ANYONE whose car is equipped with a continuous miles-per-gallon readout on the dashboard knows how compelling, even mesmerizing, the numbers can be. Drive at a nice moderate speed and watch as the fuel economy improves. Accelerate or brake hard, and the numbers plunge.
In spite of such feedback, most American drivers stubbornly resist the idea of lower speed limits. Driving at 55 miles per hour instead of 75 would reduce fuel consumption by about 25 percent, according to the US Department of Energy's website. And it would probably save lives: traffic fatalities are off 9 percent in the first five months of this year as gas prices spiked, according to the National Safety Council. Specialists assume both that fewer miles are being driven and that people are driving more slowly.
Still, whole Internet communities are devoted to vitriol against government efforts to get drivers to slow down. Bloggers call the 55 mile per hour limit, adopted during the oil crisis of 1974, "a bad joke," and "the worst idea since Prohibition." And back in 1974 gas was just 55 cents a gallon, or roughly $2.30 adjusted for inflation.
So we offer a tip of the wheel to Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia for at least broaching the subject. Warner has asked the Energy Department to do the research to identify the most fuel-efficient speed for today's cars - maybe it's 60 or 65 miles per hour - and to estimate the potential savings for various limits. It's only a study, but a department spokeswoman shot back that Congress ought to support more drilling if it is concerned about fuel prices. (So much for objective government analysis.)
Everyone wants lower fuel costs, but Warner is at least proposing to do something about it.
