Hi David Harville:

___I found a 65 mph limit along I-95 in Maryland? Is everybody traveling at 75 - 80 mph including the OTR’s? 75 - 80 mph in an 18-wheeler amongst the Baltimore to Washington DC corridor on I-95?

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net

 

Maximum speed limits on the turnpikes in Oklahoma are 75 mph. There are also a lot of highways with a 70 mph speed limit in Texas, Missouri, and Iowa. And I've heard that Montana has no speed limit at all. Things are different as you travel west in the country.

 

Was it just me or did anyone else here start to beam with pride knowing how often they've beat EPA given the outdated tests?

 

They always had a nighttime highway limit, 65mph I think. The daytime limit was listed as "Reasonable and Prudent" which most officers interpreted to mean 100mph. It was also up to the judge, even if you did get a ticket. One guy with a late model Nissan 300ZX Turbo was ticketed for 125mph, fought it, and got the judge to agree that for such a car, that was an acceptable speed. Unfortunately, it was ultimately spoiled by the lawyers who said you can't use R&P as the law of the land because it opens itself up to too much individual interpretation. I think the Montanabahn as many called it lasted about 18 months, then they went to a 70 or 75mph daytime limit. Arizona and NM are 75mph day and night, which to the best of my knowledge are the highest in the country.

 

Hi All:

MAXIMUM POSTED SPEED LIMITS FOR PASSENGER VEHICLES - as of May 2005

___All states have speed limits as AZCivic pointed out …

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net

 

xcel,

The area around Washington D.C. is a zoo during the rush hours. Cops basically let the majority go 10-15 over to keep the traffic flowing. They will ticket you for 15 over in off peak times however. When I travel north or northwest, I always go around the D.C. area.

A schoolteacher friend of mine who lives in Manassas was very glad to get a job at a different school. He was tired of "having to go 80 to keep from being run over" twice a day. He's now about to buy a used Insight to take the sting out of driving 600-700 miles a week (50 miles each way to work and most weekends he flees the city to come and relax in the country).

 

Thanks for the confirmation, Romir.

For the record, right now [1:45 pm on a weekday] the speed sensors on I-95 between DC and Baltimore are showing an average speed of above 65 mph once again. Note that the sensors do not ever show "70", "75", etc., "above 65" is the highest they show.

http://tinyurl.com/8o6w4

 

yes. absolutely trucks go 75-80 on I95. More. And on US50. And on 495. And on 695. I66, I97, 270, I70, the list goes on. The truck philosophy is to get between New Jersy/Philly and Richmond ASAP because the probability of getting snarled at DC is so high, and the effects stretch to Richmond and Baltimore.

IMO this is substantially because unlike, say, Chicago or Dallas or LA or NY, DC itself is proportionally not an end-point for long-haul commerce traffic (pop <500K), yet almost all Eastern commerce needs to flow past it. It sits right on the middle of the Eastern artery like a piece of plaque in your aorta. Add to that one of the 1st Beltways ever built (read: worse for the wear, and lacking some later innovations) and a drawbrigde on 95.

Toss in on top of that the fact that we here are basically in as much of a hurry as New Yorkers (native NY, so I can speak to that), but lacking some stoicism of a Noo Yawka.

 

October 05 issue of Consumer Reports (pp.20-23) deals exactly with this issue in an article, "CR Investigates: Fuel Economy: Why You're Not Getting the MPG You Expect"

Findings include some of the points already made here and others:

EPA standards are outdated for today's conditions.

So inflated are mileage figures the EPA obtains that the figures we see posted are already lessened 10% for city and 22% for hwy mpg.

CR have two charts in the article. In one chart, "Close-up--For City Driving, Claimed MPG is Way Off," They have ten types of vehicles, showing EPA city MPG, the mileage CR got with those vehicles, and the % difference between the EPA's figure and CR's figure. EXAMPLE: Honda Civic Hybrid 48EPA, CR26, EPA shortfall of 46%.

Their second chart, "What You Can Do: Buy a Fuel-Efficient Vehicle," lists 7 vehicle categories and gives the best and worst vehicle choices for each category. The Prius leads in the Family Sedan category with 44 overall MPG.

There are many other interesting and possibly controversal points. Sorry I can't post the whole article.

 

Hi All:

___I see a quite a few posts that the average or that all OTR trucks for example are driving this very high average speed etc. … I will not say it is not the case because obviously it appears to be the standard but having driven in at least 27 states of the Union over the last 3 years including portions of I-70 (not MD. or DC. however), I have always seen OTR’s following the speed limits or just a touch over. This includes the wide open expanses of the desert Southwest and includes the speed demon capital of the world, CA. To take this a step further, if all traffic was at 65 + in MD. and DC., would there be any traffic jams? Earlier this month traveling across Indiana and Ohio to Pennsylvania via the turnpike, I saw many OTR’s at < 65 even with truck limits posted at 65 mph!

___Would one of you that do the daily DC commute mind calculating the real world average speed while on your way to work and back? All I would need is for you to record the time you started up your hybrid in the morning, record the time when you pulled into your parking spot at work, and record the actual distance traveled. Do the same for the commute back home in the afternoon to see a better overall average figure. If you can do the same when actually up to highway speed to the time you let off to coast down/up your off-ramp, that would give everyone a good idea as to true highway speed actuals instead of what may be “perceived” highway speeds that everybody is traveling at.

___Carbound, welcome to GH. Now that you know what CR is doing wrong or soon will, you will kick both their achieved City/Highway/150 mile Highway, and Combined as well as the EPA City/Highway estimates in the teeth with what you will learn over the next few days/weeks. The EPA estimates are a joke to the low side but it is up to everyone to learn how/why on their own with a little help from the hypermilers here at GH. If they/you don’t, we will only run out of pumped oil sooner rather then later at our present rate of consumption. At what point do you drive for economy instead of “I have to get there 10 minutes earlier”? $3.50/gallon? $4.00/gallon? $5.00/gallon? I can carpool! How much time is wasted doing that? I would still car pool if I could because overall it saves a ton of fuel but it costs quite a few more minutes in most cases … Let’s consider CR’s Prius II tested to just 44 mpg combined? Most here have read that test report in very fine detail as it has been discussed here many times. With their lousy 44 mpg overall, maybe everyone should consider a regular non-hybrid Accord instead because I almost always receive better FE in it then the Prius II’s combined per CR’s? Hopefully you now see why I believe the EPA estimates are a joke to the low side if one were to drive for FE instead of how most drive day in and day out unfortunately

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net