October 16, 2007
151 moving violations, and that was just in Manhattan. Wired looks at one (very rich) man's desire to drive fast, taken to a whole new level.
This is a little different, though, in that mrflip's article is about laws that no one wants/cares to see enforced (not even the lawmen). I'm sure they'd love to get their hands on the Gumball guys.
The speed limit is largely and selectively unenforced -- most highway traffic drives 7-15 mph over the legal limit. You'd be killed if you tried driving the exact speed limit on the I-5 in Cali. Sure, they go after the flagrantly excessive and the black and the careless, but there's nothing like the (easily implemented) level of enforcement that would make it a "Limit".
"My point is instead one that democracies understood for generations, but that we recently have learned to forget. The rule of law depends upon people obeying the law. The more often, and more repeatedly, we as citizens experience violating the law,the less we respect the law. Obviously, in most cases, the important issue is the law, not respect for the law. I don’t care whether the rapist respects the law or not; I want to catch and incarcerate the rapist. But I do care whether my students respect the law. And I do care if the rules of law sow increasing disrespect because of the extreme of regulation they impose. Twenty million Americans have come of age since the Internet introduced this different idea of “sharing.” We need to be able to call these twenty million Americans “citizens,”not “felons.”
As for Captain Tom, some ideas:
- At 2800 miles and an achievable 21mpg, you need 130 gallons of gas. Replace the back seat with 20gal fuel cells. A 15gal stock gives 55gal total, good for 2 fillups. You could probably get this down to one with a custom fuel cell and good budgeting. This has to save 30-40 minutes over filling 5 times.
- I'm sure the idea of a flash Bimmer with a 10' whip antenna is k-rad... but my old BMW 318i had a 115mph top end with a 3.1L engine, and turned 22mpg@85mph (average, not peak, speed) on my Austin-San Antonio runs. I'd go the other direction, and build a total sleeper Civic with an eye towards fuel efficiency. I'd do all the efficiency-minded improvements (better cam, heads, intake; port&polish, tuned exhaust, turbos) and shoot for a ~150 top end with 25mpg@90mph.
- I'd also ding up the exterior and paint it a very dark blue. Then I'd shave all the trim and insignia, or better yet I'd letter it "HONOTA" on the trunk, with rear Nissan and front Mazda logos.
- Going the sleeper route means ditching the CB antennas. Continue the trailing airplane idea (genius) and figure out how to get someone on the ground every 200-300 miles (that's 10-14 people) to monitor CB traffic continuously for a day before you come through. Paying each of them $300 for their trouble would be a drop in the bucket for what this guy's invested. You'd probably only need it out to St. Louis and then again in Cali.
- Why make the taillight switch knock out the taillights altogether? I'd give it three positions: Normal, Taillights on but Don't Brighten on Stop, and Completely Off -- the second mode for populated areas, the third for submarining. I'd also consider adding a front-rear swaybar (TTJ can fill us in on what this is called), and tell my tuner to maximize the bounce-jounce coupling, so that hitting the brakes hard doesn't cause the car to pitch forward.
I felt like enforcement of moving violations fell under the "too expensive to bother" rather than the "laws would probably be repealed if weren't so much political inertia to keep them the same." As he says on the front page:
"There will, of course, always be some lawbreaking that goes unpunished simply because law enforcement is expensive—not every shoplifter is caught, and it's not worth expending the resources to catch every kleptomaniac."
On the other hand, I'm probably bitter since I've been stopped (and ticketed!) doing 10 over before.
So I just sat through a traffic manager class put on by MDOT for doing construction lane closures. Speeds for taper lengths and crash barrier size calcs are based not on speed limits but actual prevailing speeds. In the state of Maryland that means 15 over the limit, that is, 70 in a 55, 55 in a 40 40 in a 25, etc. This is based on an 85th percentile. Glad to know I still score in the 98th percentile on SOMTHING! MUHAHAHAHAAH!!!
50 gallons of gas weighs about 300 lbs.
(gas is 5.8 to 6.4 lbs/gallon depending on temperature [density])
I can rather readily tell the difference in the acceleration and handling of my Porsche with full and empty tank (about 17 gallons).
Keep it below 100 (on the interstate) in most places you just get an expensive ticket. Live in a state like MD with no reciprocity, and any tickets you get in another state don't reflect points on your MD license.
You sorry bitches who live in the fascist puke state of Virginia for instance, do not have such luxury.
Whats the Texas policy?
I'm not too surprised a full tank makes a noticeable acceleration difference. 17gal gas = 45-50kg => your full fuel tank weighs as much as your dancer wife.
The issue of fuel economy from extra weight came up the other day, and I don't know an easy way to thumb-rule it: What is the mileage penalty for carrying around an extra 10% mass, say 100kg in a 1000kg car?
The gravitational work evens out; what you lose is the difference in fuel efficiency vs. load going uphill vs. downhill, the air resistance if your speed varies, and the increased rolling resistance of the tires. You also have to decide whether your speed is staying constant or coasting with the hills to some extent. I don't think the extra 10% mass makes enough of a fuel economy hit to cause anything like an extra fuel stop.
As for handling, how much do you need on an interstate, even at 150?
I don't know if there is that much of a difference in fuel efficiency when you have a full tank vs. an empty tank. Once completely needless but nonetheless nice thing about my new car is it graphs average mpg over time intervals, while also giving you your instantaneous mpg. I haven't noticed a difference in my mpg when my tank is full vs. when it is empty (my tank is about 11.5 gallons and I read mpg out to the tenths decimal place). When I carry 3 passengers in my car, the mpg goes down about 0.2 - 0.3 mpg.
On the interstate and high speeds the extra weight is actually a boon, as it helps with stability to have a heavier vehicle. Bonneville speed record cars are always heavy as hell, they don't need to accelerate quickly. However there is a rolling resistance issue as far as economy. But it is probably somewhat negligable. I don't know. Endurance race cars usually have very large fuel tanks. I know of one Porsche racer that had an adjustment knob for the front swaybar so the driver could adjust roll resistance as he used up fuel in the front mounted fuel tank and lost weight over the front axle....
In Automotive Engineering we were taught that rolling resistance is negligible once air resistance becomes significant and vice versa. Top end is almost entirely drag limited.
Yeah. I thought about it more later and figured as much.
So how much affect does vehicle weight have on fuel economy? Is it mostly an acceleration issue? If I have two of the same car but one weighs twice as much as the other does it take more energy to hold a sustained speed on the heavier car? I know it must, but is it all rolling resistance?
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American Lawbreaking
posted by mrflip at 10:53AM CST on October 16