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Vrooom!: Who cares about saving gas?

Posted By Scott Warnock On In money,virtual children by Scott Warnock | 7 Comments

We were in an ice cream parlor the other day, and my son was looking at some old-time paintings on the wall. One was a decades-old picture of a sundae with a price tag: 10 cents. Despite my efforts, he couldn’t comprehend it — which may not be difficult to imagine since my grasp of macroeconomic issues is wanting . I had similar success explaining to him that gas, the stuff that makes our car go, was once a quarter.

Of course, we’ve all been complaining about high gasoline prices for years, and there’s been all kinds of lamenting, whining, some saber rattling (and even some saber wielding). But as I’ve watched my children’s lives overlap with constant war in oil-rich parts of the world, I wonder how much we care about conserving this energy resource. I mean, how much, on a day-to-day basis, do we really care about the people who are fighting overseas for our lifestyle?

Some years ago, I conducted a little driving study that I have since reproduced several times with similar results. The original study was prompted during a trip from Washington to South Jersey on I-95 and I-295 when I became disenchanted with the radio and tired of deciphering peeling bumper stickers.

When I left the D.C. area, I made sure to maintain a speed between 65 and 70 mph. Then (and, admittedly, this is the part my wife says makes me certifiable), at eight different one-minute intervals, I counted the vehicles I passed and the vehicles that passed me.

The results: Vehicles that passed me: 37. Vehicles I passed: 2.

If you calculate this out for the 150 minutes I was on the road, about 700 total vehicles passed me. But although I passed two vehicles in my “official” count during the time intervals, I don’t need to calculate that number out for the whole trip, because I was able to count easily  the total number of vehicles I passed because there were so few of them. In that entire 150-minute trip, I only passed nine vehicles. Of that nine, four of them were part of a caravan of campers, two were pick-up trucks that had just limped onto the highway from the shoulder, and one was a woman cruising proudly in a new SUV.

Everyone else blew by me: lumbering rigs, wimpy minivans, cute couple-driven SUVs, motorcycles, new cars, old cars. And while, for research integrity, I tried to stay around 70 mph, I admit I occasionally succumbed to an inferiority complex and nudged it up to 75 mph, but to no avail; everyone still left me in the dust.

While cars vary in efficiency, 55 is still a good number for most [1], and no cars are fuel efficient at 80 MPH – not to mention the reduced fuel efficiency of the many folks who came screaming up behind me, slammed on their brakes, tailgated for a while, and then accelerated past.

One good reason I heard for higher speeds on interstates is that higher speeds (and speed limits) allow drivers to reduce the time of long trips, thus reducing driver fatigue and accidents. But, good researcher I am, I noted that almost every license plate I saw during my trip was local to the three small states I traveled in: Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware. It’s tough to fall victim to fatigue in a drive across Delaware on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

The irrefutable conclusion: We can’t be hurting too badly, because we individually don’t care one bit about conserving gas.

So the question may be this: Should our government take measures to address high fuel prices? Keep in mind that even though lots of people lately say they don’t want government in their lives, these are the same people who any time a cyclone hits their house or they have to fill up the tank of their riding lawnmower clamor for government aid.

If our government maintains the representative spirit the Founding Fathers intended, in which elected officials serve as wise leaders to guide us not-so-bright masses, then our government should jack up the price of gas through a tax to help curb our wasteful, careless ways. Because as my study proves (and I encourage you to reproduce it), we do almost little individually to conserve fuel.

But if government should act based on the opinions of the people, then as far as the gas issue goes, the people have spoken. We need to get places in a hurry, and we don’t mind burning extra gas to do it, so government officials, you better help us get our hands on this resource, and you better make it as painless as possible.

That’s one of the great things about being American: Even when you don’t do one thing to help yourself, often somebody comes along and helps you out anyway.

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Scott Warnock [5]

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.
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