Anyone using their DRLs?

on the otherhand accidents can only happen when there is a difference in speed. try doing 55 in atlanta and see how safe you really are for yourself and others.

 

I understand that, but so what to do. Speeding keeps spiralling up and up. I've heard young people here who honestly thought the "speed limit" was the lower threshold. It's gonna take a quantum shift, to break the trend. Or self-driving cars.

 

its more like SOME people will try to plant themselves in the passing lane on the preposition that they are going the speed limit therefore all others will slow down. for me, its how do i keep from getting dented. btw i really do appreciate your statements and mean my answers only in a respectful manner. i think in reality we are on the same page.

 

Our provincial highways minister (a young guy) raised speed limits on a lot of provincial highways. An association of BC doctors publicly decried the move, but hey. We were on a few of the affected highways last summer, and it's was refreshing to see the majority of drivers ignoring the new, higher limits, using a bit of common sense.

 

Yup. I'm just a 64 year old youngster lol. I like to take it easy, stay right as much as possible.

I can recall having to get in the left lane for a fast upcoming left turn I had to make. There was a nice gap, I signalled in advance (first mistake), then gradually started moving over. The woman at the back of the gap basically floored it, was just about on our back bumper by the time I was in the lane, leaning on her horn. Something just nuts in some people's psyche, and the funny thing is they don't see it. I find the best tack is to just keep on keeping on in such situations. And hopefully they'll be pulled off the road for demerit points before they kill themselves or someone.

 

i agree, even though you are a youngster compared to me. there are times when some crazyass person is not going to let you turn. as you sai

 

There is always a speed difference between vehicles traveling in opposite directions, and some of them are not proficient at staying on their side of the centerline.

There is always a speed difference between vehicles traveling on the road, and fixed objects along the road or debris on the road.

Many places in my state have two different speed limits. Much of Montana has four different speed limits. Speed differences are inherent characteristics of these roads, competent drivers expect it and can deal with it.

Try doing 70 in the 55 zones were I learned to drive, and see how long you can keep your license. Points can add up fast.

Try doing 70 on some of the rural highways marked 70 where I was recently traveling in wintery Montana, and see how long you can even stay on the road. Many of those signs are simply meaningless generic boilerplate. The Basic Speed Law is what really applies, requiring significantly lower speeds.

With many of today's cars approximately 15 feet long, this is barely 1 second of following distance, which is much too close for safety. The legal minimum in my state is 33% more than than. The common 'Two Second Rule' is twice as much space.

Unfortunately, this does not reflect the congestion realities of many urban communities.

 

I know I'm responding to an ancient thread, but you better believe that running all lights will cost 1-2 MPG in the Prius. That's only a 2-4% hit to fuel economy. If we assume running the lights consumes about 300 watts, and burning gasoline to replenish the electricity is about 50% efficient, you will see a net drag on the engine of 600 watts, or nearly 1 horsepower (746 watts). It takes about 20 horsepower to sustain freeway speeds, so the lights represent nearly 1/20th of the power, ~ 5%.

The fact that the Prius gets such good fuel economy is the reason why it's so easy to accidentally burn a few MPGs here and there. A relatively small amount of fuel (energy) will give you a relatively long range. So, wasting a small amount of energy will also give up a large amount of range.

Now, it would be unreasonable to see a 1-2 MPG drop when running lights on a 10 MPG truck because that would represent 10-20% of the total energy. Applying the same 2-4% rule above to the 10 MPG truck, we get a more reasonable drop of 0.2 - 0.4 MPG.

This has a lot to do with the law of diminishing returns. You save a lot more fuel by doubling the efficiency of a car from 25 MPG to 50, than you do doubling the efficiency of the Prius from 50 MPG to 100. In the first example, the 25 MPG car takes 4 gallons to travel 100 miles. Doubling the fuel economy to 50 MPG takes just 2 gallons of fuel to travel 100 miles; a savings of 2 gallons. If we were somehow able to double the fuel economy of the Prius again, it would take just 1 gallon of fuel to go 100 miles, but the fuel saved would only be 1 gallon.

Each doubling of efficiency results in half the savings. At some point, it no longer makes sense to expend the resources needed to improve efficiency, because the cost and difficulty to do so will never be offset by the meager energy savings.

The law of diminishing returns applies to everything. Double the speed you drive, and it takes half the time to arrive at your destination. Doubling your speed again only saves half of the time you saved in the first doubling.

 

The nonlinear MPG math is even more dramatic than that. If a 50 MPG Prius needs 20 horsepower to sustain freeway speed, then that 10 MPG truck needs about 100 horsepower (or its fuel equivalent) for the same speed. Then that 600 watts of lighting power drops MPG by closer to 0.1 MPG.

If we expressed fuel economy as gallons-per-100-miles, an Imperialized version of the system used in most metric countries,. than the fuel economy difference figures would be much more intuitive.