They're literally driving us crazy.

New Yorkers are using their cars to turn fossil fuel into pollution, congestion and road death at almost the same rates that they were before the pandemic, state gas tax revenue records show.

According to the Department of Taxation, New York State collected more than $35.5 million in revenues from the 16-cent-per-gallon gas tax in March 2020, down just 7.5 percent from the last month before the pandemic. The March 2022 tax revenue was generated from the sale of 221.6 million gallons of gasoline in New York state that month — a quantity of petroleum (as the chart below shows) that's been fairly consistent across a decade, regardless of a pandemic or gas price hikes.