[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Peak Oil Crisis: On Slowing Down

[Bill Totten]

by Tom Whipple

Falls Church News-Press (June 05 2008)


As gasoline prices pass $4 per gallon and begin to eat away at our
well-being and the fabric of our civilization, the realization is slowly
growing that indeed there is something we can do - slow down. Currently
this concept has less than zero traction in Congress. Recent polls show
that, in overwhelming numbers, the American people

It is now 34 years since Congress passed the National Maximum Speed Law
requiring states to establish a 55 miles per hour ("mph") speed limit as
a condition for receiving federal highway funds. It is 21 years since
the Congress permitted states to raise the speed limit to 65 mph on
rural interstate highways and thirteen years since states were given the
authority to set any speed limits they like. After oil became plentiful
again, lower speed limits were seen as a way to save lives by reducing
the seriousness of accidents, but public clamor soon overcame concerns.

As the interstate system grew, and cars became faster and quieter, the
"double nickel" limit came to be seen as an intrusion on people's
rights. Studies showed that by the early 1980s 83 percent of the
motorists on New York interstates were cruising above the posted limit.
Speed limits soon became an ideological issue when the Heritage
Foundation put out a report saying that speed limits were only saving
trivial amounts of gasoline. In 1999, Cato Institute concluded that
deaths from car accidents did not increase after the speed limits were
raised and there was a net economic benefit of two to three billion
dollars a year from everybody driving faster.

A review of comments on web sites advocating a return to the 55 mph
limit suggests that the idea is vastly unpopular. Slowing down is not
going to come easily.

The issue of course is not one of ideology, but of physics and
economics. The resistance of the air to a moving vehicle increases
roughly with the square of the speed. There are numerous factors besides
drag such as vehicle weight, rolling resistance, and terrain gradient
that go into determining an optimum speed for the best fuel economy.
Studies from thirty years ago suggest that 35-40 mph might be the
optimum speed for best economy while more recent studies on more current
cars show 50-55 mph might be better. All studies, however, show that
getting speed down from the current flow of 70-75 mph to 50-55 mph is
going to be good for about a twenty percent fuel savings with the
current vehicle fleet.

At any given time of course, most moving vehicles are not going with the
75 mph flow, but are stuck in traffic, waiting at traffic lights, and
creeping around parking lots. Slowing down the Interstates and rural
roads by twenty mph will not save much fuel in those massive suburban
traffic jams called commuting. This, of course, is the heart of the
argument against reducing speed limits. Excessive gasoline consumption
should be a personal decision. "I paid for the gasoline and should be
allowed to waste it by driving fast as much as I can afford".

There is more to this story than personal freedoms however. Try driving
at economical speeds on most interstates these days and you will quickly
realize that you are a menace to your fellow motorists. It is only a
question of time until somebody gets killed weaving around to avoid you.
Going with, or close to, the flow becomes an act of kindness to our
fellow motorists. The moral is that we are all going to have to slow
down together - or not at all.

Our truckers, who bring us perhaps seventy percent of our food and other
stuff, are being done in by the cost of diesel which is approaching $5 a
gallon. Now I have no idea what the optimum speed for an eighteen
wheeler might be, but I suspect it is going to be well south of sixty
mph, especially if the manufacturers adjusted the gear ratios a bit.
Remember that eighteen wheelers are most frequently found a few feet off
your bumper on the Interstate and rarely stuck in a suburban traffic
jam. We are going to need our trucks as our railroads are at capacity
and will take decades to build more.

In Ontario, where they don't fool around, they have already imposed a
100 kph (60 mph) speed limit on the eighteen wheelers and have placed
governors on their engines to keep errant drivers under control when the
law isn't around. The Canadians have saved so much on their fuel bills
that the American Trucking Association now is proposing we do the same
thing right here in America and institute a 65 mph speed limit. I doubt
if they really want the governors on their engines, but they like the
savings on the diesel bill.

Interestingly enough, the truckers want everybody else to slow down to
65 mph with them, presumably to avoid obscene gestures from the little
four wheeler drivers who would otherwise have to spend the day passing them.

There will come a day in the not-too-distant future when it will become
obvious that we have to save every last drop of motor fuel just to keep
ourselves and our economy going. Even the most red-blooded American
Congressman will swallow his love of freedom to go fast and vote to
impose some sort of fuel-saving speed limit. We may have to wait until
there are wide-spread shortages of motor fuel such as we had in 1973.
However, as seems increasingly likely, lobbyists from diesel consuming
industries may just convince some Congressional committee that slowing
down is what it will take if we want to continue to eat.

I suspect that by the time Congress votes new speed limits, most drivers
will get the idea and you won't find eighty plus percent breaking the
law. If not, we could always sentence them to drive only cars with 55
mph governors for life.
  	
http://www.fcnp.com/national_commentary/the_peak_oil_crisis_on_slowing_down_20080605.html


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