Gas prices around the world

Around here the situation is opposite. The people in the Corolla's cannot
afford the cell phones nor is the vehicle large enough for soccer moms and
their brood. The Tahoes, Expeditions, and mini-vans are the ones with the
phones, screaming kids in the backseat, and putting on their makeup while
driving.

Personally, I'd favor limiting the SUV and mini-van speeds down to those of
the semi-trucks and vehicles pulling trailers. They too often spend an
inordinate amount of time playing on the radio, phone, TV monitoring,
cooking, and laptop as well (can't say I blame them though). I'm amazed at
what my LD trucking friends do while tooling on down the highways (!).

B~

 

Wow! Where do you live? I've yet to find even the lowest paying
under-the-table-economy laborer who doesn't have a cell phone. (I don't
post much here, so you may not recognize my attempt at a bit of hyperbole


I'd suggest that most people who don't have cell phones and do have
driver's licenses do so out of choice, not because they can't afford a
cell phone.

All right, let's hijack this into what vehicles engender the worst drivers!
My personal list has BMW (cars) alone in first place, by a long shot,
followed by the ML Mercedes, and finally Volvos. Close to the podium would
be any vehicle with 20" or larger wheels and/or spinners. I really don't
notice a disproportionate amount of bad driving by suv's, certainly not
when compared to the big 3 above.

Not a bad idea, although most of the semi's and trailers are going >65 mph
on the freeways I'm around...

 

In almost every country with immense oil wealth, most of the people
live in desperate poverty while a small ruling elite get fabulously
wealthy selling the oil as if it belonged to -them-. The only real
exception I can think of is Norway, because they already had a model
democracy in place when the oil was discovered. But the Middle East,
Nigeria, or wherever, the oil didn't help the people at all, in fact
the opposite. It brought them a 'strong man' dictator who kept his
own population in control with help from the US.

No wonder our oil-fueled administration considered Chavez such a
dangerous character!

 

Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, say the worst drivers are in
Volkswagen Jettas. But I agree, BMWs are pretty bad.

I don't think any particular kind of car inherently makes one a bad
driver, but I think people with different kinds of personalities pick
certain kinds of cars, and it's the personalities that are the
problem.

I know a lot of people who drive SUVs and big full-sized pickup trucks
not because they have a big family to haul around or big loads to
carry, but just because they want a nice big car. They like looking
down on traffic. Those are the people talking on the phone, putting
on their makeup, or whatever.

Also I used to have a theory (which I think I've expounded here a few
times) that people like big 'luxury' cars (like Cadillacs and
Lincolns) because they isolate them from the road, from the experience
of driving. Driving a car like this is more like sitting in your
living room playing a video game. These are the people who drive
25mph down a narrow road with no awareness of how many people are
stuck behind them. Escalades and Navigators are in the same category,
but more ostentatious. They really don't have much more useable room
than the sedans they replace. Have you EVER seen an Escalade pickup
truck with a load in the back? It's hard to imagine!

Also semi drivers are generally pretty good drivers!

 

I think you mean an Avalanche? As far as I know, they haven't started
selling Escalade brand pickups yet, though I think they're coming. At any
rate, these are the "trucks" that you can barely fit a 6-pack of beer in
the back. Honda's Ridgeline fits in here too. Don't quite understand it.

I sure hope so!

 

Escalade is a SUV

 

Nobody has been able to get the trees to comment on that, but the
question has to be "What does the alternative look like?" To the extent
that oil and gas would be supplanted by coal and wood (which is what we
used for fuel before the petroleum industry developed), it would be
worse for forests and probably for lungs.

 

That's certainly true here. We have signs on the freeways that require
trucks and cars towing trailers to limit their speed to 55 mph where the
limit is 70 mph for other vehicles. That law appears to be a dead
letter. Were it not, it would be an effective way to get rid of SUVs,
which are exempt from CAFE standards because they are considered to be
trucks.

Rich, Urban Biker

 

No doubt. A government that demonstrates to the rest of
the world that the well being of The People and the
Environment should be a higher priority than obscene
wealth for the ruling elite, is a serious threat to
criminal corporate parasites and thieves such as those
on the bu$h regime. The current U.S. government is a
horrific tragedy in almost every respect...


-


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=peak+oil&btnG=Google+Search

"You're doin' a heckuva job, Brownie!" - bu$h, a few days
before his FEMA chief, Micheal Brown was forced to resign
because of his gross incomptence.

"The tools that enable Cuba save lives and preserve
human dignity during hurricanes are socialist values
and organization." - Dr. W.T. Whitney Jr

Ever wonder who benefits from the 150 MILLION
U.S. taxpayer dollars spent each DAY in Iraq?
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0223-08.htm
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=21

http://www.commondreams.org/
http://www.truthout.org/
http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/
http://thirdworldtraveler.com/
http://counterpunch.org/
http://responsiblewealth.org/

"They are waging a campaign of murder and destruction. And
there is no limit to the innocent lives they are willing to
take... men with blind hatred and armed with lethal weapons
who are capable of any atrocity... they respect no laws of
warfare or morality."
-bu$h describing his own illegal invasion of Iraq.
http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things
that matter." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them. And then
he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did."
-- George W. Bush

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the
will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the
Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
-- Adolf Hitler

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is
not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."
-- Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

Don't let bu$h do to the United States what his very close
friend and top campaign contributor, Ken Lay, did to Enron...

 

I'm probably the only person in the state who feels this way, but I'd vote
for a return to the 55 mph speed limit. I don't get my need for speed
satisfied on a freeway.

And I imagine you knew this , but the "trucks" that have to follow the
55mph limit are tractor-trailer rigs...that would be fun to see a Honda
Ridgeline pull into a truck scale. "It's a truck!"

 

I live in NH. Prices went from $1.65 to $3.50 and have slowly gone
back to $2.89. That's pretty close to double.

Bruce

 

Never said it was fair, just that it is what has happened. As for
paying the same amount, do you think the guy that walks to work or
drives a Geo Metro spends as much on gas as the guy doing 30 miles each
way with a Hummer?

Bruce

 

Yup, you're right. My mistake. I just checked out their currentline
and there -is- no pickup truck (but they made one for a while.) Also
there are two models BIGGER than an Escalade, there's that
reconfigurable monster, the EXT, and also the ESV.

 

I understand but the logic still escapes me. Thre are many things that
defy logic and it would seem that is one of them.

Why do you choose to insult me?

pierce

 

Just speculatin', but I would have to guess that when those taxes were
put in place, they WERE progressive taxes, because only a small
percentage of the population drove cars, and only the wealthiest drove
gas-guzzling Rolls, Rovers, Daimlers, Mercedes, and American models.
Those who could afford small cars carried a proportionally smaller part
of the burden, the many bike- and scooter-riders carried an even
smaller part, people who relied upon public transportation carried
practically none, and bicyclists avoided that particular tax
altogether.

When I was in Europe in the early '60s, those taxes were already in
place; the price of gas in Britain was a heart-stopper for someone
fresh from the States. But at that time the Euros were all still
recovering from the war. A small percentage of families had one car,
two-car families were virtually unheard-of, most 20-somethings aspired
to a motorbike or a motorscooter, skilled middle-aged craftsmen
(plumbers, mechanics, carpenters, and such) rode a bike with a sidecar
for the Missus, and a large percentage of the population rode bicycles
or took public transportation (for which there were fabulous networks
of buses and trains). This was a British economy where £10 ($28.10)
bought me a 250 cc BSA thumper in good shape, and the auto-mechanix
club at the school where I was teaching bought a running and
street-legal... Riley, I think it was... for £25 (about $70.00). Gas
prices and personal transportation strategies looked pretty much the
same in France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Benelux, and Scandinavia.

Yeah, I know I used the word "fabulous". Don't try to make anything
out of it.


-Richard, with Spirit
--

======================================================================
Richard Hopley Winston-Salem, NC, USA
.. rhopley[at]earthlink[dot]net
.. Nothing really matters except Bikes, Sex, and Rock'n'Roll
.. rhopley[at]wfubmc[dot]edu
.. OK, OK; computer programming for scientific research also matters
======================================================================

 

The big difference between the Europe and the US is the vast distances one
can travel without seeing anything but the occassional farmhouse. There
are places in the US where you can drive for hours at highway speeds and
not see any civilization at all.


Fabulous? Make something of it? The mere thought hasn't even begun to
speculate about the possibility of a shadow of the likelihood of such a
thing has not even begun to cross my mind. >)

pierce

 

Actually, before fossil fuels, carbohydrates, proteins and fats were the
main sources of fuel - processed by
muscles.

 

Sigh. Sad, but true.

 

Well... people could cut back on gasoline to reduce their taxes...