Stunted Mile Age

I wonder if chronic speeders ever wonder why they get such poor gas mileage?

The number of drivers caught speeding more than 100 mph has quadrupled over the last decade to nearly 400 last year, according to a St. Paul Pioneer Press analysis of more than 3 million speeding tickets written by the State Patrol.

This interactive map shows that most tickets for super-fast speeding over the last decade were written along Minnesota's three interstate highways.

For the curious, the How Stuff Works website has a fairly good discussion on the sweet spot for obtaining good mileage. The eye-opener is that doubling the speed of an SUV from 50 to 100 mph, requires a 5-fold increase in horsepower. The implication is that, even though doubling your speed gets you there in half-the-time, you end up using 2.5 times the gas as you would going slower.

Still, actually spotting a speeder going over 100 is pretty rare. According to the Minnesota statistics, you will see only 1 in 500 potentially ticketed cars going over 100.

Suggestion: Stay away from Montana

Update: Something is in the water as the Mpls Strib reports a mortorcyclist ticketed for going 205 MPH last Saturday.