You Can Drive 55 - The Slow Issue - GOOD

Help save the planet and defeat the terrorists. This reminds me of my F/friend Phyllis' campaign of "civil obedience" back in the fall of 2001, where she urged Friends to drive the speed limit for just these reasons. - sm

You Can Drive 55 - The Slow Issue - GOOD

But the latest case for driving the posted speed limit, and lowering that speed limit altogether, is not about safety (though even a rudimentary understanding of physics would support that argument). Rather, it’s about saving money and reducing carbon emissions. A car’s gas mileage peaks at speeds around 40 miles per hour (depending on the car), and then decreases rapidly. This is because air resistance increases exponentially as a car goes faster. At high speeds, a car’s engine is using the majority of its energy simply to overcome that resistance—rather than accelerating—which wastes fuel...

Tim Castleman, a California native, thinks we should all slow down. He started his Drive 55 campaign in the wake of 9/11, after concluding that a reliance on foreign oil was the root cause of the disaster.