Termyn8or
Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
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Math might work to figure this out. Damn I am glad to be out that other thread now, I needed something else to think about.
OK, you live 25 miles from work and you make $30 an hour. Now at a speed of 60MPH that would be a 25 minute drive each way. That is fifty minutes a day you spend getting there and back. That is five sixths of an hour's pay. That is $25 worth of time.
Now to make the comparison easier to put into perspective, I am going to use two unrealistic figures, but at least they don't require alot of math.
The same drive at 120 MPH would be half the time. Given the constant thirty bucks an hour, that is $12.50 worth of time. But at 30 MPH it would be $50 worth of time.
Now if you put the pedal to the metal and accelerate to 60 MPH in five seconds, your injectors might approach a 100% duty cycle, which with engine vacuum gone will probably reach close to 60 PSI.
Now the thing is, in a modern car, being a leadfoot is not all that bad, not like the old days. Older car used to just dump in alot of gas when you got on it, now it is tightly regulated. Nowadays if you were to moderate yourself and let it take ten seconds to reach 60 MPH, you have still made it do the same work.
Scientifically there is a slight error in the wording of the definition of power. The work done should not be described as moving, it should be described as accelerating or decelerating and object in that it is removed from it's velocity space (a term borrowed from plasma physics)
In a car there are other factors, and they pretty much remain constant. You do not change you tires daily and the "wind resistance" does not change.
Dad and I have discussed this, after me hearing stories about him making it from like Kentucky to Michigan on a very small amount of gas. After consideration I see that what happened to some of the older cars was that when you got to a certain speed the body began to act as an airfoil, a rolling wing so to speak.
We can't drive like that anymore, a simple fact of life. There is to much traffic. Too unsafe. In something like a 1958 Caddilac at 110 MPH, the air pattern changes, just like it does in an aircraft as it's airspeed traverses the "barrier" between stall and flight. It also can serve to take some of the vehicle's weight off of the tires.
Years ago there were highways that had no speed limit, the Will Roger's Turnpike comes to mind. Then when the feds legislated the 55 MPH limit, Nevada told them to go fuck off.
Come on down here and drive these freeways, in the city we would love to drive 55. When the thing becomes a parking lot is where a big part of the problem lies.
Here's an experiment for you. Yes you can have empirical knowledge ! Most people drive cars with automatic transmissions. If you are legalandfhave no warrants, oneof these days just take your foot off of the brake in drive. I would bet real money that most cars would get close to 20 MPH if you did not touch the gas.
If you were to find a level road and do this, there is no refuting that fact that when you are sitting in a traffic jam, your car's engine is producing enough power to move. This is waste.
And every time you hit the brake it is wasting energy. Brakes convert the inertia of the vehicle into heat, which is not used, and has to be simply dissipated.
But then all of this put in perspective boils down to this, 20%.
I say let's attack the bigger problems.
T
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Would you drive 55 MPH if ? - 
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