Let”s just say I”ll be happy to get back home to Atlanta. This is a work trip, so I shouldn”t expect too much excitement, but Blue Ash ain”t the most fabulous place in the world. So I”m left to ponder the little things around me.
• What an attractive air dam you have on your grille. Ohio is one of those states that have both front-end and back-end license plates on cars. Driving around this morning, this question occurred to me: How much gasoline is wasted in states that have front-end license plates? Bear with me here. Having a license plate on the front of the car disrupts - to some small degree - the aerodynamics of the car; the less aerodynamic a car is, the more air resistance it creates as it moves; the more resistance created, the more energy needed to move the car; the more energy needed to move the car, the more gas consumed. If the state required a 4 foot by 4 foot steel plate to be attached to your grille, there would be an obvious increase is gasoline consumption per vehicle. So requiring a license plate that is something like 14 inches wide by 8 inches tall also has some effect on each car”s fuel consumption. And now I”m wondering how much of an effect that is. Here”s a hypothetical: Assume there are 2 million cars in the state, and each car averages 10,000 miles a year and normally gets 20 miles per gallon. If the license plate on the front reduces fuel efficiency by one-tenth of one percent, that means those cars would now get 19.98 miles per gallon. For those 2 million cars driving 10,000 miles each, that”s an extra 100,100 gallons of gasoline per year. Significant? Maybe not. But these are the kinds of thing that get my mind working.
• But I”ve never worried about technicalities. Driving up I-75, I passed a tanker truck with the following label on the back: “TECHNICAL ANIMAL FAT. NOT INTENDED FOR HUMAN FOOD”. I get that some fats aren”t made for eating, but what”s this “technical” term?
• MOTORISTS ADVISED TO DEPART TRAVEL LANES AT DESIGNATED EGRESS POINTS Also on I-75, there were signs posted at the end of construction zones that read “RESUME LEGAL SPEED”. I know what they are trying to say - this is the end of the construction zone, so normal speed limits are back in effect. But “RESUME LEGAL SPEED”? That implies that I shouldn”t have been driving the “legal speed” up until this point. In the construction zone, they post lower speed limits, which are - during those zones - the “legal speed.” Poorly-worded road signs piss me off. There was another sign near Dayton that read “MAINTAIN PRESENT LANE”. Why not say “STAY IN LANE”? Americans are generally very stupid, so I don”t see why the highway department writes in anything above a third-grade level. I do miss, however, the signs along I-285 merge lanes that read “TAKE GAP GIVE GAP”. I never figured how I was supposed to do both. I either took the gap or I gave it away, right?
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