Road Rage May Be Getting Better
Ever since the gas prices have skyrocketed this past year, I’ve noticed a significant change in the way that people have been driving. They’ve been slowing down or not driving at all. For instance, I drive a Jeep, which is considered an SUV of sorts. It’s a V6 and consumes a lot of gasoline.
Back when gas prices were $4 a gallon, I was easily spending almost $75 just to fill up my gas tank. I had a 30 minute commute to get to work and another 30-45 minute commute to get home (depending on the traffic). So, in the course of just a regular Oregon car insurance workweek, I was riding home with almost an empty tank come Friday. I was having to fill up my tank almost every single week just for driving to and from work- nowhere else! Well, if you’re like most other people in the United States, money is something that you’re trying to save. I am guilty of being a speeder.
However, I have since slowed down and eliminated my need for speed because of my need to save money on gas. Now, I was still having to fill up my Jeep every week, but because I slowed down, I could get through the workweek and still have a little gas left over for the weekend. It’s all about stretching that car insurance Connecticut And I wasn’t the only person who realized this. I noticed that a lot of other people were slowing down and maybe only doing 5 mph over the speed limit versus the normal 10-20mph. As a result of people slowing down, it seems like I have been able to witness less accidents on the roadways, less traffic backups as well as maybe just a teensy bit of courtesy for other drivers.
It’s amazing what raising the gas prices a little can do. However, now that gas prices have dropped significantly over the past few weeks and are now approaching almost $2 a gallon, I wonder whether or not we will see an increase in the number of people driving their vehicles. Will the drop in gas prices have an inverse relationship with the amount of people once again becoming enraged on the roadways? I’m not so sure. I think that given the volatility of the economy as well as the overall volatility of the fact that gas prices can be $4 a gallon one week and $2 a gallon the next week, people won’t exactly be rushing to get the keys to their cars. I recently saw a few signs at car rental places trying to encourage people to run out and rent cars now that the gas prices seem to have (temporarily) righted themselves. I don’t think people will buy into it though. I don’t think that people will buy into much of anything until the stock market is back up and banks are loaning again. We can only hope that with the election of a new president, that things will eventually get resolved in the White House and abroad. And who knows, maybe it won’t cost us almost $75 to fill up our cars each time!