Last week I walked around a mall, a Wal-Mart and a grocery store counting McCain and Obama bumper stickers So the other day as gas dropped to $2.50 a gallon and now under $2 a gallon here in Richmond, VA, I got to thinking about how people drive and if there habits would revert back to quick starts and acceleration toward red lights.
So far on Richmond’s main street, Broad Street, I am not seeing it. People are still coasting to red lights, gently slowing down and hoping the light will change to green while they are still moving. The wild discrepancies in driving speeds has still been moderated (except for the spoiled teenager in a muscle car).
But I have not counted.
I know I cannot count each car, but the county has records of how many cars travel each road each day. They have to for planning
purposes. But I can count the wasteful drivers and the conserving drivers. And while writing this, I have a theory I can propound, though I do not have the ability to prove it. As more people drive in a way to conserve gas, other drivers will mimic them and also conserve gas without even knowing they are doing it. Modeling and fitting in are prime drivers (no pun intended) in our behavior.
