EPA looking for "HELP US IMPROVE ..."

I was just at www.fueleconomy.gov and found they have this announcement:

I signed up and would recommend anyone with an interest in a public mileage database join up.

Bob Wilson

 

The particular web site deals only with automotive mileage and emissions. It is one of the few web sites that covers all vehicles by model year so we can compare diesels, hybrids, compressed natural gas, and ordinary gas-only vehicles. It has no "timber" content and the "clean air, oil" content deals only with vehicles.

Now there are a few things I would like to see changed:

• option to aggregate same model across multiple years - this would increase the count of vehicle samples to improve the accuracy.
• histogram of MPG records - this would let us see if there is a wider variance, suggesting some non-linear effects versus a narrower distribution suggesting a more linear performance.
• ability to see individual records of other owners - right now, I can see all of my records but everyone else shows up as a single MPG number.
• cut and paste into excel - currently their generated HTML is hostile to spreadsheet transfer and analysis.
• option to trim upper and lower 5% (10% total) - this does a great job of taking out data entry errors and the invariable 'out liers'

There is a gold mine of information collected at this web site but the most important parts, the individual user entries, are hidden from independent analysis. One thing for sure, this web site has nothing to do with other EPA areas or policies. It is something that helps us understand relative vehicle performance.

Bob Wilson