Apr3 15

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F RE E!

AUGUSTA

MEDICAL EXAMINER recipe feature PAGE 7

TAKE HOME T HI S C O P WITH Y Y OU !

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AUGUSTA’S MOST SALUBRIOUS NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED IN 2006

I am a speeder B

reaking speed limit laws is supposedly the most common illegal activity there is: everybody does it. Like you, I am one of those lawbreakers. But I seem to be the slowest speeder on the roads. On I-20, for instance, I routinely set my cruise control for 60 mph, maybe 62 tops. At that speed it is a rare day, indeed, when I pass even a single motorist in my normal 5 miles of interstate driving through the heart of Augusta. Virtually every vehicle on the road passes me, many of them like I was parked. The fly-bys include many drivers talking on their cell phones, sports cars and old jalopies, semis, dump trucks, cement trucks, tow trucks (some towing cars), motorhomes and motorcycles. The same thing also happens to me on Riverwatch Parkway. I wondered how much time I’m wasting by being the slowest speeder on the road. And how much time the super-speeders are gaining by risking traffic citations and accidents. I took a common stretch of I-20 driven by many as a test case. As measured by Google Maps, it’s 11.8 miles from the Grovetown Gateway exit to the Riverwatch exit. The first 6.5 miles are posted at 65 mph; for the last 5.3 miles, beginning near Wheeler Road, the speed limit is 55 mph. Driving the entire stretch at 65 mph, as everyone (except me) seems to do, will take 10.89 minutes (using the formula Time = Distance/ Speed). Slowing down to 55 where directed will extend the total elapsed trip time to 11.78 minutes. Do not adjust your Medical Examiner. Ignoring the speed limit and driving 65 all the way will save you less than a minute. Another example: let’s say you have a 10-mile commute that is posted at 45 mph the entire route, but you usually push it to 55 the whole way. At the speed limit, that trip will take you 13.3 minutes. At 55 it will take 11 minutes. Congratulations. You may have risked your life to do it, but you just saved 2 minutes and 20 seconds. To put it another way, if you left five minutes earlier you could drive the speed limit the whole way and still arrrive with an extra 2 minutes and 40 seconds to spare.

APRIL 3, 2015

Reducing Strokes

Why it matters Ask a hundred motorists if driving 100 mph is dangerous and foolish. All one hundred will probably answer yes. Now ask the same hundred drivers if exceeding the speed limit by 5 mph is dangerous and foolish. Maybe this time all one hundred will answer no. But consider the facts in this scenario: Someone steps into a pedestrian crosswalk in front of you as you’re driving along at 30 mph. If you apply your brakes when Please see SPEED page 2

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See page 2 Plus our signature service. It’s an unbeatable combination!

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Apr3 15 by Daniel Pearson - Issuu