Safe Speed Forums

I changed jobs this month and will be doing around 10K business miles, not to mention the commute has increased from 3.5 to 24 miles! In an effort to get more than 25mpg and at least have the mileage allowance cover the costs I was cruising up and down the M20 at about 70mph and being very gentle with the throttle - which meant I got 27-28mpg instead. The thing is I found this much harder work than driving at about 80mph and just slowing and accelerating as needed, lots of other cars travel at the same sort of speed and you are forever slowly catching them or being caught. You end up with them accelerating by 1 mph as you overtake so you are no longer passing or slowing as they overtake and sitting next to you, avoiding getting boxed in and managing your space becomes much harder when you are trying not to use much fuel.

This week I decided to try dropping a bit further and tried various speeds between 55 and 70mph. At the lower end you end up with trucks slowly catching and passing which can be a bit scary not to mention probably annoying for everyone else. At around 57/58 I was catching the trucks steadily then using a bit of throttle to just ease up to 60+ to make a tidy pass. Anything between 60 and 65mph seemed to get me past trucks etc. pretty smoothly and put me at a different speed to most other vehicles which made it easier to manage the space I needed to pass or gaps to pull left into to let faster traffic through.

What this has confirmed for me personally is that I feel much more comfortable travelling at a different speed to most other vehicles on the motorway, the constantly changing situation keeps me alert and stimulated. I never would have thought I would admit to this but I actually enjoyed driving slowly!

Though not more than quickly of course

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

I'm in a similar boat to you, only with a much higher mileage (30K a year). I find the biggest problem with cruising at a lower speed is fatigue, longer journey times mean I have to leave earlier, am more tired when I get to my customer thus don't perform as well and take longer to get the job done, meaning I leave later, and then it takes me longer to get home, by the end of a trip like that I'm wandering into seriously unsafe territory and am wasting the money I'm saving on coffee, snacks and energy drinks, and losing even more time to stopping for naps, not to mention the risk to myself and other road users.

Not surprisingly I stopped trying this pretty damn quickly, instead I do the following:

If the customer is over 2 hours drive away I'll travel down the night before and stay in a hotel, with the company footing the bill. You save money on fuel doing this as night time driving is much more economical, you also save money on food.
I'm looking into an LPG conversion for my car.

I wish my commute were a mere 24 miles! Luxury!

My longest runs are only about an hour and a half so I guess that makes the difference, slowing down does not make a big difference in the journey time for me. On longer runs, which will be personal rather than work, I will be back to running at the higher speed range.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Do you mind me asking what you drive?

I started out in the car I have had for nearly six years, an Impreza turbo, however I picked up a Smart Roadster Coupe at the weekend. Given how low you sit in it may have something to do with 60ish not feeling too slow!

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

You should buy a diesel car! For example, I know two people who drive Skodas with the 1.9 TDi (105PS) engine, and they both get well over 60mpg. They may not be the fastest cars, but they could sure as hell cruise at 70, which is what you're doing in an effort to get 28mpg.

I don't blame you though. I blame NuLab. It is they who have allowed diesel duties to creep up to the state now where diesel costs 13p/litre more than petrol at some garages. What NuLab should have done is to go easy on diesel duties. That way, people would be driving around in cars that get 50/60mpg, instead of 25/30mpg. That's the way it's been in many other EU countries like France, Austria, Italy...

...but oh! Getting more mpg would mean that people would be paying less tax, and we CAN'T have that now, can we?

They should just find a clever way to make biofuel to water down the fuel and that way M.P.G. wouldn't matter and they could remove the taxation of both petrol and diesel...!

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Currently undergoing training with the I.A.M.

FWD and diesel - sorry just not for me.

That's why I went for the Smart, MR layout and 50+mpg - well OK the first 150 miles I only got 45mpg but I was driving it for fun as well as transport, the same in the Scooby would have seen low twenties at best. I was trying to stay away from the car thing, more a PH thread for that, it was the way I find having differential speed to other vehicles better and if any of you feel the same. The twist being that I have found you do not necessarily have to be going faster to do it, something new to me if, I am sure, not original in general. The mpg thing is really incidental it was just the driver that lead me to my 'discovery' so to speak.

Extending this a little, by travelling well below 70 I have the option of increasing my speed without having to worry about my licence and I think this may be contributing to the way I am finding it quite enjoyable or to put it another way less stressful.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

But 28mpg is ???? OK...

Not when you get 32.7p/mile, thats why I bought the Smart, I thought about a BMW 320D but it is big and lardy car for what I need imo and my wife already has a 3 series, I also considered an Aygo/C1/1007 fitted with a Rotrex supercharger but that was a bit of a silly idea really. If the Smart had a diesel engine I may still have bought it if the car had felt right.

It all comes down to personal taste and compromise when choosing a car. If you like fwd diesel engined cars or they meet your needs I do not have a problem with that. If I could afford a Tesla roadster...


... and the car park had recharging sockets...

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

deleted

?????

Not what I started the thread about, I thought I was politely replying to your posts, sorry if I have caused offence in any way.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Sorry Toltec - I was a bit blunt before, and deleted the post.

Forgive me, but I've been worn down by a bunch of whiny Americans on another board, complaining about the cost of fuel but driving monster trucks with huge, gas guzzling V8 engines. When I suggest that they do have the option of driving something smaller/more frugal, they dig their heels in and start spouting off about "freedom of choice", and that if I "lived in a free country" I would understand. It drives me round the ******* twist.

Your situation is this. You're concerned only to be getting ~25mpg and you're looking for ways to improve on that. You've shunned the idea of a FWD diesel, and instead you're tootling around at 55-70mph, and have managed to improve consumption to a whopping <gasp> 28mpg!

What I'm saying is that the FWD diesel Skoda that you refuse to consider would be perfectly capable of those outings on the M20, cruising along at 70mph, and getting 50/60 mpg while doing it. My friend with the Skoda Fabia drives quite hard, but even she averages out at 68mpg.

But your choice is not limited to Skodas. I merely mentioned them because they are excellent value for money with VW quality. I know how you feel about FWD. I ordered AWD on my previous Audi, and it came as standard on my current Audi 3.0 TDi. Even the VW Golf TDi is now available with AWD, and the current 170bhp 2.0 diesel engine from the VAG group is a real stonker! The AWD variants usually take a bit of a hit on fuel economy, but it's well worth having. I average about 38mpg in my current car, with 43mpg possible if keeping the speed to moderate levels.

The choices are out there, toltec. If you refuse to take matters into your own hands, there's really no-one you can blame but yourself for those big fuel bills. If you would rather drive at 55 to get 28mpg than drive a diesel at 70 and get twice the mileage, well that's your choice. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

I feel obliged to post on Toltecs behalf here. You seem to have not read the part where he says he HAS got a new car which DOES do 50mpg... a Smart Roadster Coupe - it's just not a FWD Diesel is all

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Toltec - Back to your original quote, I drove up the M40 to Stratford and back last weekend. I opted to drive in a way different to usual (usual is 75-85) to try and increase fuel economy (Audi A3 2.0 FSI) and as you found it's not so bad sitting inside lane. I didn't find issues as you did when going at 70, if I needed to get past someone doing 69/70 when I was doing 70/71 I'd just increase for a short while and no real issue. No issue with being boxed in either with a bit of forward planning, I didn't go slow enough to cause lorrys to overtake either. Onboard computer told me I average 44mpg on the way out and 42mpg on the way back in (went A3/M25 on way out, M40 into White City/Hammersmith way back) so pretty chuffed really, petrol cars can indeed get decent MPG too it seems. The one thing I did find was the extra 20 minutes you spend sitting in the car can make the difference between arriving relatively happy and arriving with a stiff back/aching foot/stressed out. I also noticed, due to driving almost dead on 70 myself, the sheer number of ignorant drivers who sit at or even below 70 but refuse to drive anywhere other than the middle lane - causes lots of undertaking and traffic build up and road rage.

You're right! It wasn't in the original post, which appeared only 2 days ago.

Diesel duty is the same as petrol duty in the UK and I think has been throughout the lifetime of the Labour government, so it certainly hasn't been allowed to creep up relative to petrol.

The higher diesel price is driven by supply and demand, not duty.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Peter -

I read some Tory propaganda many years ago, in a document describing Labour's first 50 new/stealth taxes. One of those first 50 was "additional diesel duties". I've tried googling for it, and found this...



Source - http://www.racfoundation.org/index.php? ... &Itemid=35

This shows diesel rising faster than petrol because of the fuel escalator. I assume there were further occurrences, until the FE was abolished in 2001.

I appreciate what you said about supply and demand, so can you explain to me why diesel is cheaper than petrol in most other EU countries?

I've got an XJ6 2.7Tdi and do about 40k

Same boat as you but I get about 15p/mile back.

I'm getting about 40mpg at my 'usual' cruising speed but the other day I was forced to drive 150 miles on my 'get you home' tyre. 50mph returned about 47mpg which i think is exceptional for the car but there's no way on earth i'd drive at that speed through choice.

It was stressful, boring and frustrating. 50 is far far to slow on a motorway particularly if you do the sort of commute i do.

This table shows that, apart from some minor blips around the time the two respective fuels were switched over to ultra low sulphur, the mainstream duty rates on unleaded and diesel have been identical since November 1994.


Because their tax is less on diesel than on petrol, simple as that. Also I understand that we have a lack of diesel refining capacity in the UK, so we have to import refined fuel from the Continent, which drives up the cost.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Mine would drop to that if I do over 11K, standard government rate afaik, no idea what vehicle is supposed to run for that sort of cost though.



The Smart feels OK at 60ish but then it is a glorified kart, one of my slightly idiosyncratic reasons for buying it, though it was not motorways I had in mind at the time. At 50 I think a motorised skateboard would be the only thing that felt fast. The point you make about boredom etc. and Lum above about tiredness are valid reasons not to drive too slowly, the sort of distance I am covering in one stint is short enough so that slowing by about 10% does not cause that kind of problem for me.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May