...by raising the speed limit. Works for me.

Yep, very good idea. Probably save lives as well.

Afaik a mid sized car driven by a single person uses approximately the same amount of fuel per passenger per kilometer as a jet on a medium trip (say, 1000 km?).

So if you fly a four person family on a jet or drive them in a single car, the car should be more efficient.

I read some time ago that a late model 737 (it was either the -700 or -800 model) can carry well over 100 passengers from coast to coast with an average fuel consumption of 35 gallons per passenger. You can't even drive a hybrid across the country on 35 gallons of fuel. Modern airliners on long flights are amazingly fuel efficient and the 787 promises to be much better.

We're talking about short flights here, not long ones. The point is to extend the distance at which driving makes more sense than flying, which you can do if you can drive faster.

I recently drove from upstate SC to Washington DC, 1100 miles round trip. Cruised at around 80 mph or a little better, only slightly faster than the average on the roads I was traveling. And truthfully I would not have wanted to go much faster unless there were only 25% as many cars on the road as there were, and that is just not going to happen. It doesn't matter if the speed limit had been 100 mph, it just isn't practical to drive that fast on most roads outside of the state of Montana. And if there were roads with a 100 mph speed limit, I would avoid those roads as most people on US roads who think they can safely drive that fast cannot.

Might I add that most highways in North America are simply not built to handle traffic safely at those speeds.

What are the US speed limits on freeways?
In my country it's 120 km/h in summer and 100 km/h in the winter.

In Germany there are freeways without speed limit, people drive around 140 km/h.

Fuel consumption increases of course with increasing drag, though different cars behave in different ways.
It's possible that fuel consumption could double if you increase speed from 100 km/h to 160 km/h.
(62 to 100 mph) Of course it's about air drag but transmission design too.

1 km/h is 0.62 mph. When the US finally moves to the SI system of units, you can refrain from the nonstandard km/h and move on to m/s directly. ;)

It doesn't matter if the speed limit had been 100 mph, it just isn't practical to drive that fast on most roads outside of the state of Montana.

And Wyoming. And Idaho, and Nevada, and Utah, and North and South Dakota, and western Oregon and Washington, and northern California...

Might I add that most highways in North America are simply not built to handle traffic safely at those speeds.

But many are, particularly in the west, and particularly with modern cars. At least allow it there.

Having driven the interstates in all the states Rand just mentioned, I second his opinion of them there. A fair chunk of these roads go straight from horizon to far-past-the-horizon with no curves, dips, or onramps. "Next gas 143 miles" ... and there's one on/off ramp in between.

Even in the hillier sections(I-80/84/90, except 90 through the Rockies), the interstates are decidedly autobahn-like. They were designed in the original '70 mph' speed limit era, and these were designed with a healthy margin for emergency vehicles. At 85 or so, the curves are still shallow enough that you don't feel an urge to 'lean'. I-90 through the Cascades, particularly - where the current speed limit is 70, and there's often an elaborate speedtrap that catches speeders in excess of 130mph through here.

"And Wyoming. And Idaho, and Nevada, and Utah, and North and South Dakota, and western Oregon and Washington, and northern California..."

True, I was being facetious only listing Montana. But all of those states combined are what, 10% of the US population? Sure, let 'em drive 100 mph or whatever, but it won't make much difference since it's such a small slice of the population. Even counting the folks living on the edges of these states and would drive through them to other destinations, I really doubt it would entice enough who would normally travel by air to make a dent in overall fuel usage.

But I am all for letting people open up on those long straight roads, just don't try to sell it as a fuel saving measure.

A friend of mine, Bill Girodet, suggested painting a number on the side of cars in 8 inch letters. That number is the speed at which the car gets 30 miles/gallon, and that's the speed limit for that car on unobstructed roads. There's a lot of room for fiddling with the formula, but it would be great incentive to buy and drive more efficient cars and drive faster too. Of course Bill was driving a Lotus Europa at the time. :)

Oh come on, what kind of good reason exists for having any speed limit on an Interstate? Can anyone name one with a straight face?

If you can be trusted to drive a 2-ton hurtling Hummer at 65 on a five-lane Interstate at 5 PM with dipdoodles changing lanes randomly in front and behind you while they touch up their makeup and/or make one more cell phone call to the important client, then the question of whether you can be trusted to decide your maximum speed on an uncluttered road in the middle of the desert at midnight is trivially easy to answer.

The Northern Territory (Australia) used to not have a speed limit on open roads (which by distance is most of them). After introducing a 110 km/h rural, and 130km/h open road speed limit this year road casualties have actually gone up about 20%. Most likely it is because of driver fatigue, having to drive slower means having to drive longer.

I drove the 2100km distance from Alice Springs to Darwin last year in a Monaro, averaging over the entire trip about 185km/h. No chance in hell I'm doing that again at 130km/h, which is completely ludicrous considering that you can go 50km without seeing anyone on the road.

dipdoodles

I always wondered what those lane changing idiots were called. Thanks Carl.