Study tries to assess average driver's fuel cost over a lifetime

The site Go Banking Rates (GBR) attempted to figure out how much the average American driver spends on gas, per state, over the course of that driver's decades behind the wheel. Considering the methodology, it's probably best to look at this as a financial relationship between states regarding projected current outlay or how much drivers in each state drive on average. We've already got questions about what's happening in Wyoming.

First here's how GBR got the numbers it fed into the equation, all sourced from either government data or the American Automobile Association (AAA). It gives the average American a 61-year driving career, from 16 to 77, that number multiplied by average yearly driven miles per state. Car-wise, the average vehicle has a 13.4-gallon gas tank and gets 24.4 miles per gallon, going 329.4 gallons on a full tank. Take the average resident's annual mileage per state, divide that by the distance traveled on a full tank, that gives the necessary number times the driver has to fill the tank every year. Since the fixed tank size is 13.4 gallons, multiply the number of full tanks by 13.4 for the required number of gallons annually, then multiply that by the average price of a gallon of gas in a state. Then multiply that by 61. Voila, large numbers.