Quote:
Originally Posted by roflwaffle
Dave mentioned that most of us had taken this beyond what was economical and I'm curious if that's the case, so if you have the time, feel free to post up a few things...
For instance in my Camry I get ~25mpg@70mph average highway speed and ~35mpg@55mph average highway speed. This means that the cost of going faster with those two speeds is ~$13.5/hour or ~$15.5/hour adjusted for taxes. Since I like driving about three times more than I like working, I'd say I would need to be getting ~$45+/hour to make it worthwhile to drive faster. Even if I was driving something more fuel efficient that managed ~70mpg@55mph and ~45mpg@55mph I would still need to make ~$20+/hour to make it worthwhile.
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How much are you paying for gas that it saves you $13.5/hr by driving slower? At 30mpg you are consuming 2gal/hr. That's roughly $8 of gas burned every hour in my neck of the woods. Now how are you saving nearly double that by going slower?
There are way too many variables to consider when determining whether it's worth driving faster or not. Some things to consider would be the direct monetary expenditures (have to buy more fuel), value of time, environmental impacts, physical risks of driving faster or slower, etc. For the majority of people, they value not thinking of any of these things, and instead just allow their instinct to dictate speed.
For me, I travel at the fastest speed that I believe will avoid a speeding ticket 99 out of 100 times, or 72mph (whichever is slower). Life is short and driving is dull unless you are going fast. I already waste 1/3 of my life sleeping, and I don't want to waste any more than I have to driving.
Think about it this way; if you average 1hr of driving per day, you will spend roughly 15 days (24hr days) driving per year. If you spend 60 of your years as an average driver, then you have spent roughly 900 days, or close to 2.5 years of your life inside a vehicle.