Drivers behave as if gas is cheap

"REDNECKS" and their wives, that's why! Here in Virginia.

 

5% is a Million Barrels per day.
5% is about what we import from Iraq, Libya, Ecuador and Kuwait combined.
5% is about the drop in 2008 which caused the price to drop by $2 a gallon.
5% makes a HUGE amount of sense.

Stopping at 5% would not make sense.

 

People still drive like they're in the Indy 500, regardless of how high gas prices get. This could be attributed to anger at pump, fight w/ their mate, kids, bad time at work, etc. The car is an extention or amplification of their mental state - they're NUTS!

DBCassidy

 

You need to remember, its an individual that would save the 5%, and only those going 10mph faster than you want them to go. You don't want those going 5 mph under the speed limit to slow down 10 mph, as that would be extremely dangerous. Its extremely difficult, from a public policy to get even 20% to drop this amount, but if you go through that work you might save 1%. It is high hanging fruit, and you need many tools to change behavior, many that may make people angry and vote you out of office, or get people to by less efficient cars to get government off their back. From a governmental point of view its authoritarian, and harkens back to the nixonian programs. There is part of the law and order crowd that likes strong enforcement, which means if you close your eyes and hold your nose, you might like hiring a million more cops to save 1% in gas, but I would rather have them catch violent offenders. All those new police cars only on the interstate may use up most of that 1%.

Get someone to move from a sequoia to a rav 4, and the driver not only pays less money but will use about 1/3 less gas. Put that person in a camry instead of a rav 4, and you save 1/6. Go from than camry to a prius phv and you save 55% of the of the gas. Which makes the drop sequia to prius phv save over 75% of the gas, or you could slow down on the highway and save about 5%. In the world of big numbers, vehicle efficiency trumps slowing down by a large margin. I kept this all in the toyota family, to not get diverted by brand loyalty. Get 20% to switch to cars that are 25% more efficient is fairly low hanging inexpensive fruit, likely requiring less government effort, but saving 5x as much oil. The driver buying a camry hybrid is likely to drive it in a more fuel efficient manner, than the guy in a sequoia.

You do realize big brother is expensive in terms of both dollars per barrel and freedom. Using that lever again to save 1%, may actual increase gasoline usages versus some softer approaches.

The drop in us consumption of oil, had very little to do with the spike trough behavior of the oil markets in 2008. If it did the president could very easily use the strategic petroleum researve. Spikes/troughs would be less volitile if there were more restrictions on oil futures and options, but much volitility is there simply because of political instability in opec countries.

 

People parked in hot weather with engines running, their little air conditioning pods, this kinda bugs me. I believe it's actually illegal in our area, but each their own I guess. One downside: as you walk buy you can feel the heat being thrown off...

 

There is a gulf indeed between thoughts in Dallas and Austin. What kind of crap are you thinking of? You want to give a judge the right to physically harm people because you just don't like the way they act. No trial, no evidence.

Reckless is one thing, we need to enforce reckless driving laws.

Death rates for speeding on roads over 55 mph posted limits are very low. These total only about 3% of traffic fatalities, and even in these 3% other factors were likely present.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1108.pdf
Why not take people in a prius in and get them beat up instead, after all you are twice as likely to be in a fatal car crash if you are not speeding We can all see what's wrong with that stat. Speed kills, is an advertising slogan. Doing 70 in a 65 is much safer, than answering a phone call while driving.

 

Drivers just have no common courtesy or respect. We almost got rear ended 3 nights ago in the ambulance with lights and sirens on by a guy that was riding our nice person...luckily PD picked him up at the intersection where we turned. Yesterday we got passed by someone while we were Code 3 in downtown, we changed our light to green but still slow down if not stop to make sure the intersection is clear and this ****** in his BMW 335 goes barreling past us at 30mph and never pulled to the right..luckily our dash cam picked him up with plate #.

But yes, when we are cruising in the box on the freeway even we drive 65 just because a 12000+ lbs box isnt very efficient. We go through 28 gallons a day average.

 

It doesn't - not in the long term at least. We pay between $8 and $9 US gallon at the moment, yet if you drive at the legal 70 mph on the motorway you will have people speeding past you at 80-90 mph. Most motorway car traffic sits at about 80 mph or so with the odd few going 90. And it isn't all eco 'super mini's' here either, where do you think Range Rovers and Jaguars come from

 

Pentagon should put up billboards along highways.

"55 mph saves lives!" Picture of flag draped coffins at Dover AFB

 

You may understand why some of us in your states capital do not want to give you that power, I hope. Not only is it wrong headed, it seems to violate basic innocent until proven guilty aspect of the law. We do not have a chinese pesant justice mentality here.

If someone is driving reckless, they deserve a ticket with a hefty fine. If they are speeding a little on a 65mph highway in texas, statistics show its pretty safe. They deserve speeding tickets if they get caught, not physical abuse. Its much safer than distracted driving or speeding on a 45 mph road.

I have only driven a little bit in Dallas, and did have that car accident. Driver whose fault it really was was driving the wrong way on a divided street. The driver that got blamed by the police and insurance company, was the poor woman who rear ended me, that had no idea why I slammed on my brakes. Luckily the true reckless driver responded to my honking and slipped over into my left lane, instead of driving head on into me. I unfortunately could only remember 2 letters of the license plate.

Who ever said that about google cars is an idiot. Do you have a quote so we can all condemn him.

If you are getting harrassed in the right lane, it may be reckless drivers. Those are different than speeders.

Speed cameras are a money making scheme. They have not been shown to reduce accidents at all. If you are a vendor you want them, or the IIHS. You will find statistics where they have reduced accidents, but drill down and they have been faked.

I did not say that speeding was not involved in highway fatalities. I showed you the statistics though. If we closed down all the roads above 55mph, those roads would have fatalities drop to 0, but other roads would increase to create more fatalities. You need to look at the numbers as a whole. Fatalities have decreased in texas by moving traffic to safer faster roads.

These are the latest statistics
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1108.pdf
Nationwide fatalities from speeding on roads above 55 mph - 3%. Many of these also include drunk or distracted driving

Fatalities from distracted driving 16%.

 

This demonstrably false. We did exactly this back in the 70's. Oddly, a million cops were not required. Not did any of the other of your dire predictions come true. But that is all beside my point. I made no claims about how it should be implemented. You claimed 5% wasn't worth doing. I showed that it is.

So getting people to spend $1 Trillion dollars is inexpensive, but getting them to drive slower AT ZERO cost is unreasonable? How many cops is it going to take to enforce your "buy a more efficient car" program? A million?

I am not sure what you are saying here. Are you saying that people DIDN'T reduce consumption? Or that they didn't do it because the price was skyrocketing? And how would the strategic reserves help? If the government wished to lower (perceived) fuel prices, all they need to do is lower taxes.

 

not in canada! you most be spending your time this side of the border.

 

When your first correction says you still would like to see it happen, you might understand why I poke ridicule. Speeders deserve tickets, not physical abuse. Physical abuse does not work in our penal system. I don't even want people accused of rape to be beat up by the cops. Perhaps this might sink in if you think about it. Its not a sin to have bad thoughts in your head, but hey, I'm pointing out what is wrong with your fantasy. No I don't think you would seriously go through with it. It still bothers me that you want to do this.

umm, ok, why don't you think I would understand that.

Hey its your fantasy buba, not mine. No voices in my head said we should go there, I said we shouldn't. I didn't think you would try to implement it in dallas. Otherwise the mob might come for you.

If cars are weaving through traffic at 75 on a posted 60, it would likely be reckless according to texas law. If this is causing accidents police should be moved to those locations. I always said reckless driving should be curtailed.

Now if instead cars are going 66 in a 60, and traffic is moving that way, we have no need to waste resources. I've been slowed more often with cars going 50 in a 65 than tailgated here. Dallas and some other communities may have more problems. Likely they need to change their allocation of enforcement, not change the law.

Now doesn't that seem all reasonable.

 

It was a joke that it was a bad thing. Read on about skynet

Compliance was down around 5% at the end of the experiment. Fuel savings were probably around 0.5% according to studies. The million police are what was estimated to try to get a large percent of cars to follow the speed limit.

5% is worth doing, we simply can't do much more than 1% without much higher police presents. The experiment in the 70s and 80s showed that. There are ways to cut oil consumption in half. These are much more fruitfull.

It takes standing up to lobbiests to get much more efficient cars on the road, and tens of billions of dollars for incentives. IIHS, those red light and speeding camera pac, also fights against cafe standards and forces heavier cars on the road. UAW and auto companies also fight rules, but we now have decent cafe standards through 2025, and incentives for electrification.

The other side is an oil tax, but I have little hope of that even being proposed again.

The spike in prices had a lot to do with OPEC and speculation. The trough had a lot to do with opec and speculation. The drop in consumption was not enough to make the huge change. The strategic petroleum reserves can be pumped out to temporily cut demand for imported oil.

If say we used half the oil we do now, OPEC would adjust supply to keep prices in a range. The difference is lower consumption means much lower imports of oil, which is better for the economy. Dropping 1% will quickly be taken into account by opec. The US has been reducing oil consumption since 2004, but the rate could be much faster.