Well my fuel consumption has dropped by 50% recently since I began carpooling to work.
I've actually noticed in the hours I go & come from work 7AM & 3:30PM that in the morning the traffic is still running at it's normal 75-80 MPH but in the afternoon traffic has slowed down so that cruising at 65 I'm going right with the flow of traffic. Save for the odd guy who's in a hurry and goes flying by @ 80. Though what baffles me to no end is that even at those speeds which is technically 10 over people still feel obligated to slam on their brakes when they see a cop. Even if he is on the other side of a concrete barrier.
From the price jump we had last week with the fear of running out of gas I saw prices routinely jumping to 3.50-4.00 with some as high as $5-6.00/gal yet there were still people pumping gas at those stations. So evidently there are people willing to pay those prices.
In my opinion the vast majority of the population is stupid and does not recognize the correlation between speed and fuel economy. The members of most automotive sites have a good background in common sense and a reasonable mechanical knowledge, which allows us to make changes to our driving styles and our vehicles to maximize fuel economy.
Recently I have noticed more poeple driving like raving lunatics, which in part is due to where I live such that the average driver is a lunatic so the raving lunatics don't stand out too much. So it may be that they are becoming more frequent or maybe I'm just paying more attention. I am seeing or noticing more and more people, both men and women, driving a fullsize suv whith only one person in the vehicle driving like it was the indy 500. The perfect example was a nice suburban this weekend in the grocery store parking lot when all throttle or brake applications were all such that I could see the body nose dive @ brake and nose rise and body slightly rotate during accelleration. Realization that the parking lot is only about 150yards long.
