Posted on 07/12/2008 12:37:30 PM PDT by The Duke
Please pardon this "original material" vanity posting, however all the talk this Saturday morning (and previously) of re-imposing a nationwide 55 MPH speed limit has motivied me to take up the keyboard to make an important point that seems to be being missed in this debate. That point is that imposing such a limit inherently places a value on peoples' time.
Let's do the math. Since both sides have been claiming that this speed limit will result in fuel savings of 2% from traveling at 70 MPH, then let's do the math using those numbers. We'll also use a vehicle that gets 25 miles per gallon, and consider a trip of 100 miles.
If I'm traveling 100 miles at 70 miles per hour, then I'm going to arrive at my destination in 1.43 hours (100/70). If I travel the same distance at 55 MPH then I'm going to get there in 1.82 hours (100/55). The additoinal time to arrive at my destination is 1.82 - 1.43 hours = 24 minutes.
Now, if I'm paying $4/gallon for fuel and getting 25 miles per gallon, then the trip is going to cost me $16 dollars. A two percent savings of that is exactly thirty-two cents.
So, if I'm in favor of reducing the speed limit from 70 MPH to 55 MPH then I'm saying I would be willing to lose right at a third of an hour in exchange for right at a third of a dollar. In other words, my time is worth no more to me than a dollar an hour!
The reality is that this ridiculous 55 MPH speed limit idea isn't about saving fuel or money - it's about asserting control. There are those in our society - mainly those who have gravitated towards politics - who derive their sense of fulfillment by seeing others obey their dictates.
Several years ago when Al (never-met-a-tree-he-didn't-hug) Gore had the floodgates for a river opened just so he could have his picture taken in a canoe, he wasted an amount of water equal to the savings realized by the entire nation's use of low-flow toilets for TWO YEARS. Do you think this clown really cared about the environment? Of course not, the perfumed prince simply got off on the thought that he could force an entire nation to start flushing twice.
The next time you're on the Interstate conduct a little test and slow down to 55, and just get a preview of what the liberal clowns have in store for us all. While you're at it, you might as well bump up the thermostat in your home by a few degrees. Maybe, just maybe, you'll then be motivated to make your own feelings heard by our poltiical "leaders".
Don’t get me wrong....I’m not driving slower to reduce demand..simply to spend less $.
As far as the Iraq war goes, as well as the impending Iran war, we would be spending far more money for oil and gasoline now and in the future if not for our presence in the Persian Gulf. It’s not just ‘our’ oil flow we must be concerned with.
For your information ping!
Butied toward the bottom of the news story is the fact that they increased the number of police, so there was greater enforcement for the later (higher) speed limit.
That's baloney. My car gets about 24 mpg at 77-79 mph and about 26 at 65-70 mph. That means that at 78 mph, I can go 240 miles on 10 gallons, while at 68, I can go 260 miles on 10 gallons. (and yes, this is actual MPG calculated over many trips by dividing miles driven by gallons used rather than relying on the inaccurate in-car computer estimate).
For that extra 20 miles, I pay in terms of time - if the total trip were 500 miles, I'd spend 6.4 hours driving at 78 mph vs. 7.35 hours at 68. I gain roughly an hour in this case, for the cost of less than a gallon of gas.
I wonder, does the government want to pay me an hourly wage for the extra time that the archaic, slower speed limit extracts from my life?
BTW, thx for the rational perspective...
I hear you...however...
not all cars out there are going to be so well engineered...my 2000 chevy blazer has been giving me nearly 60-80 miles more per tank by going 55-60 mph for the most part when I can...so instead of filling up every 7 days it’s moved to aboutevery 9 or 10 days so I am saving money, albeit not a ton, but money saved is money saved...if it wasn’t we’d all pay top dollar for everything and not care.
That being said, I in no way would support 55mph national speed limit...local and state decisions like that should be local and state...65mph on interstates needs to stay as well...
Reimposing the 55 mph limit sounds like a roundabout way for the government to bail out the airlines. Who is going to drive 200+ mile trips at that speed?
Outstanding post! Heck even in Germany with $8 liter gas no one is trucking down the autobahn at 55mph.
Outstanding post! Heck even in Germany with $8 liter gas no one is trucking down the autobahn at 55mph.
I realize that, but your savings is from personally lower demand even if it's not significantly affecting the market price.
I'm not advocating a federal speed limit of 55 mph. I'm just fascinated with the contradictions that are popping up as "conservative" has come to mean something so different these days. The "conserve" of "conservative" has been discarded, and so-called "conservatives" are acting like warmed-over liberals of yesteryear...right along with those who push for more federal involvement in our lives and also call themselves conservative! It's amusing.
It’s not just ‘our’ oil flow we must be concerned with.
Yes, it's a global market...and I feel good about taking the lead and spending my hard-earned wages on keeping oil costs down* for our competitors like China, who are gobbling up what they can to build for the future...how 'bout you?
Heck, if we can open up our interior reserves instead of using up off-shore and foreign sources first, we might be able to make it even cheaper for them...and then have to pay higher prices down the road because we've used our own first. Cool. eh?
*as you pointed out, if we keep the price down for us, it's down for others.
Good chart - It seems that while the 0.08 BAC limit is appropriate for 18-19 year olds (with little driving experience), a 0.10-0.12% BAC limit is more appropriate for those 20 and over. Of course, that doesn't bring in the revenue for the government.
To adjust the formula I gave for the present value of the death of a motorist to include deaths to other parties, all that would have to be done is to obtain figures on the number of NON-driver deaths, via motor vehicle, per million miles per annum, then add the appropriate factor. It's a straight proportion, nothing very fancy.
The resulting figure is going to be VERY tiny, tinier than the single-driver calc, so I'm not too worried about omitting it from my post.
He said
It did save lives—that is a factTo which I said:
You're wrong; it COST lives. Look at the numbers. To make the math easy let's assume that there are 125 million drivers in the USA that drive 10,000 miles on the expressway every year. The amount of time added by going 55 rather than 70 is 39 hours per person per year. for 125 million people this is 4 billion 857 million extra hours per year. Now if we chose the average human life span in the US as 75 years this works out to 675 thousand hours that you live. divide 675k into 4857 million and get the number of lives wasted by the 55 MPH limit a little over 7200 lives wasted every year by the absurdly low speed limit.
Secondly, alarmists and the usual crew of bedwetters and cryers for hire were crying and wringing their hands about increasing deaths on the highways when the odious 55 was dropped. didn't happen; the fatal accidents continued to decline as they had in the years before the 55 was inflicted on the populace.
So it's just a matter of inflicting more annoyances on the populace and of course filling the coffers of local governments. Of course he didn't accept my argument as if holding your hands over your ears and not accepting facts somehow makes them go away.
I am sure we all understand that definition of "Democracy"...You know the one, involving three wolves and one sheep?
OK, We have John Warner. Who’s next?
Or, is that too old-fashioned for you?
John / Billybob
As far as the free flow of oil...our economy is not the only one affected by restraints on oil supply. As you pointed out, it is a global market, but it is also a global economy. If the rest of the world slips into recession, and possibly even depression if the free flow of oil is interrupted, only the arrogant and ignorant would believe that that economic turmoil will not reach our shores, of course followed not to distantly by global political instability.
Even if we didn't get one drop of oil from the Persian gulf, it is in our interests to make sure that others who need it can. Petroleum is the life blood of the world economy...always has been, and will be for the foreseeable future.
BTW, we have more oil reserves domestically than we could use for hundreds of years, and those reserves only increase the more we look. I'm not worried about using our own oil first.
And, nobody here will ever vote for me. I've run my last race. All I deal in now is facts and logic. Sorry that combination bothers you.
John / Billybob
Well then you have no excuse to be so unequivocally (and uncharacteristically) wrong on this one Billy.
I lived that crap in the 70s.
It was a joke.
It sucked when driving any distance.
Dear Congressman:
I've always appreciated your postings and have concurred 100% on all of them except this one. I suffered thru the Carter debacle and the so-called 55 speed limit years and found both Carter and the reduced speed limit nothing but crap and nothing more than an income generator for the highway patrols.........
People are naturally going to exceed whatever mandated speed limit whether its 55 or 70 and statistics prove that most of the fatal accidents are "in city" rather than expressway. And as for the expressway accidents, most of them occur during the winter months due to snow and icy conditions totally unrelated to posted speed limits since most of the drivers were driving below posted speeds yet in excess of the safety margins afforded the weather conditions.
You know darn well that this reduced speed limit proposal by Congress (as well as my state governor Granholm) is nothing more than a useless feel good proposal in order to make the ignorant believe that the U.S. Govt. is looking out for us.
You, Congressman Billybob, above all people, should be ashamed of yourself........./
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.