Antique & Classic Cars Blog
Pet Peeve a da Week: Hurry Up and Stop!
Friday, February 29th, 2008We all know how traffic lights work. They’re green a while, then red a while, and yellow just a bit between. If we have someplace to go–hence being in the car–isn’t it common practice to look down the road at the traffic lights to see what lies ahead? When I see a light go red, I lift my foot off the gas and coast until I have to brake. This saves gas and reduces brake wear. Some people are oblivious to the whole lights-follow-a-pattern thing. It’s like a race to see who gets to stop first. If you’re behind me and the light ahead changes, I’m not gonna stay on the gas till I hit minimum braking distance from 30 to zero then kill-stomp the brake pedal. You can roar around indignant if you want…. They’re your brakes.
5 Responses to "Pet Peeve a da Week: Hurry Up and Stop!"
Ah, the stoplight gran prix continues. You’d think with $3 gas drivers would wake up. NAAAAAAAAHHH!
There is a serious lack of proper driver’s education in this country- if I went on about all the wrongs I see on a daily basis out on the roads I’d have a book. :rolleyes:
No doubt in my mind, if this country was composed of educated, civilized drivers instead of morons, we could cut our oil use by 30% or more overnight.
It’s funny how divergent the information is on what does and what doesn’t waste gas. If you ever watch these drivers who compete in the highest MPG contests–I think you competed, or at least followed it, right Frank?–those competitors maximize momentum everywhere, changing speeds gradually and braking as little as possible.
Doing that, they can get outrageous MPG figures, on the order of twice the EPA estimates or more. Then some article will come out saying that accelerating quickly doesn’t meaningfully hurt MPGs.
You can find divergent articles on tire inflation too. All boils down to the quality of your testing procedure. Also, there’s a lot of politics in gasoline. Much of what’s fun about cars isn’t frugal. Mags and manufacturers hustling go-fast products have little incentive to talk about ways to save gas.
Our household approach is to put the miles on the economical car and save the thirsty vehicles for fun.
It’s called hypermiling, and I do it (I have nearly doubled EPA a few times).
Yes there is a lot of garbage info out there, especially on the net. That’s true of all topics I guess.
I used to subscribe to all the car mags, then dropped ‘em all after tiring of all the relentless hype over nothing. They are there to stir up excitement for whatever the latest thing is.
Puttering around like there’s an egg under the gas pedal isn’t necessarily the most efficient way to go- although, a person could do a lot worse. The main things are to avoid idling and using the brakes whenever possible, and get into top gear ASAP without getting into the acceleration enrichment circuit. Keeping the thing in tune and getting out of the speeder mentality will do wonders for your ability to get great mileage too.
What ever happened to synchronized stop lights? It seems that we end up stopping for way more lights than we ever used to. Because, years ago the lights were synchronized and if you drove at the proper speed you could hit every light green. The way the lights work now, if one car comes up to a light from a side street it will trigger the light and the stop light will stop 50 cars on the main drag to let one go from a side street. Not real smart in my opinion. On the other hand, those lights that start flashing to let you know that the stop light is about to change are the greatest things since sliced bread. I think those light should put at every stop light where the speed limit is above 40 MPH. Truckers love ‘em, hopefully someone from MNDOT will read this.
I suspect untimed lights get used as a method of speed control–if the lights are timed for all green, people will go faster. Does seem to waste a lot of gas, though, especially where untimed lights are purely untimed–which is even more inefficient for all than the situation you describe where the light changes in response to one car pulling up at the cross-street.
What leads to more wasted time and fuel is when drivers downtown don’t anticipate whether they can clear a busy intersection before their own light turns red. When they pull out, get stuck in the intersection on red and block cross traffic with a green light, nobody but the high-blood-pressure-care industry benefits.
I experienced this at University and 35W in Dinkytown yesterday. People who got off 35 South (which you must do) to turn left on University pushed out and blocked people trying to catch the light to enter 35 North. As soon as a few people don’t do that, everybody moves quickly and you wonder, “why were we sitting there so long?”….
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MotorMouth Kris Palmer, freelance auto writer and editor, blogs about vintage cars, the collectible auto scene and just about anything else that goes vroom.
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