May Experiment: Driving Slower!
By Karina | May 5, 2008
After this weekend’s Easy Peasy Tip, I am so curious about the effect that driving the speed limit will have on my mileage. I posted before that I am not the lead-foot that I used to be - but that’s not entirely true. I still drive pretty fast. Since I wrote that other post last summer, my speed has been slowly creeping up on me - so much so that my lifetime miles-per-gallon for my wee insight has dropped to 59.2! It’s so embarassing! Here, check out the cold hard embarassing truth:
It’s hard to tell, but the red line is the total lifetime miles per gallon for my wee car, and you can see how it is dropping. Ugh! I don’t want it to continue to drop, and while I know that in today’s delicate energy climate I’m not going to make any friends complaining that I only get 59 miles per gallon, I know that the Insight is capable of so much more.
So, in the spirit of April’s Tiny Choices Challenge (stay tuned for an update on that!) I’m going to pledge to do my darnedest to drive the speed limit this month. I will check in with you and we’ll see how much better my car is doing - it will be an easy check of the Easy Peasy Tip to drive slower for dramatically better gas mileage.
Of course, here is the standard disclaimer - I get MUCH better gas mileage in the summer than in the winter, so already I’m going to be improving over my recent miles per gallon. Here, let me show you:
But keeping that in mind, you can see in the summer of 2007 how my cavalier attitude towards driving compared to the excitement of my new car in the summer of 2006 kept my mileage pretty low. So hopefully we’ll see some really stellar readings this month! I’ll be checking in with some dork-fest later in the month!
What do you think? if you drive, are you willing to try a month of driving slower?
Topics: Transportation |
Graphs! We finally have graphs!! Man, I feel like we’ve really turned a corner here… kinda respectable-like, now.
:)
I know! actual science’n'junk.
Kari, does the age of your car have any effect on the gas mileage. I know that the older a car usually gets, the less efficient it becomes. Just something to throw in the mix. I still don’t like slow drivers in the middle lane!
as your engine gets older and more clogged with goo (from the combustion process etc.) it will be less efficient. But (and I have NO science to back this up) there shouldn’t be a HUGE range of inefficiencies - I wouldn’t think that it would affect the car more than 5 mpg, esp. if you get regular tune-ups!
and don’t worry! I am a very very considerate driver. I stay in the right-most lane unless I am passing someone, and then it is almost always passing them on the left.
How did you make your graph?
I used excel - every time I fill up I write down my mileage per tank, amt. of gas, and the miles per gallon as provided by my car display.
we used to do this, and we need to do it more!
I love graphs. Graphs are so much more convincing than anecdotal evidence!
yeah, even though they can be just as solidly manipulated they give us a real platform to preach from!
I used to have a lead foot, but I have to say I drive much slower now. We have a lot of road work going on right now, and I am always appalled by how many people speed (badly) in work zones. Most of the time, when I get through the road work, I’m still right behind the people who were zipping through. Driving faster doesn’t equal getting there faster. This is such a great, easy change. I just wrote a post about saving fuel today too. I think the gas prices have gotten to the point where you can’t not think about it.
I just read your post!
Because of my car I don’t think about the gas prices as much as others, but I was away with my steps this weekend and they were talking about it *a LOT.* it helped me to realize how pressing and real it is for everyone else. And if I can show some positive change with my little car by driving slower, maybe others will do it too!
I plan to pass along your info to a leadfoot co-worker who has a long commute and lives paycheck to paycheck. She tries hard in so many other eco-friendly ways I won’t give her a hard time but I know gas prices have squeezed her.
I don’t have a leadfoot but I still could improve. Zooming away from stops can’t be good. I’ve also started keeping a barrette in my car so I can put my long hair up and roll the windows down rather than using the a.c. seems to help.
I find it interesting where I end up going faster. On surface streets rather than the highway. I think it is partly because of using cruise control on the highway but I think it is also because my perception of what is fast has changed since my little four-speed hatchback.
i once saw a Mythbusters episode where they discovered that leaving your windows open is actually *less* fuel efficient than using your air conditioning!
we actually tackled that in a Tiny Choices Q&A here:
http://tinychoices.com/2007/09/11/qa-windows-up-or-down/
and the expert opinions are fairly mixed across the board! I still drive with my windows open - I figure it’s probably a very small difference, and I love having the windows open in the summer.
I have been trying to drive more slowly (I had already been accused of driving “like a grandma”). Driving 55mph on the highway in the far right lane, i was tailgated and honked at. Seems pretty dangerous, at least where I live! I will keep trying…
wow! those people are huge jerks. all I can say is stick to your guns and repeat my two favorite mantras under your breath: 1. it’s not my job to teach these dudes how to live, and 2. no one here wants to get into an accident. Good luck!
I think it is only a problem if you are actually under the speed limit. But props to you for being in the far right lane!! Its really dangerous when people drive 55 in the far left lane….they just cause otherwise normal speeders (5 to 10 over the limit) to become enraged and charge off after they finally pass the “grandma” in the fast lane…
Another thought, you are traveling almost 30,000 miles a year. Far over what an “average” american travels by car in a single year. Although you are taking in less fuel for those miles then most, you are emitting alot of CO2 into the atmosphere. A hybrid traveling 30k a year is not much bettter than a SUV traveling 12k a year (at least according to the climate scientist at my work, he is a Prius driver) I know you travel alot by public transport, I just like to discuss this stuff with you. Did you see that bike locking system at the Baltimore train station this weekend, pretty cool!
yeah, I’m the first to tell people that I don’t really have hybrid street “cred” because traveling 30K a year even when getting 60 MPG is the same as traveling 15K a year at 30 mpg.
BUT if you consider that SUV driver who drives 12K a year at 15 miles per gallon (I don’t even know what SUV drivers get!) I’m using 500 gal/yr of gas vs. the SUV 800 gal/yr of gas. I’m still using roughly 60% less gasoline.
(in other words, your climate scientist is correct, but my insight is more efficient than his prius! ;) )
and yeah: I love talking about this stuff! I love the bike lockers at BWI, but that train station is so far away from *everything,* I wonder if anyone uses them?
My boyfriend and I live together and work two blocks away from eachother, at the end of a 30 minute commute. He has already sacrificed coming into work a half hour earlier, and I stay 2 hours later (not a problem for me; I’m a teacher!) so we can carpool.
There are still things to improve upon…like the difference between driving his 4 door tundra, or my ranger, and the speed at which we cruise the mainly freeway on our commute every day. I’ve already convinced him to wake up earlier in the name of environmentalism, I’m not sure if I can get him to actually drive any slower…I just make sure I do when it’s my turn to drive!
The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about this just the other day - with some actual numbers for how much efficiency drops at high speeds, and how much money you can potentially save by driving X number of miles slower. Very interesting, and since the article I’ve found myself consciously driving a little slower - although I usually stick to the speed limit, anyway, and the freeways here are so congested that you’re lucky if you can even hit the speed limit on a weekend afternoon!
…and this is why we read ALL the posts in our RSS reader before commenting. :)
Not only do I always try to drive slow-ish (right lane, baby!), but I’m especially in this habit now. And, don’t forget the importance of keeping those tires inflated. Replace as needed, although where they go when ‘thrown away’ is the subject of yet another post.
[…] May Experiment: Driving Slower! […]
[…] Two weeks ago I posted that I was going to try a May Experiment to try to drive the speed limit and see what kind of mileage I got. Looking back at the previous months, when I averaged the miles per gallon I’d been getting for March and April of 2008 it was approximately 58.2 mpg. Which is not that great for a car that should easily be getting over 60 mpg on the highway (which is where I do most of my driving). And I really wanted to improve that — mostly, to be honest, because I wanted to put my 60+ mpg bumper sticker onto my car. I have some interesting results to report just two weeks in! In the spirit of ME having to look at graphs and tables every day at work, here YOU go: Check out this Awesome Data! […]
[…] sure you’ve all been waiting with ‘baited breath for the exciting results of my May experiment (mid-month update here) to drive the speed limit! I am so totally excited, check out these […]