How much of my life have I spent waiting at red lights?
Every red light is a small pause. Added up across a driving life, they become something you can measure in days.
Real maths • Your answers stay on your device
What you'll need
- How long you have been driving
- How many days a week you drive
- How many red lights you stop at on a driving day
- Roughly how long each wait lasts
Your number appears here.
Answer the questions and press Show me my weird number. Everything is worked out on your own device.
How we work this out
We count the days you have driven, multiply by the number of red lights you actually stop at on one of those days, and multiply again by how long you sit there. Every figure is yours — we do not substitute a traffic model for your experience of your own commute.
Step by step
- Work out driving days: years × 52.1775 weeks × driving days per week.
- Multiply by red lights stopped at on a typical driving day.
- Multiply by your average wait in seconds.
What this does not claim
- The wait-time presets are convenient starting points, not published national averages. Signal timing varies enormously by city, road and time of day.
- Only lights where you actually stop are counted. Lights you drive through contribute nothing.
- One typical driving day is applied across every driving day. Holidays, road trips and years of a different commute are all averaged into it.
Sources
This calculator uses no external reference values. Every number comes from your own answers, plus standard calendar and unit arithmetic — a mean year of 365.2425 days, and twelve months in a year.