There might be hope speed limit

[Frank Lee]

You're obligated because you incurred those obligations. You made decisions to arrange your life so. Nobody made you do it. Millions upon millions of people arranged their lives around the notion of perpetual cheap energy and decided 3 hours of driving every day was a smart thing to do for that extra $1/hr., not to mention the 15,000 miles/year of recreational driving all over creation. God I hope gas goes to $10/gallon quickly.

[Big Dave]

You are pushing on a rope. The 55 MPH speed limit was the most hated statute since the Vollsted Act.

[pstrbrc]

I guess what offends me about much of this is the following quote from the article:

“The average driver races from red light to red light with little regard for how much energy they’re consuming. It’s an amazingly antisocial behavior.”

"Antisocial behavior"? Excuse me? Antisocial behavior is behavior that alienates one from the culture around, behavior that irritates most everybody else, and predisposes them to not want to like you.
Like, just fer instance, DRIVING 55MPH IN TRAFFIC THAT WANTS TO GO 65+MPH.
Like, fer instance, what most people here call "hypermiling". If the average driver is doing it, it's not antisocial. If the average driver is irritated by it, it's antisocial.
The moralizing done here (as if YOU know what is best) is more than a little annoying. Yes, I want to get better mileage. Yes, my driving style is much more conservative than it was at $.999 a gallon. But that's my ethics applied to me, and I'm happy.
But I'm also aware that the world's known oil reserves just keep growing. I don't find any weight in the argument that we are running out of oil. All such arguments are based on flawed use of statistics. In fact, almost all "doom and gloom" futurecasting done in the past 60 years has been provably erroneous.
So knock off the "I can't WAIT to make everybody else drive as slow as I think they should be allowed to go!" It just makes ecomodders sound antisocial.

[pstrbrc]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

You're obligated because you incurred those obligations. You made decisions to arrange your life so. Nobody made you do it. Millions upon millions of people arranged their lives around the notion of perpetual cheap energy and decided 3 hours of driving every day was a smart thing to do for that extra $1/hr., not to mention the 15,000 miles/year of recreational driving all over creation. God I hope gas goes to $10/gallon quickly.

We are all obligated based on choices we've made. But we are even more obligated based on choices and decisions made by persons who don't give a monkey's butt about us, only about their own personal acquisition of wealth and power. $10 gas will just make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Or is that what you want?

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by pstrbrc

I guess what offends me about much of this is the following quote from the article:


"Antisocial behavior"? Excuse me? Antisocial behavior is behavior that alienates one from the culture around, behavior that irritates most everybody else, and predisposes them to not want to like you.
Like, just fer instance, DRIVING 55MPH IN TRAFFIC THAT WANTS TO GO 65+MPH.
Like, fer instance, what most people here call "hypermiling". If the average driver is doing it, it's not antisocial. If the average driver is irritated by it, it's antisocial.
The moralizing done here (as if YOU know what is best) is more than a little annoying. Yes, I want to get better mileage. Yes, my driving style is much more conservative than it was at $.999 a gallon. But that's my ethics applied to me, and I'm happy.
But I'm also aware that the world's known oil reserves just keep growing. I don't find any weight in the argument that we are running out of oil. All such arguments are based on flawed use of statistics. In fact, almost all "doom and gloom" futurecasting done in the past 60 years has been provably erroneous.
So knock off the "I can't WAIT to make everybody else drive as slow as I think they should be allowed to go!" It just makes ecomodders sound antisocial.

If flagrant wastage of a finite resource is against society's best interests, I'd call that anti-social. Doesn't matter which side the "majority" falls on.

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by pstrbrc

We are all obligated based on choices we've made. But we are even more obligated based on choices and decisions made by persons who don't give a monkey's butt about us, only about their own personal acquisition of wealth and power. $10 gas will just make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Or is that what you want?

I want our society to be less wasteful and less profligate. DAH

Plus I want to bask in lots of schadenfreude when V8 4x4 100 mile commutin' tards feel the squeeze.

[99LeCouch]

IDK if the speed limit is ever going down again. Maybe if we're in a shooting war with China, the yahoos will see a reason to go 65 instead of 75.

Or maybe as the weather continues to worsen every year people will slow down because they won't know if there'll be a weather-caused traffic jam at their destination causing them to creep slowly. Folks will slow down in the rain and the snow when they can't see.

If fuel ever goes up again folks will most definitely slow down. Many regular folks drove slower when gas was over $4 a gallon simply because they couldn't afford to drive like maniacs. The gasoline that had always been cheap suddenly became as dear as expensive perfume.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by pstrbrc

Antisocial behavior is behavior that alienates one from the culture around, behavior that irritates most everybody else, and predisposes them to not want to like you.

Yes, racing from red to red fits that definition perfectly well, since by doing that - and in particular cutting in front of me and jamming on the brakes, thus preventing both of us from moving smoothly and swiftly through the newly-changed green - you predispose me not to like you.

Oh, and then there's the time after you've stopped, while you sit there in your oversized guzzler, waiting like a dinosaur kicked in the tail for the fact that the light had turned green to make its torturously slow way way to the hindbrain.

Or the way you people who drive 75+ on the freeways suddenly slow to a crawl when you hit winding mountain roads, and can't be bothered to use turnouts to let me (who'd like to drive pretty much the same speed on both) go past.

[nemesis]

I have a solution, instead of lowering the speed limit, lets just get rid of Nascar, all they do is drive around in circle at 200mph and waist gasoline.

[user removed]

On my almost daily drive the first light is 5 miles away from where I enter the road. 55 MPH and you have enough distance to anticipate the light on it's green cycle. Every single time people blast by me and get stuck at the light.

Next light is just over 3 miles away. Same scenario always passed by speeders in this section that's 45 MPH, only to catch up with them at the light when it changes green.

Next 3 miles is 12 traffic lights. Here we go again same Morons pass me speeding to the next red light. I know the timing of the lights and when I am lucky I can actually roll through all 12, and even hit the last one, which is a left turn only signal. This stretch does require a slightly better strategy. In once section you need to reduce your average speed, while in another you need to increase it.

Inevitably the speeders will ruin your average speed and get you stuck at a light by their blast and brake stupidity.

Just dumb, inattentive people who don't understand the light timing. On the return trip through the exact same section, you need a little luck and an average speed of 2 MPH over the limit to hit all 12 lights green. In most cases here if you stay right at or a couple of MPH over the limit I have driven 35 miles through over 55 lights and never stopped, but it is rare. Its always the same with other drivers. Only occasionally does another driver realize that you know the light timing and they will follow you and do the same thing. I can't put a number on the times I have heard the vehicles engine roaring as it accelerates past me while I am coasting to the next light so I can hit it green, while this idiot next to me is getting 2 MPG so he (or she) can burn up his (or her) brakes and pull over in front of me and kill my inertia. In those instances I downshift to slow down so the idiot can get going before I get there, but with timed lights in some cases it cause me to get caught by a red just a couple of lights later.

The wife once commented on how it was amazing that I almost never had to stop for a red light, even when they were 20 miles apart.

regards
Mech