Speed and gas mileage

The stasi had that technique down pat.

I don’t understand, does this mean there are no speeders in MN?

It is hard for me to reconcile your attitude about speeders and your ownership of a letter series Chrysler 300. If you never let it rip, what was the point of owning a 300. A new yorker was more comfortable .

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I was younger when I bought it, climate change was not a concern, and you can’t beat the feeling of a torque flight shifting from second to third at 95 mph under full throttle on the NYS Thruway.

And now you want to deny everyone else that feeling. As far as global warming goes, it is already past the tipping point and no one has the ability to make the whole world do anything about it. We just spend money doing piecemeal things to make us feel better like banning I/C cars after a certain date in California. Do you think that will have any effect when Russia, China , India, Indonesia and all of Africa and most of Mexico, Central America and South America don’t follow suit.

You might be more likely to be in an accident or trigger one near by, but you would be slowing down the whole highway and teaching drivers a lesson which would increase the safety on the highway over all. If someone can’t slow down to 55 and ends up hitting you, what is to happen if that driver is on the road and there is a stalled vehicle or there is a sudden traffic jam up ahead where the speed drops down to 0? They’re going to run in to the stopped traffic at over 55 MPH and someone will likely be killed.

Maybe not just speeding, but during the pandemic when fewer vehicles were on the road but law enforcement stopped enforcing speed limits and DUI, Colorado had something like 30% more fatalities than normal years.

Look at slowing down to save fuel like this. Wind resistance is the cube of the speed, so if you go twice as fast there is 8 times as much wind drag. But you get there twice as fast, so that brings the cube down to a square. Driving twice as fast uses four times as much fuel, and eight times the engine power, if wind resistance alone is considered.

Some of the friction from driving a vehicle, such as drive train efficiency with a locked torque converter or manual transmission, is mostly linear, so speed doesn’t have much effect of efficiency. Gasoline engines tend to be a bit more efficient at higher load (torque at constant RPM), so driving faster increases engine efficiency. Then there is wind resistance loss which increases with the square of the speed. If your torque converter isn’t locked, then the loss from that will increase too as drag increases, increasing the exponential loss even more.

The goal here is to calculate the decrease in travel time due to increased speed compared to the increased cost. For instance, if you’re pulling a big trailer with lots of wind resistance, driving faster than 55 MPH could cost $20 in fuel per hour of saved travel time. Are you missing work due to travel time that pays $50 per hour after all taxes? Then it is worth it for you to drive faster in this situation.

The fuel price in this example is $4 per gallon.

Figuring out how much loss is due to wind drag is the tricky part. Say I get 30 MPG at 55 MPH ($0.1333 per mile) , and I get 60 MPG at 55 MPH ($0.2667 per mile) with a 55 MPH tail wind. In this case half of my energy is used to overcome wind resistance. I’ll ignore the increased engine efficiency at higher load in this example.

60^2 / 55^2 = 1.19 Increasing from 55 to 60 MPH increases my wind loss by 1.19. If that is half of my energy, then it becomes 1.095, so 1.095 (109.5%) as much fuel used to go 60 MPH. $0.1333 per mile at 55 MPH now costs $0.146 per mile at 60 MPH. That’s a $0.012667 per mile cost increase. 55 MPH is 0.0181818 hours per mile, and 60 MPH is 0.0166667 hours per mile. That’s a 0.0015151 hour decrease to go a mile at 60 MPH, and you save $0.012667. Now do $0.012667 / 0.0015151 hours = $8.36 per hour saved. So in that example if you’re making minimum wage then going 55 instead 60 is probably worth it for you. Any decrease in speed down to 55 will be worth it for you. As you go past 60 MPH the wind resistance becomes a bigger factor and that $8.36 figure grows. Saving as much as $30 per hour by driving 69.9 MPH instead of 70 MPH while pulling a big box trailer wouldn’t surprise me.

Just to comment, it used to cost me about 7. cents per mile. Now it costs me about 14 cents per mile. Maybe I could save $2 on a 100 mile trip or $20 on a 1000 mile trip driving 55 but I doubt it would be that much. Bottom line is I don’t care that it costs a couple dollars more. That’s a cup of coffee. I’ve never killed anyone at 55, 70, or 80, not even close.

Out of stater, got a speeding ticket in IL. $75 4 hour traffic school, and it does not go on your record. Second Ticket in a year if you get one 8 hour traffic school. 3rd tickit in a year judge can send you to another 8 hour traffic school and nothing goes on your record. After year start over You have to request traffic school when issued the ticket. J
Jail me? HAHA

Can’t be any worse than siting through the 8 hour AARP driving class to get my senior discount. Insurance agent stopped giving the class so no more fresh cookies.

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Checking the oil is so easy you just have to push the button on the dash and wait 30 seconds.

I’ll just keep driving fast the extra penalty I’m paying is not that much.

That’s because I don’t drive a Winnebago, a truck, or SUV.

Iowa just passed a new law requiring most stations to up the ethanol percentage from 10% to 15% by 2026 to have at least one pump available. So beware what you pump for older cars or small engines. They already fooled me filling up late at night.

I dunno though when we are talking fertilizer shortages causing lower yields and food shortages a possible reality, seems bad timing. About half of the Iowa corn crop goes for ethanol production now. Sure to spread to other states.

A fine that is “high enough” for someone with low income might not be enough to concern someone w/high income. Some think fines should be proportionate to income level; i.e for 70 mph in a 55 zone, $10 for a low income offender, $1000 for a high income offender.

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I frankly wouldn’t care if a fine high enough to make a high income earners think twice bankrupted a low income person.

Maybe just start taking away DL’s on the second offense within a set period? Not sure I want that, but at least it wouldn’t be income dependent. It would suck for everyone equally! I guess I’d be ok. Haven’t been pulled over in ten years or more.

This sort of thing is hard to make truly fair. One method is to just not bother whether it is fair or not. Another as SJ mentions is to confiscate DL for second offense within some period, two years for discussion say. The unfairness w/that is a lower income person loses their DL, they may lose their job too, as they can’t get to work. But maybe a partial DL confiscation, allowing the DL be used to drive to and from work only. Something like that might work. I seldom come up against this problem myself, but I was pulled over maybe 5 years ago for a burned out license plate bulb (believe it or not … lol).

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Kinda is what it is, in my opinion. They’ll yank your DL in a heartbeat for a DUI, whether you need to drive to work or not. Rightfully so, I guess.

In this fine land of ours there is a principle that the penalty fit the crime. Let the percolate around a little. So a high crime like shooting someone or armed robbery has a higher penalty. A high victimless crime like fraud also has a penalty commensurate with the sin. Now how does a violation like driving 70 in a 55 or even 80 in a 70, or parking by a hydrant somehow compare. Was someone injured? Different story.

A woman was stoned to death for not honoring her husband or covering every part of her body in public. People have their hands cut off for theft. Is this the society you wish to live in? Travel can be arranged if this sounds good.

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It would be unfortunate if an otherwise responsible and considerate person got nabbed twice and lost their DL; on the other hand there are many irresponsible and inconsiderate folk out there too, for example may be cited for 35 in a 25 one day, and 45 in a 30 the next. I’ve never read that famous (among the academic illiterati) book Crime and Punishment, maybe I should.

I think they have that in Illinois. It’s a special permit thing to get to and from school or work. Illinois is rather strict on young drivers. Teen drivers in Ill can lose being granted a driver’s license for up to 9 months for a single violation in some cases. In Ill all drivers under the age of 21 will have their driver’s license suspended for any two moving violation convictions within a 24 month period.

I wish they would do this for DUIs in trucks and SUVs but have a lesser penalty for DUIs that are committed in small cars. It would discourage drunks from driving big vehicles. Most of the innocent fatal DUI victims are people that get hit by big vehicles.

Can’t they continue to be responsible and considerate in the area of their life that doesn’t involve operating a vehicle? That’s the purpose for taking their DL away rather than facing jail time.