Archive for the ‘Gas prices’ Category

There has been much written about the recent drops in traffic fatalities being a result of the bad economy, or the efforts of traffic safety campaigns (which, however laudatory, sometimes doesn’t explain the full picture; Massachusetts has the lowest seat-belt-wearing rate in the country and also, paradoxically, has the nation’s lowest per-mile fatality rate).

A new brief paper by Michael Sivak, “Mechanisms involved in the recent large reductions in US road fatalities,” published in the latest issue of Injury Prevention, makes the case, as shown in the above graph, that road fatalities have dropped more than miles driven, suggesting it’s more than a mere “exposure” issue. “The reduction in road fatalities,” he argues, “is the result of a change not only in the amount of driving, but also in the type of driving.”

What’s changed? While miles traveled have dropped across the board, rural miles driven — which are more dangerous than urban miles driven — have had a particularly steep drop (probably because rural incomes are lower and thus more affected by the economy/higher fuel prices). Sivak also suggests, though this is more logical supposition than empirical fact, that discretionary driving (e.g., the trips we don’t have to make) has been the first to go in the national mileage profile. Discretionary driving is riskier than things like commuting to work, Sivak notes, as it tends to be marked by “higher speeds, greater involvement of alcohol, and more night-time driving.”

In other words, while the recent drops in fatalities are to be welcomed, it does not necessarily follow that they would hold once the money (and fuel) started flowing again.

The above chart, which shows the negligible gains in fuel economy cars have seen over the last century (what efficiency gains there were have been plowed into horsepower and more weight), is from “Fuel efficiency of vehicles on US roads: 1923–2006,” by Michael Sivak and Omer Tsimhoni, published in the most recent issue of Energy Policy.

The authors note:

After the 1973 oil embargo, vehicle manufacturers achieved major improvements in the on-road fuel economy of vehicles. However, the slope of the improvement has decreased substantially since 1991. Specifically, from 1973 to 1991, the efficiency of the total fleet of vehicles has improved by 42% (from 11.9 to 16.9 mpg). This represents a compound rate of improvement of 2.0% per year. On the other hand, from 1991 to 2006, the efficiency has improved by only 1.8% (from 16.9 to 17.2 mpg), representing a compound rate of improvement of 0.1% per year.

The curve will begin to look dramatically different by the end of the second Obama administration.

Via Mobilizing the Region:

How times have changed. As of today, the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is $1.85. This may be just a temporary drop, but it’s nevertheless relatively cheap to drive again.

Through the first eleven months of 2008, driving has fallen an astonishing 102 billion miles, a drop of 3.5 percent over the same period in 2007. Assuming that trend holds true through the end of the year, it would represent the biggest decline in driving since World War II.

Georgia town drops “fuel surcharge” for speeding tickets. Story here.

In Toronto recently, I was intrigued by the vehicle stream during the morning commute on the Gardiner expressway. As compared to the U.S., I felt as if I was seeing many more compact cars and minivans, and fewer SUVs and massive pickup trucks. What might explain this, I wondered — higher taxes, fuel prices… or something else?

An interesting answer is proposed in Tim Falconer’s Drive, an enjoyable and far-flung journey into our conflicted relationship with the car (we made a few shared stops along the way, like the office of Donald Shoup at UCLA).

A research company called Environics did a survey in 2004 comparing U.S. and Canadian attitudes on a number of things. One question asked people to agree with the statement: “A car says a lot about a person — it must reflect my personal style and image” or instead thought “A car is just an appliance, something to get me from point A to B.” Some 62% of Canadians went with the appliance bit, while only 40% of Americans did. “If Americans have a passionate love affair with the automobile,” the researcher wrote, “Canadians have a mild crush.”

I wasn’t wrong to sense a minivan abundance. Writes Falconer: “In fact, minivans are twice as popular north of the border because they are cheaper and better on gas than SUVs and are more understated, just like the people who own them.”

Falconer goes on to note other reasons that might explain a weaker Canadian ardor for the car (and I’m not sure the American situation is as much love as a kind of terminal co-dependence), such as the fact that despite the sheer size of the country, 39% of its population lives in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, where the need for constant car usage is less pronounced. Higher taxes and fuel costs, Falconer adds, do play their part as well (and recent gas spikes have probably left Canadians better situated to deal with higher pump prices).

The Economist notes:

“For years it seemed that American consumers’ demand for liquid fuel was price inelastic—whether it was to drive their cars or get their brains going in the morning. Yet $4 seems to have been the price at which demand becomes elastic, for both petrol and a frothy latte. As a result, baristas at Starbucks coffee shops around America are starting to get a taste of what it feels like to be a carworker in Detroit.”

I wonder what the actual relationship between gas prices and Starbucks’ performance is — are their sales down more in places where people drive more? Are things worse at Starbucks with drive-throughs than those without?

I find the magazine’s comparison interesting in light of the old saw that says coffee is the world’s second most-traded commodity — right behind oil. I know which form of sludge I’d rather cut back on (it’s not the one you drink).