Go Slow To Conserve Gas - Best Speed To Save Fuel

Slow Down To Save Gas

The way the gas prices are behaving these days, they could easily send most of our motorists’ blood pressure up. With the prices continuing merrily on their upward trend, drivers simply shun the sight of gas pumps. Naturally, now we are all becoming more and more concerned with finding easy ways of increasing the fuel efficiency of our vehicles to conserve every possible bit of gas. 

Best Speed To Save Fuel

Fortunately, the best ways of conserving fuel when driving are also about the easiest to implement. For instance, your style of driving has a big bearing on the quantity of fuel consumed. It being so, it should be possible for you to bring about a big change in the gas consumption by making some changes to your style of driving. We will try to examine in this article how such changes to your present style may be accomplished.

Evidence gathered by experts indicate that you would consume about 20-25% more fuel when going at 75 mph compared to your usage if you were driving at 55 mph. This is very big difference, and we should see whether we could justify incurring an additional 25% cost on a trip for the sole benefit of reaching the destination a little earlier.

There could be instances where reaching a destination on time is very important such as to keep an important appointment or when going for work; as well as instances where a difference of a few minutes is of no significance at all like when going on a vacation. Unless the timing is important, you should try to slow down to average around 55 mph or a little less when driving on interstate roads or highways for the purpose of conserving fuel which means minimizing your costs.

Driving at 55 mph on a highway, you may feel a sense of inferiority or loss of face similar to a hurt pride when many others overtake you at 65 mph or still faster. But you have to remember that you are going at 55 mph for a specific purpose of saving money since whether you complete this (say) 60 mile trip in a little less than one hour or about 10 to 15 minutes later is of no concern to you. Surely, you will not mind an extra few minutes spent inside the car! Supposing it was important for you to get to that destination at a particular time, then you could arrange to start the journey 15 minutes earlier so that you could drive at 55 mph instead of at 75 mph.

Speed Limit To Save Gas

I presume it is quite clear that you get a fuel saving not by driving at 55 mph only or less. Although you get a saving of around 25% by driving at 55 mph compared to driving at 75 mph, it follows that you would get some fuel saving all the way between 55 mph and 75 mph. It also follows that when driving at over 75 mph, you will incur more than 25% increase in usage and costs compared to driving at 55 mph. If you feel uncomfortable when driving at 55 mph. you may drive at whatever speed is comfortable for you, bearing in mind that you are reducing your cost per mile by reducing speed and increasing the cost per mile by increasing speed.

With regard to the extent by which your costs increase in response to every 1 mph increase in speed, the relationship is not a proportionate of a uniform ratio, but a progressive ratio. The rate of increase also increases with each unit of speed as you increase speed from 55 mph upwards. In other words, the difference in cost per mile when you are increasing speed from 70 to 75 mph would be very much higher than when you are increasing speed from 55 mph to 60 mph.  

Higher fuel efficiency is not the only benefit you accrue by driving slow. At lower speeds, you would eliminate any chances of getting a traffic ticket that could cost around $ 200.00; while greatly minimizing your chances of meeting with an accident too.