Do people really care abour our crisis?!?
 

So I was driving to work this morning and saw up on the traffic notification sign the message, "Slower speeds save gas". I know this to be true as well as anyone else on this site. I started to wonder if the general public would know this as well. My guess is probably not. However, here was this sign telling them so. It's not just a billboard, or advertisement. It's a MDOT controlled message board for traffic alerts. It's not like they're going to lie or anything.

So as I'm driving under the sign doing about 52mph, the speed limit is 55 mind you, a whole slew of people are passing me. The most noticeable one is the guy in his H2 doing about 75-80 in the left lane. This got me thinking about people in general. I would hope that people would feel the need to conserve since we are diving into this oil crisis, but the opposite seems to be true. Now I could understand maybe a couple people who just don't care, or are running late, or some other excuse necessitating them to drive 70mph when the speed limit is 55. Unfortunately it wasn't just a couple people, it was everyone on the road other than me. I thought maybe I just didn't see anyone driving the same speed cause the exits were so far away, but this didn't really make sense to me.

I just don't understand why people don't make the slight effort to conserve just a little. I'm not saying that everyone should go out and buy a hybrid, although that would be awesome. What makes people totally disregard the fact that we should be conserving? I wonder if this whole fuel conservation is going to be like getting people to recycle? Is it going to take a city mandate to force everyone to conserve our resources?

Slow down Save gas Is what
 

Slow down
Save gas

Is what was up on i-95 this morning. I was going about 55 and traffis was doing 60, limit of 65. I had some interesting thoughts about Immanuel Kant and self-regulation. On the trip home it was the norm though, so it might've been a fluke.

It is hard to change habits.
 

It is hard to change habits. If gas stays high over the next few years (looks like it is going to happen) drivers will change there bad habits.

I have noticed some threads on saturn fans about people moding there cars for better mpg. I never noticed threads like this before. So that is a good sign.

Re: It is hard to change habits.
 

It is my opinion that nothing is really going to change in terms of drivers. The only thing that will change is the auto industry, who has begun to take fuel economy a little more seriously.

Much like the smoker who says they will quit when cigarettes are $5/pack, motorists often claim they will drive less/slower when gas is higher. Just like the smokers who are addicted and continue to smoke regardless of the price, motorists continue to drive because of their addiction.

I would like to se higher
 

I would like to se higher mpg standards for all cars. There has been talk of this recently but i don't know the details.

people are starting to slow
 

people are starting to slow down here. People that can't afford gas slow down. People that can afford h2's can afford gas and tickets.

a sure sign of people caring
 

a sure sign of people caring about the issue is evident when i look at the traffic logs for my web site. metroMPG had its busiest week ever last week, with most traffic coming in from google searches about how to save gas / increase mpg. and i'm not just talking about the peak of a steady climb, but a dramatic spike. (actually, weekly traffic had been declining slowly on average since the last spike.)

i'm sure gassavers.org traffic has seen a similar pattern. we all know the site has experienced a recent jump in activity - you can see that just from the number of new members.

i think each time fuel prices spike, the general public becomes somewhat more interestested in energy issues until people desensitize to the new, higher prices. the media frenzy eventually dies down; soon it's business as usual again.

but with each spike, i also suspect a new splinter group calves off from the masses and stays interested enough to change their behaviour more or less permanently.

Re: a sure sign of people caring
 

I've noticed the same here. Unfortunately we have hundreds of users and MAYBE 10% are active on this site.

When we make the switch to vbulletin I'm going to send an email inviting everyone back.

Gas crisis
 

I'm old enough to remember the gas crisis of the 1970's.

It wasn't high prices that brought us efficient cars in the '80s and early '90s. What scared us all into K cars and Hondas were the "NO GAS" signs at the local Exxon. (The shortages then were actually due to Nixon's price controls. There was plenty of oil back then if you paid OPEC under the table.)

High fuel prices might slowly induce carmakers to improve fuel economy, but not nearly as much as did the fear of not being able to drive. We have forgotten the utter uselessness of a shiny 3,000 pound hunk of iron with an empty tank. (While making loan payments and paying insurance to boot!)

Now in 2006, the thought of gas shortages (not high prices) ought to scare the bejesus out of us. Suburban sprawl has made us utterly dependent on cars for mundane things like food, clothing, and medicine. The local WalMart may be a 10 minute drive, but without gas, it's a 10 mile hike with a full pack. In the rain. And snow.

This time, the oil shortage isn't an artifact of government price controls. A reserve supply of oil (awaiting a shiekh's bribe)doesn't exist today. We need fuel efficient vehicles and we need them now. But carmakers aren't listening. GM still thinks a 22 MPG SUV is great mileage. GGGGGRRRRRRRRRRR

luckily I live close to
 

luckily I live close to everything. I could walk to college if they stop selling gas. I could walk to the grocery store if they stop selling gas. I could walk to the bank if they stop selling gas. I have everything to walk to except a job, LOL.

pedal power and mass transit
 

I would definitely bike everywhere if gas got to a certian point. I'd probably have to switch jobs or something though. Biking 30 miles just to get to work a little far, particularly on a mountain bike. I did notice a few more people driving a bit slower since the message board changed. Ironically it's usually the people driving small compact cars and such.

I saw this article about people refining their own bio-fuel. Makes me want to go out and buy a TDI VW and a deep fryer.

Everytime someone mentions
 

Everytime someone mentions svo I'm like, damnit, no one listens to me when I say that.

Re: Everytime someone mentions
 

when i was looking for my car, i also looked at vw golf diesels with that in mind. vx's, metros & golfs. oh my.

no gas
 

You guy better like next to a farm that grows a lot of food because without oil you don't get food delivered by trucks or trains.

true
 

I was just about to say the very same thing. But you beat me to it. Our economy would be immediately cripppled.

People care, so long as they
 

People care, so long as they don't have to sacrifice too much to meet its needs.

BUT they've been backed into a corner by vested interests. Our cars wouldn't be near such a burden politically and environmentally if they were either very efficient, alternative fueled, or both. But the oil and auto companies and federal government have other plans.

Re: Everytime someone mentions
 

I actually contacted someone in the paper about a 82 civic hatchback. It was going to either by an EV or a biodiesel car.

They contacted me back and said it was already sold.

you were going to put a
 

you were going to put a diesel in a civic? what kind of motor would you have used?

Re: you were going to put a
 

I was thinking of putting one of those Kubota 3cyl 15 HP tractor engines in it. I could get 80mpg easy in that thing :)

A recent thread on another
 

A recent thread on another forum brought up the topic of denial. It probably does play a role since we are relatively early in the game right now. Accepting the possibility of dramatic change is not something humans do well, in general. We resist passively by going on about life as we always did, and sometimes we resist actively by doing the exact opposite of what we know we should be doing. Most people fit into the former category, and a good example of the latter is the person in a large SUV or truck who tries to drive up the tail pipe of every Prius and Insight on the road. That's not plain stupidity, it's an act of rebellion.

People will change with time depending on how things go. If something very bad happens in the middle east and we come up short of fuel, you better believe people will change relatively quickly. But that requires necessity to change, not just higher prices than we are used to. Pure economic pressure will result in a longer transition.

So the short answer is this: The average North American will care when he is forced to care, like the Europeans with their $6 gasoline. It requires pressure beyond the point at which we can still talk ourselves into believing that everything is OK. We will get there.

PS: My save gas sign only
 

PS: My save gas sign only lasted for one day, but I have been driving without as much blow-by from people and more tagger onners. I've always liked the idea of make a small sticker of a pump for the front and back of the car so you can see who is friendly to your cause, :p

What about those who drive
 

What about those who drive EVs and/or cars run on SVO?

Re: What about those who drive
 

those who are rich or educated enough? those never represent the masses and you know the masses make a difference, not just a few beings opposing how others have done things a certain way.

Most are willing to just accept it and sacraface other things to drive.

Quote:What about those who
 

Well if they don't want to drive 55 with me I don't see a reason to team up with them on the roads, so why ought they to have a sticker?

Truck Country
 

I'm hailing from Alberta, Canada and this truly is truck country. My little Metro often sticks out like a sore thumb...if you can see it at all. I felt wasteful enough driving my gas guzzler Aerostar to work when I had nothing else, I don't know how these guys with F350 V10s or Hemi-powered Rams sleep at night.

Overall it seems as if most people just don't care at all. Maybe they're all just demented...or maybe I'm the sick one...I actually enjoy driving a Metro...

Fortunately I've been seeing a number of other Swift-clones on the road lately and a lot of Toyota Yaris's around (even though the Echo got better mileage).

I'd enjoy driving a Metro...
 

I'd enjoy driving a Metro...







...if I shoved a smallblock V8 into it!

Re: people are starting to slow
 

The solution is to make it *SO* expensive to drive an H2, that even the rich decide not to. We should up the tax on fuel where demand drops by 50%, and eliminate the budget and trade deficits by doing so, with the corresponding reduction in demand.

If we don't do it ourselves, the laws of supply and demand will put the price there anyway, filling the coffers of OPEC and the oil companies, and compounding our budget and trade deficits, as if they weren't already bad enough. Keep in mind that the rest of the world now has an infinite supply of U.S. dollars to buy oil with, for as long as the OPEC folks will accept them.

The longer we delay reducing demand, the worse the result will be. Failure to reduce demand quickly will put us in 3rd world status within 2 or 3 years as the dollar turns to paper.

it won't be easy
 

American families seem to be hurting very badly with the current prices. The tax on fuel is not going to hurt the rich, it will hurt the middle class much more, but it will reduce demand indeed.

I do agree that we need to reduce demand. But with elections both parties would want to improve their image, so I think there will be a price ceiling to fuel costs.

Re: it won't be easy
 

Its no longer about "image". Both parties are absolutely worthless, having allowed us to get to where the situation is as desperate as it is today.

A price ceiling will just result in shortages, gas lines, gas on even/odd days, and a nasty recession just like it did in the 70's. Given a price ceiling, there will be no incentive for anyone to reduce consumption, and no incentive for anyone to increase production, either.

China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and Europe literally have TRILLIONS of US dollars they can and are using to buy oil or gasoline and there isn't enough oil and gas being produced for everyone to have all they please. So the laws of supply and demand say that if you don't increase the supply, the price must rise until demand drops. If we just print more dollars, they become worth less oil, gas, or whatever other commodity you'd like to measure them against. That's what's been happening.

The reality is that consumption needs to drop by a huge percentage so that instead of their being an oil and gas shortage, there is instead an oil and gas glut. Then the price will drop. If you suggest a rationing scheme by which we reduce consumption on the order of 30%, that would solve it, but recognize that rationing schemes don't necessarily end up with rational results. American families are ABSOLUTELY GLUTTONOUS consumers of gas and oil. Count the SUV's, vans, trucks, and high horsepower cars vs the miserly little cars on the road some day. I'd bet 2/3 of the SUV's you see have only 1 or 2 people in them, and no gear requiring such a guzzling behemouth to drag around 95% of the time. Yeah, there's our soccer mom, driving 40 or 50 mi to take her kid to soccer practice, or dad doing the 70 or 100 mi round trip to work. But why do they drive these huge beasts to get there and back? Status. Pure and simple. Be cool, drive a Hummer or an Escalade. Raise the price to $5.00 a gallon and they will ditch their Hummers and buy miserly Saturns like me. Hey, I have a big van and a race car, but my big van only leaves the driveway to tow the trailer to a race 3 or 4 times a year. In the past, that was a dozen times a year. The higher the price of gas, the more I avoid driving it any distance. I use it when I need to, otherwise I drive my Saturn.

In summary, consumption needs to drop dramatically or this nation is going to quickly collapse to where your dollars "aren't worth a Continental".

All true. It seems that as
 

All true.

It seems that as with all addictions, the addict won't seek change until he stops denying the problem.

An addict's denial never stops until it hurts the addict badly enough - no matter who else it hurts.

It won't hurt addicts badly enough to change when we act as enablers by sharing the costs as we do now.

throwing money away
 

We need to stop giving our money to these hostile countries in the world. If Iran keeps developing their nuclear technology, something bad is going to happen. If we could just stop buying fuel from them, Iran's president wouldn't be so smug. He said that they do not need us, but we definately need them! (being the 4th highest exporter of oil in the world)

Have a look
https://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=679612006

If only the US did buy oil
 

If only the US did buy oil from Iran, we might not be so arrogant about changing our consumption of world oil. Well we don't but the problem is that oil is fungible so if we weren't burning oil from Saudi, Venezuela, Canada, etc, then Iran's customers (Japan, China, Turkey, North Korea, etc) could, but they can't because we're hogging it all.

It is our own stubborn valuation of oil that funds Irans ventures. Of course the same is true of Saudi Arabia, where is a certain percentage of oil money is used to fund terrorism. Our hypocracy is monumental. We give to oil producers (because big oil likes making money), and then we send our tax dollars, and our sons and daughters to fight for those oil 'rights.' :(

Iran's arrogance (the non-star bellied sneeches) is in direct response to our own (the star bellied sneeches).

Re: If only the US did buy oil
 

Of course there is also the shrewd dynamic Iran is exploiting where their threat of nuclear proliferation is in itself driving up the price of oil even though we don't buy from them. You'd think we'd be smarter than that...except for that denial thing.

why are you still driving?
 

Then why are you still driving to everything? if you really only need to drive to work, then only drive to work!
I've helped my parents to get a motorcycle and moped so they could get 50 and 100mpg, insted of 30 and 40mpg, and sold a bicycle to a kid who wanted to stop driving the two miles to work, and my car hasn't moved in 4 days, I try to only use it when I need to go great distances, or haul stuff, it's impressive how many groceries you can fit in a back pack on a motorcycle.

a few years ago they did a pole, and asked how high gas prices would have to get befor people changed their vehicles, and driving habbits, and most people said $3 a gallon would be high enough, well this cheap gas finder tells me it's $2.84 and $2.92 a gallon today, have people changed their habbits? not really, a few people I know have, people asking me to build them pedal carts, looking for better cars, riding bicycles more, but it could also be said that I know all the weird people in town.

average fuel economy is something like 21.5mpg at $2 a gallon it costs you 9 cents a mile in gas, at $3 a gallon it's going to cost you 14 cents a mile just for gas, the IRS has a flat tax write off for mileage if you have to drive for your job, they give you something like 42 cents a mile write off, maybe it's gone up, I'm not sure, but I've kept tract of how much my car really costs me, and found out that after buying the car, and insurance, and tires, and oil changes, and tune ups, and everything else, that gas is a very small part of the cost of owning and driving a car, so when someone is complaning about the price of fuel going up 20 cents a gallon, that 20 cents a gallon increas is 1 cent a mile increase at 21.5mpg (averge for amarica) added on to the 42+ cents a mile it's costing them.
I have records of every dollor spent on cars in the last 2.5 years, and it's fasinating to play with the numbers and figure out when it becomes cost effective, I did this befor I bought my civic vx, and those pennies do add up, save a few cents by driving something better, or avoid a trip, and realize that saved a few dollors.