Found another way to save on gas.

[diamondlarry]

What if you go the speed limit on the highway while nearly all other cars are exceeding it by 15 MPH, and because of some careless driver who's speeding, an accident occurs because she tries to make a lane change to avoid rear-ending you and side-swipes a minivan. How much gas is wasted cleaning up the mess, fixing the vehicles, transporting the injured to a hospital, investigating the accident, paying the insurance claims, etc.? How often do such accidents occur? If it costs you an additional $2.00 in gas for your trip to drive at roughly the same speed as almost everyone else who's speeding, was it worth the $2.00 as insurance against an accident? Most police officers on traffic duty will not issue you a ticket if you're speeding but keeping up with traffic around you, as long as your speed isn't too ridiculously high.

I have a problem with this logic. I drive the speed limit. PERIOD! If someone has a problem with me OBEYING the law, then it's just that; their problem. A few years ago there was an incident in another town near me where there were riots for about two days because a man on a motorcycle was killed while running from the police after he had committed a crime. The people were rioting because the police were doing their job and enforcing the law when the man was killed. They started coming up with the goofy idea that police shouldn't chase someone if they ran after committing crimes. So just to protect the criminal's life they should just let him go. The same or similar thing applies to the idea that you should stay with traffic even if it is going 10-15 mph over the limit. I agree with what SVOboy says:

So, you're saying that we should speed to keep up with everyone else then? If you wanna play the safety game you can get all sorts of data about reaction times and safety as you go from 65 to 80 mph, not to mention the fact that most cops will not let you off speeding 15 mph unless they also enjoy spending their time cleaning up after crashes.

EDIT:
http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/speed_manage/docs/speeding_facts.pdf

Speeding causes 1/3rd of all crashes? Speeding costs 27.7 billion dollars per year? Speeding causes almost as many fatalities as drunk drunk? Most speeding fatalities happen on the highway? Huh? Is it just me?

Do we become part of the problem of speeding by "keeping up traffic" and contributing to increased accidents and death, or do we become part of the solution and drive the speed limit which saves lives and gas? If everybody followed the rules, there wouldn't be any "keeping up with traffic." Sorry about the long windedness but it kind of bothers me.