Wow... that is absolutely terrible. If I lived over there, I would use public transportation during the week, and use the car on the weekend. Here in the USA, we don't have that option in many of our major metro areas. For example, here in Detroit, there is no commuter rail, the buses only reach a portion of the major suburbs, and taxi rides can be extremely expensive due to the huge amount of distance the metro area has sprawled. Therefore, we are forced to drive. I live 25 miles from work, and that is typical. But, we have folks in the office that drive as much as 65 miles EACH WAY every morning.

From my travels, it seems that Japan has just about the best public transportation in the world. One guy that I know over there has just a few thousand Km on his two year old Toyota. It is used mainly for weekend drives to and from the countryside.