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Carol's letter to congress |
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Wednesday, 09 August 2006 |
Dear MEMBER OF CONGRESS,
I am sending this letter to those whom I consider to be our country's leading thinkers and policy makers. I write to you with great respect and a deep desire to help our country survive.
Some months ago I viewed a television program on the Discovery channel that documented a simple, proven method of saving a great amount of gasoline and, of course, thereby saving a great amount of money. That simple method was to travel in our vehicles at no faster speed than 55 mph. The program showed an experiment using identical vehicles under identical circumstances on an identical roadway; one auto traveling at 65 mph and the other at 55 mph. The resulting comparison showed that the auto traveling 55 mph was able to travel 18% more miles on an equal amount of gas than did the 65 mph auto. A savings of almost a fifth of a tank of gas!
I was impressed with this information and so proceeded to do my own experiment. I filled my gas tank 4 times and proceeded to travel at 55 mph for two of the tanks and 65 mph for the other two tanks. Of course, I traveled at local, legal speed limits during my city, non-freeway, driving through all four tanks of gas. I diligently maintained careful data. The results of my test showed a gas savings of near 19% at the 55 mph over the 65 mph. If all Americans would observe a 55 mph speed limit, our nation could conserve an estimated 18 to 20% of our country‚s gas supply. It has been estimated (www.er2025.org/current_editorial.asp <http://www.er2025.org/current_editorial.asp> ) that...the U.S. will spend over 500 billion dollars in 2006 on the 21 million barrels of oil that we consume each day. Of this amount, over $300 billion will be spent to procure crude from outside the U.S. The cost of crude has essentially tripled over the past five years.
By applying the DRIVE 55 AND SAVE 18% principle to the above estimate, we can see that we could save an approximate 90 BILLION DOLLARS on money spent in 2006 for crude oil.
We, as individual citizens, could help, not only our country, but also ourselves in saving a great deal of money at the gas pump. I believe that most of us see the terrible and dangerous situation that our country faces and will continue to face paying tremendous oil prices due to our dependency on foreign oil imports. I believe most of us are ready and willing to comply with an enforced maximum speed limit of 55 mph on our highways.
The idea of a 55 mph speed limit is not new. We should have implemented the law immediately after the tragedy of 9-11...but our leaders failed to act.
I believe most of us DO want our country to remain free and safe and are NOW READY AND WILLING TO DO OUR PART TO HELP OUR COUNTRY AND OURSELVES.
NOW IS THE TIME TO PROPOSE AND PASS A NEW LAW TO ACCOMPLISH THIS GOAL.
Please take the time to try this "55mph vs 65mph" experiment for yourself and verify the savings.
It is now time for all Americans to "GROW UP" and accept the situation our country faces.
I sincerely hope that you will read this letter, hear my words and proceed to make efforts to translate this idea into reality. I would appreciate hearing your position of this issue.
Sincerely,
Carol Holtman
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