I did not know that yesterday!

Besides having negative effects on our planet, the seemingly excessive number of cars makes parking an unwelcome challenge. Maybe it's time to donate my Ford and start taking the bus.

I love finding one page with all the answers, and the Physics Factbook has just such a page. The stats begin in 1900, when somewhere between 4,142 and 8000 passenger cars existed in the United States (the only country to manufacture cars at that time). In 1985, there were 375 million passenger cars and 109 million commercial vehicles worldwide. Just 85 short years resulted in 6 million percent growth. Not too shabby.

A 1997 report claimed that in that year, over 600 million motor vehicles existed in the world. It went on to predict that if the existing trends continued, that number would double in the next 30 years. So in 2030, we could see 1.2 billion cars. And we thought parking was bad now.