Fuel Saving Nutbars Are Going to Kill Us All
Posted by Chief Oddball in the early afternoon on July 11th, 2008With gas costing a lot of money these days, we’re constantly regaled with the media’s so-called “brilliant ideas” about how we can all save money on gas. Their ideas, unfortunately, go directly against every safe driving practice in the book. You know how people talk about how we’re all going to see fewer traffic fatalities because people are driving slower in order to save gas money? I’m betting on an increase in traffic deaths, if people put these cockamamie fuel-saving ideas into practice:
1. Shift into neutral when slowing down or when stopped.
Yeah. Let’s all go ahead and take our cars out of gear while we’re still moving, so that we will be completely unable to react quickly in the event of an emergency situation. Let’s even put additional wear and tear on our cars so that we can pay all the money we saved on gas toward rebuilding our transmissions. And correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t cars with an automatic transmission generally idle at lower RPMs when they’re in gear than when they’re in neutral?
Almost as if to prove my point, I was listening to a radio show today where a caller was promoting this idea, and in the same breath admitted that she accidentally put her car in reverse while attempting to go to neutral once. Great! I can’t wait to be the guy behind the next idiotic suckface who grenades his transmission by popping it into reverse at 45 MPH!
Use cruise control on surface streets.
Again, let’s break another cardinal rule of driver’s ed and set our cruise control at 40 MPH while we’re on a surface street — you know, a street with actual intersections, residential areas, school zones and other things that we may need to continually adjust our speed to navigate safely through. This is just one more excuse for American drivers — who already have a problem discerning between the gas and brake pedals — to zone out behind the wheel.
Drive at 35 MPH on all roads regardless of conditions.
Yeah, I have actually heard of a guy who does this. If you drive slow, you’ll burn less fuel, right? Right, but what you fail to realize is that driving 35 MPH on a road with a 55 MPH or higher speed limit is more likely to get yourself and others killed than jumping out of a perfectly good plane. Adjusting reasonably to the flow of traffic isn’t about kowtowing to the nutbars doing 20 over, it’s about creating an overall safe environment in which to travel. If you’ve got a dozen cars moving at 70 MPH and suddenly there’s one guy in the road doing 35, I’ll give you one guess what will happen if just one of those dozen drivers isn’t paying attention.
Please, people: Don’t throw the rules of the road out the window because you want to save a damn buck. If you’re that hard up, get a friggin’ bicycle.
Edit: Seems AAA has the same opinion, particularly about taking your car out of gear while in motion. I swear I did not see that article before I posted this rant.
I was also going to add a link to an automotive forum I visit where I just found this article posted. However, as is typical of automotive forums, it only took until the third post in the thread before somebody started a flamewar, so I’m not going to bother. Suffice it to say, the flaming troll’s argument was that he’ll put his car in neutral when he slows down if he wants to, since he should be “comfortable while driving” and not “stressed out about whether his engine is going to die” as he slows to a stop (presumably from bogging, as he has a manual transmission).
All I can say is, the guy must have just learned stick yesterday if he is still worrying about that. I think I outgrew that fear on the first day driving my first stickshift car.
I also shake my head at the “draft a semi-truck on the freeway to improve fuel mileage” idea as well.
And only sorta related, but I love on the news when they try to publicize “deals” on gas. Not only does such publicizing result in insane lines that cause massive traffic backups, but in the end, is it really worth wasting so much gas to save 2 cents per gallon? (Especially since said “deals” are usually way out of your way?)
Wow, I’d not heard the truck-drafting idea. Sounds like a great way to encourage people to sit in a trucker’s blind spot and cause more potential for calamity.
I agree on “gas deals,” if you actually have to plan for them, they are usually not worth the money and hassle. Especially since (although they won’t always tell you this up front) the”deal” is usually only good for the first 20 customers or some such thing. If you hit upon a gas deal by accident, then it’s a real benefit to you — but how likely is that?
I used to not care where I got gas, but now I’m a little more cognizant of it. Even so, I won’t drive miles out of my way just to save a few pennies, because that comes at the added cost of burning extra fuel to get there so I may as well not be saving at all.
For example, a station close to my home might be selling gas for $4.05 a gallon. Filling a 16 gallon tank costs $64.80. A station eight miles away, meanwhile, is selling gas for $3.99 — which would cost me a total of $63.84. Am I actually going to drive all those extra miles to save 96 cents? Abso-friggin-lutely not. But there are people who will. When in reality you could order a smaller size Starbucks coffee one day out of the week and save more.
These are usually the same people who will by a shoddy product from a crap brand because it costs 5 cents less than the better-quality competition, though, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. When these people try to tell me that they’re “frugal,” I want to laugh. How frugal is it, really, when you’re replacing your broken stuff more often than anyone else because you always buy the crappiest thing on sale?
Some people have a hard time seeing the forest for the trees, having have no concept of “value” — only “initial cost.”
I saw the semi-truck drafting thing on a recent episode of Mythbusters; it actually works, with the biggest benefit coming when you’re within 10 or 15 feet of the truck’s trailer (I forget the exact number). But as you noted, that’s right in the blind spot and a bad idea. Not to mention that no human alive has the reflex time required to stop suddenly if the need arises if you’re that close.
As for being “frugal,” if it’s something like spending a little less on William Schallert Brand (er, CVS brand) that’s identical to the “big name” stuff (like autographed tubes of toothpaste or something equally disposable), that’s fine. But on bigger stuff it’s stupid. Especially since, as you also noted, the price differential is negligible at best.
I don’t doubt that the drafting thing works — it works for NASCAR after all, huh huhhuhhuhuh! — but the safety factor would override it in my mind.
Oh yeah, I don’t take any issue with going for a store-brand product to save money, if the store brand product is roughly the same quality or better. In fact I routinely buy certain store brand grocery products because they actually taste better than the name brand shizz! (Rice pilaf, for example…nummm.)
The problem lies with opting for the cheapest option, just because it’s cheaper, even though the quality of the cheaper product is horrible. You wind up spending a little less now, but more later.