are there any advantages to Driving Slower?

Brake pads should last longer too.

Brake pads should last longer too.



*********
    Maybe not.   Stop your grinding braking practices, and you will probably
improve your brake life.

On 6/25/2012 1:16 PM, marc wrote:

GO FUCK YOURSELF NOW ASSHOLE


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No, beyond saving gas there is no advantage for you to be a pain in the ass
to everybody else in the universe. As a practical matter, driving slower
does not really save anything. What saves a lot is slowing the rate at which
you go from 0 to 60 and from 60 to 0 for that matter.

It saves gas--in some cars, quite a bit of gas.

So you go on 'roid rages against people doing 55 in the right lane?  And
why would you do that?

One, why are you telling me this, I said the same thing. Not in those words,
but the same thing. The very first thing I said was, "No, beyond saving gas
there is no advantage ..." Saving gas is the only advantage. There could be
savings on tire wear and fuel consumption, but tire wear comes more from
taking a 30mph exit at 45 than going 60 instead of 50, and brake wear comes
from waiting until the last second to mash on the brakes and applying 4G to
the seat belts instead of noticing that the next light is gonna still be red
when you get there so you may as well coast a few hundred yards instead of
holding the gas pedal to the floor just so you get another chance to apply
4G to the seat belts again. One can still go 60 instead of 50 -- not go
slow -- and do things to save on tires and brakes, and one can also do
things that eat the crap out of tires and brakes AND go 50 instead of 60 --  
go slow -- at the same time. So, going slow is not the key to saving tires
and brakes, it is only a key to saving gas.

Two, the question was, "BESIDES SAVING GAS, IS THERE ANY BENEFIT TO DRIVING
SLOWER?" Everybody knows that you can save gas by going slower, the question
was if other automotive systems will also benefit from going slower.

Three, nothing I have ever said should indicate that I go on rages about
people doing anything in the right lane. If one wants to go slow -- I pull a
trailer and am frequently among that crowd -- then doing so in the right
lane is precisely the right thing to do. The problem comes when the guy in
the left lane goes the same speed as the slow traffic in the right lane, or
goes just enough faster to take 5 miles to complete the pass and in the mean
time there is a traffic jam built up behind him/her.

Nothing you ever said should indicate that you go on rages about people
doing anything in the right lane?

So maybe you can comment on your original statement, the one I actually
responded and referred to:



What about someone driving 55mph in the right lane (for example) makes
that person "a pain in the ass to everybody else in the universe"?



So you're now retracting your *blanket* statement that going slower
makes you "a pain in the ass to everybody else in the universe".  Now
you're qualifying it, and even admitting that you yourself would have
been covered by your own blanket.

Nice tap dancing there.

Going slower than everybody else does make you a pain in the ass if you are
going slow in the wrong place. I'm not reversing anything, the issue is not
going slow or going fast, the issue is if there is anything BESIDES FUEL
MILEAGE to be gained by dropping the speed. So, I stand by my original
response, "No, there is nothing to be gained beyond the savings in fuel."
And, going slower makes you a pain in the ass to the entire rest of the
universe.

Ask the Prius driver why he insists on going slower than the flow of traffic
as a single driver in a carpool lane. He'll tell you that he has a fuel-pass
that lets him go as a single rider in the carpool lane, then try to claim
that he only needs to do the speed limit. Clearly this driver is a pain in
the ass to the entire rest of the universe because he could do the speed
limit in any of the other lanes and still go the same speed as he is going
in the only lane that multi-rider vehicles get to use, and they should not
be hampered by the slower car hogging the lane. Clearly this is a driver
that is going 55 and NOT in the right lane.

As a matter of fact, it was discovered that cars from the 60s and early 70s
actually developed problems as a direct result of the national 55mph speed
limit. Cars have a power band, and the lower speed limit factually resulted
in many cars operating outside of that band, the results were widely varied
but it generally boils down that while lower fuel consumption happened
nationally, the cars did not like the abuse that came from driving them too
slowly.

well, of *course* that's true.  Just like it's true that going faster
than everybody else makes you a pain in the ass if you're doing it in
the wrong place.

Comfort level?

Is there anything to be gained by forcing people to go the speed you
yourself desire?  Other than making YOU happy, that is.

So what if grampa is more comfortable going 55 in the right lane?  As
long as he adjusts for entrance ramps and keeps that flow of traffic
smooth, what do you care?

Because, of course, no one else is allowed to have a comfort level
that's different from yours.

You sound like those people who think that anyone going slower than you
are is an idiot--while anyone going faster than you are is a jerk.

So that's one single instance of PITA thoughtless driver.

But if he were in the "correct" lane, would he still be a PITA?

Citations or it's bullshit.

The QUESTION was if driving slower saved the machine, or just gas.

Without regard to what I feel about your speed being sufficient or not and
the ramifications thereof, there is no benefit to the machine, so the only
benefit is to the gas. And, the savings here is minimal.

When the speed limit was lowered to 55, it was hoped that the fuel
consumption would be about 2.2% less than the then-current consumption.
Studies by the Department of Transportation found the fuel savings to be
closer to 1%, and an independent study found the reduction to be only about
0.5%. Contributing factors to the new consumption rates staying as high
after the new speed limits as before the limits was that the 55 limit was
widely ignored. (I have to assume that a return to a mandated lower speed
limit would also be also be widely ignored. One can save fuel on a personal
level, maybe, but on a national scale it has been found that lowering speed
limits does not work to save fuel.)

It turns out there is ample discussion on whether the lower speed limit was
safer, and some studies show that the lower speed limits actually raised
accident rates. (Without reading the studies, my guess is that the vast
majority of the population that ignored the rule ran over the minority that
observed it...)

None of your feelings on your comfort, or mine, have anything to do with the
topic that was raised. And to answer the question presented, while there is
no mechanical advantage (in terms of saving wear and tear) there appears to
be little advantage to the fuel consumption either.

right.  And the assertion at hand is that "cars did not like the abuse
that came from driving them too slowly".  Citations?

Or else it's bullshit.

You made 5 false assertions that I addressed in one post. You really need to
stop breaking stuff down to the individual words and making a comment about
each of them separately. It confuses you when you make 5 posts in 6 minutes,
and somebody replies to all of them at once.




Driving the cars at the lower end of the power band, which happens in
pre-'70s cars driven at 55, causes them to operate in a range that forces
frequent downshifts. That is a fact, I survived it.

This happens today on 4- and 5-speed automatic transmissions, and the cure
is to downshift (move the gear selector) to the gear that the transmission
selects so that the selected gear is held until the conditions that cause
the shift have gone away. It is bad for one to allow the transmission to
downshift then upshift then downshift again over and over while ascending a
hill on the freeway. Cars built in the '60s typically had a 3-speed
automatic, so the downshifting on a hill on the freeway caused high engine
speeds for the vehicle speed. The issue was easily cured by increasing the
vehicle speed to 65 or 70, where the engine hummed along easily and did not
bog down because the confluence of low speed and highway incline created
conditions where the engine had to go from operating at the bottom end of
the power curve to operating at the very upper limits of the power curve.
Consider that many (way more than half) of the cars on the road for the
Double Nickel Speed Limit were built in the '50s and '60s where highway
travel at 65 or more was the norm. Puttering along at 55 is not problematic
all by itself, and I am not making an argument that it is bad. But when a
car gets out on the interstate for hours on end, or where drivers live in a
region where the interstate is hilly, and the drivetrain is forced to
operate at the extreme lower or upper end of the power band, then this is
generally accepted as a bad condition that one should seek to avoid. If I
have to provide a citation that this is true, then you should stop hanging
out in automotive news groups and pretending you know anything about a car.

Driving a car at the lower end of the power band so that frequent downshifts
happen causes the plugs to foul. This is more true on the carbureted engines
of yesteryear (which were the predominate engines on the highway in the days
of the National 55 Speed Limit) than it is on today's cars with modern fuel
injection equipped with sensors that constantly maintain an air/fuel ratio
of 14.7:1. The double nickel was hugely problematic on many levels, most of
them having to do with designing a car for a particular environment, then
forcing it to operate in another environment.

You made the assertion that "cars did n ot like the abuse that came from
driving them too slowly".

Despite my asking more than once, you continue to dance around providing
citations for that.

All I say is, citations or it's bullshit.  If you have citations, it's
not bullshit and you have no reason to be mad.  Simple  If you don't
have citations...



But you claimed that research showed this abuse.  Now you're claiming
that you experienced it?  That may be, but I'm still waiting for you to
show the research.




You continue to dance.  YOU made the claim about there having been
research on this very specifically in the context of the 55mph NMSL, but
now you're dancing around the matter when someone presses you for
details on this research.

So now all you have left over from your assertion that "research showed
that cars did not like the abuse" is "it's generally accepted that this
one transmission behavior is bad".

Roaming from "abuse" in general to "this one transmission behavior" and
couching it in terms of "everyone knows that, I don't need to provide
citations" is your very bad effort at dancing around and trying to get
out of the fact that it appears that you made specific shit up out of
thin air to try to make yourself seem important.

Notice in none of that did I dispute anything you said about gear
hunting, but no doubt you will ignore that and simply attack as you try
to divert attention away from the fact that you made shit up out of thin
air to try to make yourself seem important.

If you don't have specific citations, then don't claim to have them in
the first place--or else don't get all bent out of shape when you get
called out on your claims.

I don't recall claiming research. I have anacdotal information. I gave you
sound reasoning to support the anacdotes. But, this has nothing to do with
the topic that you have yet to address in any way other than to offer
support for fuel savings THAT THE OP ALREADY ACKNOWLEDGED, and that I have
told you that the government itself said did not hold up on a national
basis. Saving gas by going 55 might work, but mandating 55 to save gas did
not work. That is a fact.

I have nothing further to say unless you can find something that says doing
50 instead of 60 will save the car. That's the discussion here. Well, it's
the discussion I was having with the OP -- who has not been back -- until
you came along.

Did you completely miss my post on "comfort level"?

If grampa is comfortable at 55 in the right lane, and he's driving a
modern car that isn't gear hunting (say, a Prius that *does* do
SIGNIFICANTLY better at 55 than at 65), and he's happy to adjust himself
to accommodate entrance ramp traffic for maximum flow--then he has a
100% valid reason for driving less than 65 in the right lane.

Or did you miss that post?