Police: High gas prices lead to reduced speeds
Posted on Thursday, July 3, 2008
BENTON COUNTY - Maybe it's the silver lining, assuming there is a silver lining.
Local unleaded-gas prices have been flirting with the $ 4-per-gallon mark. Diesel users have already resigned themselves to never seeing prices that low again.
According to AAA, the national gas price average today is $ 4. 092, up more than a dollar from the $ 2. 953 average of 12 months ago. The Arkansas prices have seen a similar increase, from $ 2. 847 to $ 3. 935 over the past 12 months, according to the AAA Web site.
So many English idioms admonish against negative thinking and instead encourage hope. Where is the hope in the current gas prices ? Apparently, it is on the highway.
The speed limit for much of Interstate 540 is 70 mph. Arkansas State Police Sgt. David Hyden said there are fewer and fewer people moving faster than that, and he links it all to the price of gasoline.
That's not to say there are no speeders. It all depends on the motivation of the driver, Hyden said.
Two types of speeders are described First is the aggressive driver, the ones who are driving fast out of a need to pass people, to weave in and out of traffic, to bend or break the threshold of safe driving. Unfortunately, they're not the ones that are disappearing. Their speed, Hyden said, cannot be influenced by the price at the pump.
The other speeders can be influenced that way. They are the drivers who like or prefer to drive fast because they enjoy it, Hyden said. It is not a need, so it can be overcome: Gas prices, he said, are the final straw forcing them to slow down.
There is science behind that thinking. The federal government, on the Web site fueleconomy. gov, indicates that gas mileage decreases up to 10 percent for every 5 mph driven beyond 60 mph.
Police still see no difficulty in finding speeders to ticket, Hyden said, mostly because of aggressive drivers. Troopers still spend about 75 percent of their shifts dealing with speeding, he said, even though there are fewer people speeding.
"There is better compliance at this time; however, speeding is still a problem," Hayden said.
There has been one more change in driving behavior that Hayden attributes directly to gas prices.
"Our daytime troopers are seeing more car-pooling," he said.
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