I must say I was quite surprised by the most recent “In Our Opinion” from Nov. 16. As it has been pointed out, the Daily is usually quite a liberal paper, but on the issue of speed limits they either forgot or didn’t care that there is more at stake than their desire to reach their destination a few minutes sooner.

I did some research with the EPA and DOE, and here’s what I found.

Doubling a vehicle’s speed, quadruples the air resistance it encounters. The average driver in the United States exceeds the speed limit on open highways by approximately 5 m.p.h. For every mile per-hour over 55, the average car or truck loses almost 2 percent in gas mileage. That means billions of gallons of gasoline are being wasted.

That’s (70-55)*2=30 percent loss at the new proposed limits!

The Department of Transportation says if highway speeds were observed by all of us across the nation, the pollutants from about 4 million gallons of gasoline per day could be kept out of the air.

So, Daily, my question to you is this: Do you really care about the environment, or only insofar as it doesn’t affect your easy lives?

Jason Schissel

Senior

Physics and math