GMAC Insurance released their 2010 National Drivers Test results. The findings are interesting:

• If taken today, 18.4 percent of drivers on the road – amounting to roughly 38 million licensed Americans – would not pass a written drivers test exam.
• The national average score was 76.2 percent; a score below 70 percent is considered failing.
• Average test scores in 2010 continue to show a slight trending downward, from 76.6 percent in 2009 to 76.2 percent this year and a drop of almost 2 percent from the national average in 2008 (78.1 percent).
• With Age Comes Wisdom: The older the driver, the higher the test score. Males over 45 earned the highest average score.
• Factoring in margin for error, the average test score was significantly higher among males than females (78.1 percent male versus 74.4 percent female). Females also had a higher failure rate than males (24 percent female versus 18.1 percent male).

I’m not particularly surprised at the results. It can be hard to remember which of several similar answers is correct, which partially accounts for the low score; but this isn’t an excuse on something this important. The way I see it, the results are evidence that nearly one fifth of the licensed drivers in the country should have their licenses suspended until they re-pass their licensing requirements. Even this is optimistic. A survey like this can’t distinguish between book knowledge and its application. How many people can pass the test but never follow the rules afterward? This could be examined by including both the scores on the driver’s written tests and state accident data in the analysis.

Even in the wildly optimistic case that all drivers are able to re-pass the driver’s licensing tests after driving for a few years, it still wouldn’t be enough to ensure safe roads. The driver’s tests are currently only for the absolute minimum required knowledge and skill to drive a car on public roads, safe driving requires much more skill and awareness. A good step toward this level of driving is to take the ABATE or MSF motorcycle safety test. I think that passing one of these courses should be a prerequisite to applying for a car learner’s permit. This would make the roads much safer.

The GMAC test is online so you can try it yourself. Then you should read my page on safe driving around bicycles.

Source: 2010 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test via AOL Autos via USA Today. Note that this was an online survey.

I never would have guessed, but apparently drivers in Fort Wayne are involved in accidents 16.3% less than the average driver in the 200 most populous cities in the USA. Just think how much safer we could be if Indiana had slightly less easy licensing tests.

Study found through ‘For safe driving, city ranks No. 11’ in the Journal Gazette.

A gallon of gas contains an average of 36.6 kWh. So, if a car gets 25 miles a gallon, it uses 1.46 kWh per mile. So, driving a car one mile is equivalent to keeping a 60 W light bulb on for 24.4 hours. Over one lightbulb-day per mile!

Next, I plotted this equivalency for a wide range of fuel economies, highlighting three locally common cars:

Of course, we (mostly) switched to compact fluorescent bulbs years ago. CFLs use less than a quarter of the energy of an incandescent bulb, and my car does better than 25 mpg; so, for me, driving a car a mile is more like keeping a bulb lit for over five days. Woah.

Anyway, it is an interesting paper showing that many people underestimate the energy consumption of power hungry devices, and overestimate the power consumption of small devices. It’s open access, so you should read it.

Suggested reading: ‘Public perceptions of energy consumption and savings’ (doi:10.1073/pnas.1001509107)

Recommended reading:

• ‘Driver’s ed value doubted: Trained teenagers wreck more often, legislators told’ – Journal Gazette
• ‘Ex-ISU prof urges tougher driving standards’ – Tribune Star

The the definition of light truck in the CAFE standard includes many SUVs and vans. Pickup trucks, SUVs, and vans made up around half of the passenger vehicles sold in recent years. The orange line shows the expected average fuel economy for the current mixture of trucks and cars. Keeping this mix of light trucks and cars will result in the average fuel economy only reaching 33.7 miles per gallon. Reaching the target of 35.5 mpg requires the fraction of new vehicles sold classified as light trucks to drop from one half to around one third. This is shown by the pink line.

From my estimate of the total number of cars and miles driven, I can estimate the gasoline burned, giving the CO₂ produced by all cars and light trucks on the road:

This shows the expected change with and without the new CAFE standard. For the base scenario (without the CAFE update), I included the expected change in the fraction of trucks sold. Notice that after the CAFE standard is constant, the expected CO₂ output resumes its climb. This is due to the predicted population increase, with the number of cars per capita remaining constant. The CAFE update will bring the expected CO₂ production from cars to below 2000 levels for nearly three decades, when population growth catches up with efficiency improvements.

Since I found the expected gasoline consumption with and without the CAFE update, it is easy to find the expected savings in CO₂ emissions:

Notes: The numbers from 2005 to 2010 are estimated based on 2004 levels. These years are estimated because accurate statistics are released a few years late. The scenarios not labled ‘current trucks’ include a decrease in the truck to car ratio starting with 1:1 in 2008 and reaching 1:2 in 2016. The data before 1979 isn’t as accurate as the 1979 to 2004 data, but the effect is negligible after the early ’80s due to the high turnover rate of miles driven.

Together, EPA and NHTSA estimate that the average cost increase for a model year 2016 vehicle due to the National Program will be less than $1,000…. over the lifetime of a model year 2016 vehicle, the consumer’s net savings could be more than $3,000. –EPA.

Here is a plot of historic US fuel economy along with the new standards. The historic data is based on the efficiency of cars sold each year and car survivability and miles driven by age. The plot shows all cars on the road each year, not just those sold that year. The future lines are directly from the new standards. Because the number of new cars sold is large, and new cars are driven more than older cars, the plot ignores the small hysteresis for future fuel economy. Data from 2005 to 2010 is estimated.

The various documents related to the ruling contain lots of interesting and useful information. For example, a good compilation of existing technologies that improve fuel economy, with an analysis of cost and efficiency changes. Some of these changes reduce manufacturing cost and improve fuel economy. I’ll probably use these reports frequently. They contains lots of information that I previously had gathered from many sources, as well as some I had calculated or planned to calculate.

Since they are in the business of selling gasoline-powered automobiles, the manufacturers understandably are reluctant to come out and publicly announce the obvious solution to air-poisoning by the gasoline engine: Get rid of the gasoline engine.

On the other hand, every member of the industry is actively engaged in trying to do just that.

–W.E. Butterworth, Wheels and Pistons

While editing down the number of books I own, I found Wheels and Pistons: The Story of the Automobile, a history written for middle schoolers that my grandmother gave me years ago. It is a 1971 book championing the car and car companies, and how the number of cars on the road and miles driven demonstrates the USA is better than the Soviet Union. The chapter on the future is interesting. It mostly talks about turbine and steam engines, but also mentions electric and hybrid gas-electric cars, showing a couple Ford and GM experimental cars.

From the pictures, you can see that GM was treating electric and hybrid technology as a play technology, for use in toy cars. The examples of turbine engines in the book are installed in production cars. This fits well with my understanding of the history of the automobile, where GM has kept up enough research on modern technology to not fall too far behind, but does so in a way that they never have to actually sell a car that could cut into gasoline car production. The book also shows a similar Ford of England Comuta electric car.

It is worth to noting that Wheels and Pistons was published two years before the first oil embargo, and that GM still does not sell an electric or viable hybrid car. (I’m not counting the EV1 beause they were destroyed at the end of their leases, or their current hybrid options because of sub-par performance.)

This is a good time to put in another recommendation to read Edwin Black’s Internal Combustion, an excellent history of the car.

Sources:

@book{butterworth1971,
	Author = {W. E. Butterworth},
	Publisher = {Four Winds Press},
	Title = {Wheels and Pistons: The Story of the Automobile},
	Year = {1971}
}

@book{black2006,
	Address = {New York},
	Author = {Edwin Black},
	Publisher = {St. Martin's Press},
	Title = {Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments
	 Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives},
	Year = {2006}
}

This is certainly nicer than the standard three phase light, but I’m not convinced that it is practically better than a four phase light. I prefer the simplicity and reliability of a four phase signal to the extra complication and unneeded detail of the Stanković signal. Still, it is good to see someone else promoting the idea of better traffic signals. I’m not sure how many American drivers are alert and courteous enough to take advantage of better signals, but there are probably enough that we could still see some improvement in traffic flow, saving gas.

Source:
A Better Understanding of Stoplights through A Stoplight for the Progress Bar Generation

The four phase system is superior. The fourth phase gives drivers advance warning before the light turns. This lets everyone know when traffic is going to start moving. Drivers have time to shift into gear, and can start driving almost as soon as the light turns green. This helps eliminate the slinky effect we see at every light in the US. Here the typical situation is: the first driver is not paying attention, and takes a while to start, then the driver behind takes a while to start, and so on. If there is much traffic, these delays can make it so that only the first few cars make it through the intersection. When people are talking and texting on cell phones, it is even worse. In Sweden, everyone can see that the light is about to turn green, so they can be prepared to start before the light turns. Everyone can start at almost the same time, allowing more people through the light. This contributes to a smoother flow of traffic than we are used to in the US.

Smoother traffic flow means that the same speed limit (set by light timing) produces higher average speeds. Hard breaking and hard accelerating with traffic lights leads to lots of time spent stopped. The increased awareness provided by the fourth phase allows everyone in line at a light to start over a much shorter time, lowering the time spent stopped. By lowering the time spent stopped, the average speed of traffic increases. This means you can get where you are headed sooner. This system has the added benefit of saving fuel in two ways. The gas burned while a car is stopped is completely wasted because in isn’t helping you reach your destination. With smoother traffic, less time is spent stopped, so less gas is wasted. The second savings is partially because of driving style. In the US it is common for a light to turn green, and the first and third car to immediately start moving. The second driver isn’t paying attention, and takes a while to start. This causes the third driver to slam his brakes on. The second driver then starts moving, then the third can start again. Driver two’s inattention has cost him gas, but has cost driver three even more gas. The delay also slows all drivers behind, wasting more gas. By giving advance warning the light is about to turn, it is easier for traffic to start smoothly and keep flowing.

A four phase system should also improve safety. With traffic flowing faster and more smoothly, there are fewer chances for a driver to rear-end a car stopped at a green light. There are other potential ways for this to improve safety, but most require an improvement in driver attitudes in addition to better traffic engineering.

Since I began telling people about four phase traffic lights, I learned that there are a few in Maryland and southern Pennsylvania.

It would be really fun to prove that four phase traffic lights are superior, but time is limited, and I’m sure someone else has already done the work. Even without rigorous demonstrations, I’m sure that switching to four phase signals is a simple and inexpensive way to improve the flow of traffic, and will have a short payoff period.

New York Times: China Is Said to Plan Strict Gas Mileage Rules

You should also read Thomas L. Friedman’s latest editorial. It is past time for Americans to get serious about energy efficiency.