even the time spent hunting for a parking space.
Importantly, the spreadsheet also includes a layer for external costs based on EU28 averages. This calculates the financial burden your vehicle places on the environment and public infrastructure. The final summation gives you exactly how many months of the year you spend working just to keep your car on the road.
Why does this matter for sustainability?
The “illusion of speed” traps us in a cycle of high consumption. We work more to afford a faster life, but the financial cost of that speed eats the very time we were trying to save.
However, the data offers a silver lining. The analysis found that increasing the car’s occupancy (from 1 to even just 1.3) significantly boosts social speed. Anyone can easily calculate this figure for their own car here.
But this theory doesn’t just apply to your driveway; it undermines the logic used to build our urban spaces. The economic case for vast motorway projects which come at the expense of green spaces and air quality usually relies on the importance of cars in our society. Planners calculate the monetary value of millions of tiny fragments of time saved by motorists and use that total to justify these projects.
The push for new infrastructure continues regardless. Romania, for instance, plans to build around 3,000 kilometers of new motorways and expressways by 2030, framing the project as a vital engine for post-pandemic economic recovery. Academics and conservationists are increasingly alarmed, noting that these high-speed corridors will carve through some of Europe’s last remaining untouched landscapes and resilient ecosystems.
The solution isn’t to simply stop moving, but to change how we measure progress. The data shows that even small shifts—like increasing car occupancy from 1 to 1.3 people—can dramatically improve our “social speed” by sharing the time-debt across more individuals. On a larger scale, it means shifting our focus from high-speed motorways to “high-efficiency” living: walkable cities and reliable public transport that don’t demand a 40 percent tax on our working lives.
