262.1 **­bil­lion** vehicle miles was the U.S. Department of Trans­porta­tion’s estimated travel figure for the month of May in 2013, in units used by the rest of the world that yields roughly 422 billion kilometers traveled.

It’s really as­ton­ish­ing to me that the distance traveled by vehicles in 1 month just in the US is measured in hundreds of billions of miles. When con­sid­er­ing this figure it’s worth keeping in mind that the maximum distance from Earth to Mars is ~401 **mil­lion** kilometers or about 1000 times less than the vehicle miles for the month of may.