P&G or Hypermilers waste gas in traffic - true?

I think most hypermilers are concerned mostly with their own mileages and any gas saved or lost by others due to their antics is pretty minimal.
Aggresive drivers are going to find ways to 'waste' gas regardless of whether or not there are pulse and gliders out there...

 

Perhaps you might consider using the approach of finite element analysis to model the drivers, vehicles and a set of roads. Then use a random number generator to adjust the mix of traffic and driver behaviors and inject a 'hypermiler.' Run several thousand simulations and report the results.

Commonly called a Monte Carlo simulation, it has the advantage of allowing insights into the effects of the control variable on the population without having to do the 'impossible' experiment.

Bob Wilson

 

Even without P&G everyone goes around me. I choose to drive at or slightly above the speed limit, which apparently is too slow for most drivers. I had the same issue even before owning a Prius, although it didn't happen when I was younger driving a CRX.

Tom

 

I understand the point made by jhinsc. Even before my Prius, I was driving with fuel economy techniques all the time but It happened very often, in dense traffic, that I raced my way when a light turned green so that more cars would be able to also catch the light before it turned red again. I could have accelerated quite slowly (as I usually do) to save my own fuel but then, because of my behavior, 3 or 4 more gas guzzlers would be burning fuel idling at the light.

So yes, sometime, saving your fuel can mean wasting other's.

 

Driving friendly and hypermiling DO go together.

Not only do I go out of my way to let others pass, it intersections I often avoid stopping in the left lane if the driver behind is going to make a right turn.

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In many parts of the US, including Dallas the problem is not hypermilers but the 90% that insist on speeding 10mph over the posted limit, consider ALL LANES a passing lane (maybe the shoulder ), and think no more than two car lengths ahead.

Seriously, does anyone feel responsible for the bad driving of a tailgater exhibiting signs of ADD and anger management?

 

Just curious - nothing to go by as I only got my Prius yesterday and have about 40 miles on it: Could some of the tricks, like described below, be why the displayed mileage is slightly more optimistic than the calculated?

 

To be clear - I'm not saying they don't improve mpg's; rather, that they may not improve as much as the computer thinks?:noidea:

 

I doubt it but since I don't know why the indicated mpg is optimistic I cannot say for sure. I think it has to do with latency issues between what is happening mechanically and what the sensors and ECU sees. This becomes obvious when watching the instantaneous mpg reading on a Scangauge and the factory MFD. They rarely read exactly the same.