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You try doing a typical 30 mile journey involving a mix of local roads and M/way at 60mph one way and 90mph coming back and door to door the time difference will be barely measurable. People saying it's more time efficient are kidding themselves. I speak as someone who has spent decades driving like I had my pants on fire, but I think the penny is starting to drop with me. Driving at 70mph using lane discipline requires you to be a lot more alert than simply getting into lane 3 as your default lane and cruising at 85mph, something I still do plenty of times, but increasingly less often.
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Yeah? I used to race my dad home from university. He'd do 70ish. I wouldn't. Sheffield to Wrexham, I'd be 20-30 mins ahead of him. Tried it again the other week with a friend between Derby and London - again I was over half an hour ahead.
I find that at 60 I get very frustrated. At 90 I am very calm. I am not going to claim to be safer at either speed as I have no evidence.
Oh yes. And my lane discipline is fine. Except I (occasionally) overtake on the inside when people do 60 in the middle lane, overtaking no-one. Irresponsible, yes. See you in court.
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Life is complex; it has real and imaginary parts.
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Yeah.
That journey involves less than 50 miles of M/way, which would have taken your dad about 43 minutes to cover at 70mph. If you reckon you could cover that same distance in 20 or 30 minutes less you are mistaken.
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You try doing a typical 30 mile journey involving a mix of local roads and M/way at 60mph one way and 90mph coming back and door to door the time difference will be barely measurable. People saying it's more time efficient are kidding themselves. I speak as someone who has spent decades driving like I had my pants on fire, but I think the penny is starting to drop with me. Driving at 70mph using lane discipline requires you to be a lot more alert than simply getting into lane 3 as your default lane and cruising at 85mph, something I still do plenty of times, but increasingly less often.
Totally agree Nsar. See lots of drivers in a 'trance' sitting at 85mph in right lane - no concentration, eyes just glued to the back of the car in front. And anyone who has a car that uses less fuel as its driven faster should be in line for the Nobel Prize for physics.....
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And anyone who has a car that uses less fuel as itsdriven faster should be in line for the Nobel Prize for physics.....
great idea - where do i apply? ;-)
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On a slightly different note but Uni run/fuel related:
I recently picked up my son from Sussex Uni/Brighton travelling from Gloucestershire via B roads to Swindon joining M4 at J16 (avoiding the roadworks and multiple cameras between J18-16)and then drove M4 /A329M /A332/M3/M25/M23/A23 my trip computer showing it's usual 32 -34 mpg running on Shell Optimax, at Brighton could only find BP to refuel and had to queue to fill up then found unleaded pump out of order so filled up with BP Ultimate unleaded to avoid requeing & reset computer as is my usual practise every refuel. Drove back exactly the same way but with heavier load (my son + huge amount of kit) and similar light traffic conditions, no hold ups as outward journey. Forgot all about the Ultimate as I was chatting, catching up on news etc but after unloading car I remembered I had used the BP Ultimate and checked computer to find 37.4 mpg which I found very impressive.
Normally I use Optimax which I find gives about 2 mpg benefit over normal unleaded so it just pays for itself and the car does run better.
Unfortunately BP stations thin on the ground around my usual routes.
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I do the same 100 mile journey more or less every weekend, same traffic-free conditions everytime, always with cc so my mpg never varies. Air-conditioning knocks off 1 mpg, having two adults in the back and a boot full of suitcases deletes another 2mpg.
If I?m in the mood though, I?ll kick off the cruise and drive enthusiastically and this can cost 5 mpg easily.
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Not sure how dependable trip computers are. My Omega consistently gives a more optimistic reading (by about 8%) than my Excel spreadsheet shows me I am getting (I always brim it), either over one tankful or a year's petrol.
I often reset this, just to while away the time, but noticed tonight I hadn't set it for 2701 miles, and I was just about to use exactly 100 gallons. Now I reckon that's probably an average mpg of 27.0 (rounded). The average mpg readout showed 26.6.
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"anyone who has a car that uses less fuel as its driven faster.."
I seem to remember that one of the early Lotuses claimed better economy at 70 than 50 - presumably something to do with throttle settings and torque characteristics, so doubtless special circumstances rather than an upending of Physics!
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