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I figure I would chime in on this as I am now doing it a lot now.
My drive starts at 1,581 ft and peeks at 4,804 ft and then stops at 2,497 ft over a total distance of 64.6 miles.
Going to work it is 22.8 miles from the start to the peak and 41.8 miles from the peak to the base/end.
Going to work, the uphill climb is not drastically steep up until the last 700 ft climb or so. From the peak to the end there are only a few small steep downhills that are coast-able.
However, the drive from work to home is far better, dropping over 3,000 ft across 22 miles is highly advantageous for coasting! Of that 22.8 mile stretch to home, about 65% of the drop is coast-able, the other 30% is to flat to keep a good enough coast going to maintain speed to avoid being run over by semis coming downhill.
So I have only just now begun trying to EOC the best spots of my drive home and I started thinking about how it can be illegal as I have actually been scolded for doing it before (coasting with engine on though).... only reason I was pulled over was I ended up doing about 80 in a 65. Now I understand the ramifications of not having your vehicle at 100% controllable in a split second to avoid a hazardous condition, thus I understand the reasons that 15 states have laws against neutral coasting, let alone EOC. However I believe it to be a highly situational issue! New cars all have the little black box that stores the vehicles last known driving feedback prior to an event (crash, airbag deployment, etc). Should a vehicle be neutral coasting or EOC and be in an accident which shows that the driver was sacrificing control and stability for the purpose of increasing efficiency against the law... yes, this individual should be held accountable for his/her actions. In essence, this offense needs to be labeled as a secondary offense, meaning you can't pull me over for it but you can pull me over for speeding and then give me a ticket for neutral coasting.
There are far too many new cars that are built to be much quieter while at highway speeds and in town, including tires ment to reduce road noise as well. My car being one of them, in idle I can't hear my car from 30ft away on a calm day. There are very few possible ways an officer can pick out a car that is off, let alone in neutral. Yes he can check tailpipe emissions on a cold day (I'm in So Cal... what cold days?) The road and wind noise off your car and other cars is enough to cover the lack of engine noise from your car.
In California the law is stated as:
"The driver of a motor vehicle when traveling on down grade upon any highway shall not coast with the gears of such vehicle in neutral."
(A law from 1953)
I wasn't in neutral, I was in 5th gear with the clutch depressed.
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