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The best way to find out if driving slowly saves gas is to do it. I live 30 kilometers from work and I used to drive at just over the speed limit, averaging 105 kilometers per hour in the hundred km zones but having to slow down to 50 km/hr halfway to work and again about a kilometer out from my destination. I was overtaking anything going under a hundrede as well and the result was I had to fill my gas tank twice during the week: once on Monday morning and again by Thursday or Friday morning to get through to the weekend.

Gas, or petrol as we call it in Australia, is much more expensive than in America. So when prices shot up and we were paying about $6 a gallon ($1.50 a liter), I decided to slow down. I had already worked out that going an average of 85 km/hour was only going to 'cost' me about five minutes at the most in time per trip. Was it really worth the extra money and danger to get to work five minutes early? So I got myself some good music and some talking books and slowed down. This saved me having to overtake as well because I was now going at a speed that didn't cause me to catch up with other drivers. Instead, people were passing me. Did they get to town faster than me? No, in most cases, they did not. They still had to slow down through the village and when they reached town and I usually caught up with them there,n especially if, after passing me by, they caught up with the rest of the slow traffic in zones where overtaking was not allowed. My road is windy and there are very few good overtaking zones. When I was going fast, I often found that the cars I had overtaken were right behind me when I got to town. So really all that extra petrol was just wasted anyway.

I not only spent less petrol on the driving and overtaking, but I also didn't have to brake to slow down when I reached the 50 km zones, nor did I have to spend as much petrol getting the car back up to speed when I got back in the hundred km zone. The result was quite astounding to me. I now only have to fill my tank once a week and the petrol lasts from Monday morning to Friday afternoon. That is about half a tank of petrol and that costs me about $30, so I am saving $30 a week for less than an hour's total extra driving time. During that time, I can relax,think, enjoy the scenery, listen to music and get to work more relaxed as well as getting there and home again more safely. Its a win win win situation with an extra $30 a week from my pay packet to spend on myself instead of on dwindling fossil fuel supplies. Try it. You'll be pleased with the results.

Learn more about this author, M E Skeel.
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