I feel the need for (less) speed

The Man wants you to buckle up and drive the speed limit, but guess what? You’re James Dean (or whoever the kids are watching these days). You’re living dangerously and thumbing your nose at the powers that be. Until you reach for your wallet, anyway.

Turns out The Man and your fuel tank are on the same page.

With gas prices breaking price records, agencies like the Canadian Automobile Association are offering fuel-saving advice, some of which aims to simply slow us down.

Along with a few common-sense vehicle ownership steps like keeping your tire pressure up and getting regular tune-ups, the CAA recommends keeping to posted speed limits. Ditto fighting the urge to burn rubber off the stop line.

Between 60 and 70 km/h, the argument goes, is where your car is processing its fuel most efficiently. Increases above that limit increase consumption exponentially. In fact, in the throes of the 1973 oil crisis, the U.S. took direct advantage of lower highways speeds’ fuel economy with the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act. But since the act’s repeal in 1995, speed limits have been more about our safety than our fuel consumption.

So while speed limits don’t have the same explicitly environmental purpose as, for example, anti-idling bylaws, their eco benefits do raise an important question: what other environmental benefits are there to being a decent, law-abiding citizen?