{"id":366985,"date":"2018-06-27T18:44:47","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T17:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/what-the-government-really-thinks-about-gas-mileage\/"},"modified":"2018-06-27T18:44:47","modified_gmt":"2018-06-27T17:44:47","slug":"what-the-government-really-thinks-about-gas-mileage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/what-the-government-really-thinks-about-gas-mileage\/","title":{"rendered":"What The Government Really Thinks About Gas Mileage"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t                            \t<!-- S3 Cache --><!-- S3:S3:Non-Original -->\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>All this hubbub over how much gas cars burn and the government won\u2019t even synchronize traffic lights.<\/p>\n<p>How much gas does\u00a0<em>that<\/em>\u00a0waste?<\/p>\n<p>An interesting\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/large.stanford.edu\/courses\/2011\/ph240\/miller1\/\">study\u00a0<\/a>was done by a Stanford University researcher a few years back. Its author \u2013 Victor Miller \u2013 estimated that the average car\u00a0<em>needlessly<\/em>\u00a0stops \u2013 and then goes \u2013 about 15 times every day as a result of such things as unsynchronized traffic lights.<\/p>\n<p>When multiplied by the approximate number of cars driven each day in urban\/suburban environments \u2013 which is about 60 million cars \u2013 the study determined that the fuel wastage of\u00a0avoidable\u00a0decelerating, idling and re-accelerating accounts for about 1.2 billion gallons of wasted fuel annually.<\/p>\n<p>That is an ocean of gas \u2013 and a lot more gas than \u201csaved\u201d by elaborate, expensive and<em>\u00a0annoying<\/em>\u00a0technology such as the engine stop\/start systems being grafted to almost all new cars as a desperation measure to meet the government\u2019s fuel economy\u00a0<em>fatwas<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Much more fuel could be saved simply by keeping the cars moving. And \u2013 as a bonus \u2013 we\u2019d also save\u00a0<em>time<\/em>, an invaluable (and never renewable) resource.<\/p>\n<p>But it never gets done. The lights remain generally unsynchronized. Cars lurch forward, briefly. Then stop \u2013 and wait. It is like a Soviet-era bread line queue. Rinse, repeat \u2013 times 60 million, every day.<\/p>\n<p>Not only is gas (and time) wasted, but also brake pads and tires \u2013 and tires are made of\u00a0oil\u00a0(mostly). I wasn\u2019t able to find a study which quantified how much needless wear and tear on tires can be laid at the feet of avoidable stop-and-go driving, but a sound guess is probably \u201ca lot,\u201d since most of the wear and tear occurs from the initial friction of getting going \u2013 and the friction of stopping.<\/p>\n<p>That adds&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2018\/06\/eric-peters\/what-the-government-really-thinks-about-gas-mileage\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All this hubbub over how much gas cars burn and the government won\u2019t even synchronize traffic lights. How much gas does\u00a0that\u00a0waste? An interesting\u00a0study\u00a0was done by a Stanford University researcher a few years back. Its author \u2013 Victor Miller \u2013 estimated that the average car\u00a0needlessly\u00a0stops \u2013 and then goes \u2013 about 15 times every day as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-366985","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}