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If people start thinking of individual car trips as spending money (rather than the generalized cost of having a car), I wouldn't be surprised if people drastic
by superuser2 12y ago
If people start thinking of individual car trips as spending money (rather than the generalized cost of having a car), I wouldn't be surprised if people drastically reduced their travel and, correspondingly, consumption (by not leaving their houses). People seem to highly resistant to impulse purchases for dollar amounts smaller than they are willing to spend on road travel without thinking. This would be a Very Bad Thing for the American economy, so I'm not surprised that we are encouraged to reason about gas milage in language that makes this more difficult.
- ghaff 12y agoWho is doing this encouraging "to reason about gas milage in language that makes this more difficult"? MPG as a fuel efficiency metric goes back many decades. I don't actually disagree that that if there were a big ticking dollar gauge that tallied up the cost of each trip in a car, some people might drive less. But it's not the reason we use the MPG metric.
- dec0dedab0de 12y agoa big ticking dollar gauge that tallied up the cost of each trip in a car That sounds like a fun project.
- dragonwriter 12y ago> I don't actually disagree that that if there were a big ticking dollar gauge that tallied up the cost of each trip in a car, some people might drive less. Some cars already have those (well, not necessarily big and ticking, but, some have a fuel-cost-of-trip measure that is displayed, either on one of the information screens or when you end a trip, or both.)