Most people go with the flow. There will always be people passing you and those you will pass. I regularly ride with two people who smugly think they're being safer by driving slower than prevailing traffic, but they have come close to causing crashes many times. Most people today follow much too closely. When changing lanes, it is too easy to switch over, then get surprised by a slow poke in the right lane. I become that slow driver when someone moves into my lane and puts me in a position of being too close. I slow down a little to create a bigger following distance, then other drivers become irritated.
As for your speed, you're wrong on both counts. Going faster doesn't cause more wear and tear unless you're accustomed to making sharp corners at high speeds. If it's fuel mileage that's your priority, as it is for me, I found a few interesting tidbits by having the average miles per gallon displayed on two of my vehicles. Last summer, on a long, two-hour trip, I got my 2014 Grand Caravan up to 31.9 mpg, and it was still climbing, but I ran out of road. I used to think I'd get the best mileage by using the cruise control, but that proved to be woefully wrong. There were no steep hills on my trip, but there were grades, and plenty of curves through two large cities. The cruise control forced the transmission to downshift going up the grades, and it accelerated hard to hold the speed, then it relaxed the throttle going down grades, and then had to accelerate hard again for the next hill. I found the mileage got a real lot better by using my foot and letting the van pick up a head of steam going downhill, and allowing the speed to drop off going uphill. Other traffic was running between 75 - 85 mph. I wanted to take it easy, and I found my perfect driving speeds by following multiple semi-trucks. They didn't want to slow down going uphill, but they couldn't avoid it. That allowed me to slow down too without irritating anyone behind me.
Since that trip, I've found my van has a sweet spot around 68 mph where it gets the best fuel mileage. If you believe fuel mileage gets better when you drive slower, consider how many miles per gallon you're getting when standing still at a red light. It's true you're using more gas to go faster, but you're covering more distance, and faster, so your trip is over sooner. My average has been hanging around 26 mpg with mostly rural roads and highways, and I've noticed it drops very quickly when driving in a city.
Compared to cars from the 1970s, the engineers have made the newer models much lighter, and they've found a number of ways to reduce friction. The biggest factor we never discuss is wind resistance. That goes up exponentially as speed increases. In the late 1980s, GM used to brag in their ads that it only took six horsepower to make their Cavalier go 50 mph. That's the equivalent of a go-kart engine. The rest of the story was it took something like another 30 horsepower to go five miles per hour faster, or 55 mph. It's all in how you spin it. Most Toyota models are pretty aerodynamic, so added wind resistance isn't going to drop your fuel mileage very much.
If there was one thing I could share with other drivers, it's to remember you're not the only driver on the road. I don't want to go 80 mph just because that's how fast traffic is going, but I don't want to get rear-ended either, or block others from smoothly changing lanes. You can be concerned with wear and tear, but that's not affected by speed, so put that on the back burner.
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Sunday, July 7th, 2024 AT 9:52 PM
