Said It Here

Should I drive or fly for vacation?

Deciding between driving and flying comes down to balancing travel distance, personal comfort with flying, and the hassle of dealing with a car at your destination like parking in NYC. People weigh limits like five to eight hour driving thresholds against fear of flying or navigating unfamiliar traffic.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    Drive to where you are staying outside the city center and walk to a subway or PATH train
  2. 2
    Set a strict driving distance limit (e.g., 5-8 hours max) before automatically choosing to fly
  3. 3
    Take public transit/walking upon arriving instead of driving around the destination city
  4. 4
    Using public transport, trains, and buses
  5. 5
    Relying on guided day tours to get around
  6. 6
    Self-driving and dealing with single-track roads and parking

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/travel4 people · September 2026 – October 2026

“I drive a lot. I like it. I drove once to jfk. Never again. NYC driving is the worst”source ↗

followingtheleader · r/travel · 5 upvotes

“I’ll usually drive anywhere within 5 hours, and I’ll consider it up to 8. Anything over that is very clearly in flight territory even before factoring in whether I want to deal with my car at the destination”source ↗

HeronEnjoyer9000 · r/travel · 3 upvotes

“My partner has flown, but is not big on flying and I have never flown”source ↗

HeidiKat23 · r/travel

“Hi, we’re currently planning to travel Scotland in May, and are debating whether we should self drive or use public transport/trains as well a day tours to get ourselves around.”source ↗

Federal-Lettuce8473 · r/travel

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised