A Purdue University study suggests that higher Interstate speeds has not lead to more Interstate deaths.
Before the move was approved in 2005, legislators heard concerns that allowing speed limits on rural portions of interstates to rise from 65 mph would increase the danger for motorists.
Fatalities on those highways, however, did not increase because drivers were already going faster than the speed limit, and the differences in drivers’ speeds were lowered, said Fred Mannering, a civil engineering professor at Purdue who was the study’s co-author.
The 70 mph speed limit was enacted by Senator Server’s SEA 217-2005.
My personal experience is, as Professor Mannering suggests, that the difference in speed is more significant than the speed itself. It’s always startling to see a car in front of you and find that you’re closing on it much more rapidly than you expected. I don’t know about others, but I find that I always feel like I’m more comfortable driving when I’m moving slightly faster than the average vehicle. If I’m doing that, it seems like most of my hazards are in front of me since fewer cars are closing on me from behind. Also, it feels like I spend lest time hemmed in by other traffic. And, with this approach, I emphatically am not recommending the practice of living in the left hand lane, moving 1 mile per hour faster than the guy in the right hand lane. That drives me nuts. When you catch up to the guy in front of you, get left, pass quickly, then get the heck over to the right again.
Just some friendly driving tips from a guy who has no particular business giving them.
Side Question: What is !=? Did you try entering ≠ and it failed? (That would be ampersand n e semicolon). Or is this another way to do “not equal to?”
It’s another way to do “not equal to.” I didn’t know the fancy way to do the sign you did.
In many forms of programming, “!” is used for NOT. I think some search engines use that as well, so you could seach for “apple !orange” to find pages that have the word apple but not the word orange.
Then there are the programs where to do =, you have to do ==, and & becomes &&. I was just using a tool yesterday where I had a string like this “ip.addr==192.168.1.1&&!arp&&!udp”, or “All packets to or from 192.168.1.1 that are not ARP nor DNS packets.”
*sigh* I guess Doug’s explaination was much simpler, and he beat me to it since he didn’t take 50 words to say what could have been said in 15.
LOL. I thought I had seen the ! before, but I wasn’t sure (and you can’t Google != – or, rather, you *can* but it doesn’t return anything). Thanks for educating me.
I stumbled across this Wikipedia entry that’s fairly handy: Table of mathematical symbols.
Amen, brother! I learned early on that this was the way of driving in the Twin Cities. I remember my first few days up there tailgating drivers that were going 55-56 in the far left hand lane (okay I was in my early 20’s then and full of road rage!) I talked to one of my native Minnesotan friends and he told me it was the way all roads were traveled in Minnesota. You drive on the left and pass on the right. Never quite got used to it, but I still see Minneswotans-and yes even a few Cheeseheads-doing the same down I-65.
Chicagoans live in the left hand lane-but at least those who live there are trying their best to hit the speed of sound;-)
Ok, sorry to just drive rampently off topic, but…
Oh cool! And some new ones for me:
One of them surprised me:
Convolution?? I’ve always seen this as a substitute for the multiplication symbol (3*5 = 3×5) – particularly when a lower-case x looks odd (as in a*b = axb).
Oh, look at that, my 3 x 5 “x” was converted into a real-life multiplication symbol 3×5 by the wise-old internet gods.
Higher interstate speeds = higher gas consumption. That indirectly means more deaths from pollution and oil wars. Drive 55!
Not necessarily. Cars can be geared to where they run more efficiently in the 70-75 mph range.
That’s a question I’ve had for a long time (and never bothered to answer). We’ve been told that driving at higher speeds uses more gas – which makes sense since, even ignoring friction, at the very least, it takes more energy to accelerate to a faster speed. However, it also stands to reason that leaving your vehicle in idle will eventually use up all the fuel without getting you anywhere.
So, where’s the sweet spot? Anything over zero? Some kind of bell curve?
I’m one of those people who often drives long distances and here are a couple observations. My next long drive is next Monday from the Lehigh Valley to Chicago doing the entire PA-OH IN turnpike/tollway system.
Going an even speed saves gas.Don’t follow too close so you don’t have to brake as much and use gas pedal: that burns lots of needless gas.
I’m not sure where the optimum gas-saving speed is, but eerything else being equal, 70mph burns more gas than 60.But if you go 60,you almost have to stay in right lane to pass in and out a lot,so it’s not very pleasant driving. Try to join the crowd so you’re going the same speed as those in your lane. When I learned to dive in 50s I was taught that each lane toward the left of a highway is faster than the one to right,but more and more people don’t follow this old fundamental rule so that’s why so many people weave in and out,braking and gassing and wasting fuel.
A certain number of drivers drive well over 80 in the fast inner lane if they can get by with it,so I tend to stay mostly in the middle lane,if there are 3 lanes,or in right lane except to pass,if there are 2. Staying in the left lane and going less than 70+ creates a weaving menace and causes accidents,imo
I-80 through PA will become toll in a year or so,but I usually take the turnpike because of built in rest stops.I-80 is too desolate for me in central and western Pa.
I also remember I-80 in PA being the bumpiest road around. I remember riding in the semis with my dad as a kid and making him stop every 40-50 miles b/c my kidneys couldn’t take it any more!
It will be toll soon, huh? That’s got to be a first in this nation that a road that’s been around for forty or so years as a freeway suddenly becomes toll.
So, where’s the sweet spot? Anything over zero? Some kind of bell curve?
The “sweet spot” is the lowest speed that your car is operating in top gear and with the torque converter locked.
I can do this on my Saab at 45 mph. It gets over 40 mpg when I do this.
Manual transmissions may be able to get into top gear at lower speeds.
It is a myth that there are cars that get better mileage at higher speeds. It is true that engines can be more efficient at higher rpms, but that doesn’t mean that they use less fuel at that rpm (just that the amount of horsepower per amount of fuel used is higher than at other rpms).
Here’s a calculator that shows how much money you “make” (tax free!) by slowing down.
Is it a done deal that I-80 in Pennsylvania is going to become a toll road? I thought that it still needed approval from the Feds.
I see that the company that now runs the Indiana Toll Road also runs the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and will run the I-80 toll road too.
Now all they need is for Ohio to privatize its portion of the toll road, and they could have control from I-94 in Chicago all the way to New Jersey.
Then get the New Jersey Turnpike and the New York bridges and tunnels on board and there can be a route they own all the way from the southside of Chicago to NYC/Manhattan.
Can you imagine “ferriners” owning the bridge named after our first President?
From Wikipedia:
That’s exactly what I found with a little Googling.
I read that as that the tolls are not a done deal.
The public employee unions run New York. They’d never let the bridges be privatized.