I did not hear Rush say that “only 50,000 barrels can be saved per day by properly inflated tires.” But I may have just missed it. But if Rush did say “50,000,” he is not off by much.
Properly inflated tires can improve gas mileage by approximately 3 percent compared to grossly under-inflated tires.
The U.S. consumes around 20.7 million barrels of petroleum per day. Only about 9.3 million barrels per day are used in motor vehicles. So a 3 percent improvement in automobile mileage would correspond, at best, to a 1.3 percent reduction in total oil consumption.
1.3 percent of 20.7 million means as much as 269,100 barrels of petroleum a day saved.
Here is a handy calculator. http://www.math.com/everyone/calculators/calc_source/percent.htm
But since most people know that properly inflated tires can improve gas mileage and they do keep their tires properly inflated, the actual potential savings is much smaller than a 1.3 percent reduction in total oil consumption.
Savings could be only as much as 269,100 barrels of petroleum a day if all tires were improperly inflated. If as many as 4 out of 5 tires are already properly inflated, Rush is very close to being right.
But the point is that the exact numbers are debatable within a certain range, but Rush is right to ridicule Barack Obama for claiming that properly inflating your tires will save as much as “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling.”
This analysis does not even account for the practical impossibility of getting every idiot in the country to keep his tires properly inflated.
Al Sadr is re-inventing himself as Al Sharpton!