People don’t drive above the speed limit just to save time. It does not feel good going 55 mph on a road in which you feel safe at 80 mph. Most of the time, I feel the need for speed even if I’m running early and will have to sit at the destination for a half hour waiting; traffic tickets are a bit of a disincentive, but what’s the chances of that happening.

Maybe some people feel good about saving their gas money, and that feeling overpowers the other feeling of poking along the road like at 55 mph like an idiot, but I really can’t relate.

I save lots of gas money by not having a commute (I’m probably driving only 6000 miles annually.) But when I get on the road I’ve just gotta move. To quote Sammy Hagar, “I can’t drive fifty-five!”, and Hillary can just eat my dust…

Well, not quite. Even though you aren’t paid, that extra driving time has an easily determinable monetary value. Just look at what people are willing to do to reduce the time of their commute — risk speeding tickets, pay hefty tolls on the expressways, live closer to the office, etc. — and you can get a pretty good idea of the ‘real’ cost.

To give an example, if I pay $5 on the expressway to shave a half hour off my commute, then my time’s worth at dead minimum $10/hr.

What I said was that no one will pay you for the time that is lost, not that the time itself is worthless. As such, the argument about specific value lost (particularly when calculated to the penny per hour) is…less than convincing.

I then tried to point out better justification for not changing the speed limit: it’s completely unnecessary. You can already choose to drive at the lower speed.

By the way, there is one change that apparently results in an immediate 12% drop in traffic accidents every year: the Fall time change. (The Spring time change has the exact opposite effect.) If we are looking to reduce traffic accidents, let’s just “fall back” every day. By Congressional calculation methods, that’s be (12%*365 =) almost a 4400% reduction in accidents!

Now, the time you (or this special person) spend on all of the non-commute trips, such as the drive to gramma’s house, would not have the earning power you note (assuming that you are already working the hours you can for the wages you can pull down), so the argument becomes less powerful. Note, of course, that you already receive recompense for any time spent driving on the job. And, of course, those poor fools like me who work for a set salary don’t have the option of earning additional money by working more hours.

You could argue that your hourly wage indicates the value that you put on your time, in which case the argument (somewhat) holds water. Instead, however, you could argue that the speed limit is the (supposed) maximium, unless you are in California, in which case it appears to be a minimum. Thus, those people who want to save fuel (and/or money from buying same) can simply drive at 55 in the right lane. Anyone think that they’ll be passing Senator Clinton and her entourage driving at 55? I, perhaps cynically, believe that she’ll take the opportunity to save driving time, where legal, and drive at the limit, even if it’s above 55, because she’s an important person with places to go and things to do. Unlike the unwashed mob she’s trying to protect.

Since it’s unlikely that the minute amount of gas savings experienced by enforcing such a speed limit would actually amount to anything even close to this.

The underlying reason for high gas prices is high oil prices. Though gas use makes up a fair chunk of oil usage, there are many other things, such as energy production, that use it. And, unless we forget, oil, and gas to a lesser extent, are traded on a world market. Therefore, it’s unlikely that this kind of action would amount to more than a drop in the bucket. That is, unless you account for the ability of pathetic politicians to claim that they “did something.”

It is out of the question that Hillary Clinton will ever be able to follow what you are trying to say.

If you assume the price of gas rises due to external factors, then you will eventually hit a break even point. As near as I can rough it it out without setting up an equation, the gas price has to rise to $6.76 before Ms. Clinton’s idea makes sense, assuming the rest of the numbers are true.

From what I recall of high school physics, if you assume no rolling friction, the gas mileage at 55mpg should be, hmm … 36% better, or 34 mpg. So that’s not too far off. In my experience, it’s a hair worse than that, because rolling friction is not zero, part of your power is used to run your AC and alternator, etc., and life just doesn’t follow a physics equation. Although, it might be more telling that all these cars are rated by the EPA at a rather quaint 55 mph; so it might be better to think of the average mileage to be 25 mpg, and mileage at 75 to be more like 18 mpg.

[GEEK ALERT: The oft-repeated assertion that driving twice as fast quadruples your gas consumption is misleading enough to be considered junk science. Although technically true that your fuel-per-time squares, your distance traveled increases proprotional to speed, and so your mpg decreases only linearly compared to your speed (as in, a straight-line tradeoff.)]

And any remaining folks that say that driving 55 saves lives are mistaken; many studies have shown that overall accidents remained dead steady at 1.2 per million man-miles driven (although fatalities have decreased a hair due to seat belt use and marginal safety improvements.)