Or to put it another way:
Toronto, On, Canada to Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida is a 24 hour drive.
Toronto, On, Canada to Winnipeg MB, Canada (the major city in the next province to the west, is a 24 hour (non-stop) drive. To get to Montreal, the nearest city to the East, is a 5 1/2 hour drive, when there’s no traffic.
$70 for a motel room, good luck. If I can get out of a Holiday Inn Express or Best Western for under $100 I feel I’ve done well.
Jimmy Carter’s administration passed legislation for speed limits of 55 mph. This proved to save lives and save gas. I’m in favor of the 55 mph limit. Currently if I try to drive 55 on the highways in my home state of Missouri I cause congestion and create a dangerous situation so I try to limit my speed to 65. Even then I’m causing some congestion. I’ve noticed that the vehicles that pass me doing 80 are the gas guzzling large SUVs and big trucks.
Jimmy Carter didn’t become president until 1977. The 55 mph national speed limit was enacted in 1974 during the Nixon administration. In terms of its effectiveness, 55 didn’t work any better than prohibition did 50 years earlier. The general public despised it and ignored it as much as possible. The only ones in favor were fanatical car haters. Its one enduring legacy is the radar detector industry.
But folks want what they see advertised.
Not necessarily. When I go car shopping, I have a list of specifications and a pretty good idea which models will meet them. About all I get out of advertising is notice that a manufacturer might have a model that meets my specifications. I actually pay more attention to road tests in magazines from Consumer Reports to Car and Driver and, these days, to internet reviews. Hands on test drives mean the most. They lead me to drop some candidates and add others. If nothing matches my specifications perfectly, I will compromise, but only on the less important ones.
To me that would mean that would suggest that by not keeping up with traffic you are causing a traffic hazzard. I suggest that you either A. Keep up with the prevailing traffic or B. Stick to the secondary roads. You can get ticketed for this. I submit the following,
http://www.ci.pasadena.ca.us/trans/trafficoperations/speedlimit.asp
If anything, speed limits are too low. There are some highways around here that can be safely transversed at speeds of 85 MPH or better.
wow!i bet england would fit into florida!
It could fit in Ohio. Toledo to Chesepeak, Ohio(north to south) is nearly 5 hours. Bridgeport to New Westville, Ohio(west east) is about 4 hours
Now, given that information, if you were to be driving for a few days, wouldn’t you want a larger, more comfortable vehicle to drive around in?
Two points…Englisnmen would drive more gas guzzling SUV’s if they had the land mass to travel, the roads that could accommodate them and the tax structure that made petrol more affordable. Ask them how many miles a year they put on their cars, and you will see why the Triumphs, Stradas and Hugos actually sold over there as family vehicles.
Secondly…Many Americans would become much more frugal if they lived within walking distance of public transportation. More Europeans do than US citizens.
PS…do your research…55 mph did and does work at so many levels, but fails at the perception level.
So I can’t travel at 55 mph because some people want to travel at 85 mph ? 55 mph is a legitimate choice if others would obey the 65 mph limit. The is NO HIGHWAY in the US that is as safe at 85 mph as it is at 55 mph, in any car. “Safety” is a relative term that should be used to compare speeds.
I know I’m late to the party, but I wanted to chime in.
The people who want to go 110MPH+ don’t buy big V8s, they buy big 4 cyls. The big V8s are to carry around huge framed SUVs. And no, not for hauling cargo or towing a camper (perhaps they do that once a year), it is to:
a) see over all those other smaller cars.
b) protect their pwecious wittle snowflakes
c) drag around all the toys needed to entertain said snowflakes when their ritalin wears off.
d) crush any vehicle (or small house) that they should run over while yelling at snowflakes in back seat.
I don’t call 'em SUV’s. I call 'em “MallMonsters”
in the uk our motorways are 70 mph,which is fine,but this is the maximum speed,so you can go slower,in fact our lorries(trucks to you!)are limited to 56mph.its when you get some old lady doing 45 in the middle lane that causes problems,because over here you can only overtake on the right,so if youre in the 1st lane,and doing 70,and then you catch up to someone doing 45 in the middle lane,you have to cross 2 lanes to overtake,then cross back to get to the 1st lane!i wish we could undertake(legally!)like you guys can!then we would have less congestion.
I forgot that you have traveled every foot of every highway in this country. How silly of me. Anyway if 95% of the traffic is traveling at 85 MPH , even if the speed limit is lower, and you decide to plod along at 55 MPH you are creating a dangerous situation for yourself and the other people who are on the road with you. The “safest” speed is the prevailing speed (85th percentile) regardless of actual speed limit.
I was getting ready to fire off a post about how the new MPG rating isn't equal to the old one.. but the Metro is rated at 43/51 *new* MPG (it claimed 53/58 old MPG). Remarkable.
This is one reason for apparently lower MPG on some new models, starting in 2008 there's two MPG measurements -- the old one is still used for regulatory purposes (i.e. fining companies for not meeting minimum MPG requirements), the new one is used for stickering. The old test had VERY slow acceleration, no accessory use, top speed of about 40-45MPH, the city test had a very unrealistic number of stops (like about 3 in a 10-mile test -- I wish I could get through town with that few lights!), and so on. The new test has realistic acceleration (especially on the highway test), 70 or 80MPH top speed, uses the accessories (A/C etc.) and so on, to more accurately reflect current driving. They did collect enough data that fueleconomy.gov has old and new MPG ratings for cars back to 1985 or so.
Prius' and especially Insight's mileage *plummeted* when they went to the new MPG rating.Mini vans registered as trucks??? My Sienna is registered in Texas as a car.
Hey, Stephen, you need to get out more. There is no man-made global warning. It is cooling off now. Also, there was no R-12 induced destruction of the ozone. R-12 is too heavy to float up 15 miles; the problem is stuff tossed up by volcanoes.
The problem with government telling us every move to make is the nuts and idiots are the ones who tend to take over the government agencies and their hoaxes, such as man-made global warming, cause a lot of suffering. Then, in a few years when everyone realizes it was a hoax by nuts and idiots, they are on to something else.
The is NO HIGHWAY in the US that is as safe at 85 mph as it is at 55 mph, in any car.
The same can be said for 25 mph versus 55 mph and zero versus 25.
Slow speeds have two benefits for those who are unwilling or unable to drive well. The slower you go, the more stupid you can be before getting into trouble and the less severe the consequences. Fast is more difficult than slow. Therefore, the faster you go the harder you have to work to maintain the same level of safety.
Several years ago, I drove I-29 through the Dakotas to and from the Canadian border. North of Sioux Falls, the road was virtually empty. At most, I would see one or two cars between me and the next ridge five miles away. As long as one was careful, especially when overtaking slower traffic, that highway was safe at 155 mph.
Please ignore the responses of ironically named common sense answer. His arrogance and ignorance, once a prominent part of Americana, seems to be fading. Most of us have been humbled by the financial crisis, $4+/gallon gas, our standing in the world. Even George W. Bush acknowledges climate change is a problem, even though he won’t doing anything about it. (only 21 more days!!!)
I love it!
It’s a tough call…I hate to agree with CSA (I feel so dirty now), but our culture is one of consumer choice. It is been our tradition to keep government out of our lives as much as possible, as compared to other countries. However, that leaves more decisions are being made by stupid people and when it comes to the environment and energy, those choices are not only about personal freedom anymore. Driving a 15 mpg Chevy Suburban because you “feel like it” has an impact on the roads we share, the air we breathe, and our country’s dependence on foreign oil. Think of the cost that stuff - money & lives - include everything, such as what we spend on military intervention in order to protect our supply. People like CSA, who don’t like to accept the new reality, will develop bogus arguments about the supply of oil and global warming, by right-wing thinktanks which are funded by big oil, big coal, etc. We live in a different world, folks, and it is time for our culture to begrudging accept government intervention in energy use through policy or taxation, to protect our country from vulnerability…and ourselves.
To the people complaining about SUVs;
If I were to drive around in a 1957 Chevy Bel-Air with a 572ci V8 with straight pipes, as my daily driver no less, would you complain as much about that as you do about the SUVs
With so much cell phone usage, impaired drivers, those that have forgotten the basic principles and courtesies of sharing roads and those that should not be allowed to drive require those that want to remain alive and well to have a large vehicle to buffer the impact of those mentioned earlier in this message.