GETTING OUT OF AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP:

America's love affair with the automobile and those dreams of roaring off on open highways are on the wane as the nation grapples with too much stop-and-go traffic and too many hours spent behind the steering wheel.

Those findings are contained in a report to be released Thursday by Arity, a technology research spinoff created two years ago by Allstate Corporation, parent company of Allstate Insurance.

Arity underscored the growing disillusionment by using an illustration: Americans, on average, spend more time in their cars -- mostly driving to and from work -- than they receive in vacation time.

Arity researchers said most people average 321 hours in the car each year and get 120 hours of vacation.

"To me, that really crystallizes the issue," said Lisa Jillson, who leads Arity's research and design department. "I get a certain amount of vacation time, and I spend almost three times that in my car just getting back and forth to a job."

Her research showed a notable difference between millennials and baby boomers. Unhappiness with driving becomes more pronounced, with 59 percent of millennials saying they'd "rather spend time doing more productive tasks than driving," while only 45 percent of baby boomers make that same statement.

"Millennials don't see it as worth it anymore. It's not worth the [expense of] car ownership, and traffic becomes even more of a headache," Jillson said. "Boomers are more just comfortable that 'this is the way things are,' but millennials have seen how technology can impact things for the better."

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