Freedom of the Road

When I was really young there was a quaint little ritual we would all do on a Sunday afternoon (before and after football season).
All of us kids would crowd into the car and the whole family would take a Sunday drive.
Sometimes we would picnic, sometimes not, sometimes we would go somewhere specific and sometimes my Dad would just go in a direction just to see what was there.

The point is that we had the freedom to get in the car and go wherever we wished.

How times have changed.
Average cost of car ownership now $8946 per year

And you thought it was expensive to just buy a car these days.
The average cost to operate a vehicle in the United States is now $8,946 annually, according to the 2012 edition of AAA’s Your Driving Costs study.
That’s an increase of 1.9 percent over 2011 and encompasses the full cost of ownership, including fuel, maintenance and tire wear among other factors.
And it could already be a lot more than that.
Increases were seen almost across the board with fuel prices experiencing the biggest single jump at 14.8 percent. But that figure was calculated using a fourth quarter 2011 average price of 3.36 cents per gallon, which has risen dramatically this year.
Fuel was followed by tire costs, which rose 4.9 percent, and insurance, up 3.4 percent year over year.
The only bright spot for car owners was a decrease in the rate of depreciation of their vehicles by 4.9 percent due mainly to low auto sales over the past few years, a trend that is already reversing.
Overall, a typical driver can expect to spend 59.6 cents per mile this year. That compares to just 9 cents per mile when the study was first conducted in 1950, when the average price of a new car was about $1,500.

Freedom is relative, it's not just about constitutional freedoms it's also about the right to go where you want when you want, oh yeah of course if you can afford the high cost of car ownership, maintenance and gasoline then you're still free to do so.
But there used to be a time when you didn't have to have a trust fund to enjoy the open road.
The more government has interfered in the free market the more expensive it's become to have the simple freedom that was enjoyed once by the middle class.

To be able to take a sunday drive.