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You're thinking she decided to sell the Hummer.
Well, no. Not yet, anyway.
"But I never fill it up anymore," says Grossman, a 42-year-old lawyer who lives in Center City and drives 12 minutes to and from her office in Pennsauken. "I just put in $30 worth and think more about where I'm going. I try to be more efficient. Instead of going to the bank, coming back to the office, and then going back out to get groceries, I'll combine errands."
The studies are beginning to spill out, documenting how Americans are adjusting their habits since gas passed the deal-breaking $4-a-gallon threshold.
Yesterday, the big automakers reported drops as much as 50 percent in sales of trucks and SUVs. In March, the Federal Highway Administration reported the biggest-ever year-to-year drop in vehicle miles traveled on U.S. roads in a month: an estimated 4.3 percent, or 11 billion miles, below the March 2007 total of 258.3 billion.
MasterCard has reported a 4 percent to 5 percent drop in gas purchases. Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a Massachusetts firm, predicted in June that last year would mark the peak in U.S. gasoline use, as we make long-term changes in where and what we drive.
While many people are buying smaller, more efficient cars, many more in Philadelphia and across the country can't or aren't ready for the energy-consuming equivalent of gastric-bypass surgery. Instead, like Grossman, they are making smaller adjustments.
Bundling errands seems to be one of the most popular.
"I plan my errands more carefully. I schedule things so I don't drive a lot. The miles add up," says Pam Scalamandre, 43, taking her 11-year-old son, Matthew, shopping. After leaving their home in Cherry Hill, they stopped on Route 70 at Dick's Sporting Goods. Then Scalamandre parked in Haddonfield, and they walked from Animo Juice, where they'd had lunch, to the English Gardener Gift Shop, where Scalamandre bought her brother a present for his 40th birthday.
"I drive an SUV," Scalamandre says.
"Unfortunately," Matt interjects.
His mother nods and says the family has just started to think about selling its 2002 Ford Explorer.
"I have three friends who have gotten rid of their SUVs and bought smaller cars. One got a Ford Focus and one a Jetta, I think. And my brother drives a Prius. But I'm not sure it's such a great idea to be adding something that is in perfectly good working order to the junk pile."
In the meantime, Scalamandre says, she has changed not only how much she drives but also how she operates the vehicle: "I was in an accident, and while it was being repaired, I drove a Prius for a month. You can see how when you accelerate to overtake someone, you use up more gas."
Living in suburban New Jersey limits what you can do, Scalamandre says. "I lived in Ireland when I was in high school and college. Those cities were built around the need for public transport. People can survive without an automobile much more easily. But I couldn't get from my house in Cherry Hill to Haddonfield without using my car. We're going to have a problem here because our infrastructure didn't evolve with $5-a-gallon gas."
Businesses that require heavy hauling are also in a bind. Eric Gospodarek, who works for Griffith Exteriors, put more than $50 in his truck last week at the Sunoco station at Midvale and Ridge Avenues in East Falls before picking up a can of soda and a bag of chips. In his line of work, the 33-year-old Gospodarek says, he can't exactly trade in the company pickup for a Mini Cooper.
"I try to schedule appointments for estimates that are in the same area," he says. "And I am definitely being more selective in the jobs I take. I'm not going to go to Haverford from Warminster for a $250 service call."
Since gas hit $4 a gallon, he says, he has turned down at least 10 jobs.
His personal car, a Pontiac G6, is not the most fuel-efficient, either, "but I'm in the first year of my lease, so I'm stuck," he says. "I wish I had a car that didn't need any gas. Slow to market, aren't they? They can send people to the moon, but they can't make a car with no gas."
A month ago, Chris Brooks chose the next best thing to a gasless car. He quit driving into Center City from his home in West Oak Lane and opted for public transit.
Between the commute to his housekeeping job at Hahnemann University Hospital and his side business doing construction, Brooks, 31, was spending $200 a week in gas for the Ford F150 he bought last year, he says. "When I first got the car, it was about $60 a week."
In May, Brooks says, he gave up. "Now I park my truck in Olney and take the train from there."
But the trade-off is time. "It takes an extra 30 minutes to get home. My son is 18 months old, so now I don't get to see him as much. But there's no price on time," he says. "You know?"
High fuel costs have not only led to small adjustments and sacrifices but have also helped push some people to make major life decisions.
"I used to drive 45 minutes to an hour to work," says Yona Diamond Dansky, who lives in Laverock and worked at the Bucks County Intermediate Unit near Newtown. "I spent a lot of time in the car, and a lot of gas. And even though I have a Prius, that was one of the factors in my decision to retire."
The others?
"You don't want to know."
Analysts say that even if the price of gas falls, many adaptations will probably stay because of a long-term concern about global warming and because when people finally decide to change their lifestyle, their motivations arise from a brew of the rational, emotional and economic.
When she buys her next car, says Grossman, the lawyer, it probably won't be a Hummer. Not only is driving it like burning twenties every time she crosses the Ben Franklin Bridge, she says, but she's also becoming concerned about the environment.
For now, however, she's sticking with the shiny, pewter Sherman tank of a car she has driven since 2002. Blame it, she says, on maternal instinct.
In the summer of 2000, when her son, Grayson, was 6 months old, they were rear-ended at a stoplight in Atlantic City, she explains. "We were in my husband's SUV. The car wasn't damaged that badly, but had we been in a small car, we would have been crushed."
With all the SUVs still out on the road, she feels the Hummer is the best way to ensure her son's safety.
"My husband says, 'You've got to get a smaller car,' " she says. "But my son is the most important thing in the world to me. I'd do anything to protect him."
at 215-854-2590 or mdribben@phillynews.com.
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