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Subject:Re: Diesel powered vanagons - Driving Slow
From:Jeffrey Schwaia
Date:Thu, 22 Sep 2005 11:11:09 -0700

There's a reason people say it:  according to the CHP, slow drivers are the
number one cause of road rage in California.  Additionally, a large
percentage of accidents are caused by drivers who do not get up to highway
speed quickly enough (saw that on some news journal on TV).

Don't flame me.  I'm not defending driving fast or degrading driving slow.
These are just a few facts that I recently was exposed to.

Cheers,

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM]On Behalf
Of Brendan Coffey
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 10:17 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Diesel powered vanagons

On Thu, 2005-09-22 at 13:05 -0400, David Bohannan wrote:

> Where on earth can you drive 55-58 MPH without getting run over?

I don't understand why people say this.  It seems to just come out of
the mouth without ever having been evaluated by the brain.  I mean, has
anyone here ever -actually- had a problem because they were driving too
slow?

Quite the opposite, I find it pretty nice.  Nobody in an inertial frame
moving 15-20 mph faster than mine even has the ability to cut me off or
get in my way.  I suppose someone could rear-end me doing a million
billion miles an hour, but I've got 10' of Vanagon behind me, including
the engine block.  They're going to get the short end of that stick, for
sure.

> I did a trip this weekend...averaged like 63 (58 on the low and 70 on the
> WAY high side) and felt like I was going to get run off the road...
>
> Seems like today's cars are geared to move at much higher speeds :-(
people
> just don't seem to care about those like us...

I guess I don't feel like they NEED to care about me.  And watch me care
that I'm in THEIR way.  Ready, here I go!  Oops, you missed it.

> On the positive side, I got 20.25 MPG :-)

My '82 GL/'98 TDI averages 27mpg within the city limits of SF.  :-)  I
wonder what it would do on the highway, if I trusted it to make a long
trip...

-bmc