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FEATURE

DOCTORSWHAT CARS DO
DRIVEACTUALLY
An Unscientific Study (Vol. 2)

By Fred H. Olin, MD

About six years ago, I wrote an article with the same title that was data into an Excel spreadsheet. Whilst perusing the data and rear-
published here. I recently bought a little pocket-sized voice recorder ranging it in various ways, he added a column for the national origin
to help me remember things that came to mind while I was driving, of the vehicle. It was decided that this would be specifically the home
to record talks I’ve given, etc. As I fiddled with it one day, I realized country of the manufacturer; for example, even though most Toyotas
that it was ideal to do what I had done then: take an informal census are made here in the USA, they were listed as Japanese.
of the cars in doctors-only lots and see if things had changed. So,
here goes: some of the text is recycled from the original: I couldn’t RESULTS:
seem to improve it. A total of 283 different vehicles were counted last time, and

MATERIALS AND METHODS: 287 this time. There were more empty parking spaces than I re-
The author took his trusty Ford 150 (which was counted only membered from before, and there has been the loss of some ca-
pacity here and there.
once [and which he was driving six years ago]) and his ID card and
made the rounds of five different hospital parking lots that require First, here’s a little table showing the national origin, number
the card or an RFID for entry. These were at Methodist Main, St. and percentage of all of he vehicles counted, and what has changed
Luke’s Baptist, Methodist Specialty and Transplant, Metropolitan over the years:
Methodist and North Central Baptist. Although he visited at least
two other hospitals during the study, these had open lots. There was Country 2010 2016
considered to be too much risk of contamination by non-physician- Japan No. Percent No. Percent
owned vehicles. At each location, he took out the little recorder and 123 43.77% 121 42.16%
undertook to record data about each of the cars parked there at the Germany 73 25.98% 78 27.18%
moment. This was done early in the day, usually between 7:30 and USA 64 22.78% 68 23.69%
9:30 a.m., when there were the maximum numbers available. As he 12 4.27% 10 3.48%
walked through the lot, he dictated make, model (if available) and England
the first three characters of the license tag. No attempt was made Korea 2 0.71% 7 2.44%
to determine the model year, as the author is ignorant of this sort of Italy 2 0.71% 2 0.70%
thing. Later, at home, he listened to the recordings and entered the Sweden 5 1.78% 1 0.35%
Total 281 287

32 San Antonio Medicine • November 2016