Dear fellow drivers,
In case you haven’t noticed, gasoline now costs $4 a gallon. At that price, I want to buy as little gas as I can. Therefore, when I’m first at a traffic light, don’t expect me to burn rubber the instant the light turns green. In fact, you may see me gradually accelerate my not-so-fuel-efficient minivan in order to conserve gasoline.
This is fine. Perfectly acceptable. In fact, you might save gas and money trying it, too! At any rate, we’ll both get to Capital Boulevard’s next red light (and the red light beyond that one, and the one beyond that one) in approximately the same time.
KTHXBYE,
Mark
Yeah, I did that last night in fact. I was crossing 401 on Ten-Ten in Garner, and the guy who’d been riding my ass for the last 5 miles decided he’d pass me on the right in the turn lane ’cause I didn’t accelerate fast enough.
He almost T-boned someone coming out of the Harris Teeter parking lot at 40 miles an hour, all because I was only going 3 over the speed-limit, instead of the 10 he wanted to go.
At highway speeds, when you’re traveling all day to the coast or something, I can understand wanting to save some time by driving a bit faster, although nowadays my desire to save on gas wins over that desire to save time, but I don’t know why people feel the need to go crazy fast on smaller residential highways and back roads like Ten-Ten. It’s not like they’re likely to be traveling more than 15 miles on the thing. Even assuming you’re driving 30 miles somewhere on local roads, that extra 7 miles per hour saves you… about 5 minutes.
Hope that death is worth it!