Does Cheap Gas Bring Crazier Drivers?

Recent wild fluctuations in fuel prices have impacted our lives in obvious and not-so obvious ways. When gas edged north of $4.00 a gallon, everything changed. Many of the changes were positive, but with the good there often comes the bad.

On the plus side, the world took a brief but hard look at driving habits, the vehicles we choose to drive, and our transportation system in general. From a ‘green car’ perspective, these are all long overdue and necessary. We need an incentive to improve fuel economy, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and lessen the overall environmental repercussions of the vehicles we drive. Pinching personal and family budgets certainly did that in sometimes painful and unfortunate ways.

High energy costs are a big factor in our current economic situation. The price of fuel, for example, affects the cost of goods and services across the board. Nearly every product we use on a daily basis, from food to toilet paper, moves by truck at least once and often several times in the distribution process. In the case of food, fuel is an even greater factor. From planting to harvest to market, petroleum fuels are the energy upon which agriculture relies. Those costs must all be passed along to the consumer if farmers and the trucking industry are to continue operations. Combined with the sub-prime mortgage mess, the turmoil from higher fuel prices has obviously exaggerated our economic woes.

With the changes in the worldwide economy and reduced consumption, the market could not sustain those higher prices and the bottom literally fell out. Oil is a commodity with price driven by demand and, fundamentally, what the market will bear. Will oil and gasoline prices remain low? Not likely. Consumers should view the current sub-$2.00 a gallon pump prices as a breather, not a long-term trend. In fact, OPEC’s recent decision to cut production by 2.2 million barrels per day will certainly have an influence on moving prices upward, and if it doesn’t then further cuts can be expected.

Our driving habits also changed with high fuel prices. Along with an overall reduction in consumption, drivers were driving smarter. When gas became more precious, many aggressive drivers actually slowed down and started paying more attention to their driving. A trip on the freeway was suddenly more sane and intelligent, with fewer people seemingly determined to run you down to get to wherever they were headed.

This anomaly was most noticeable when the bottom fell out of the oil market and prices dropped dramatically. Locally, gas prices are currently bouncing under $2.00 a gallon for regular unleaded and guess what? Crazed drivers are back on the road, tailgating and too often executing questionable, erratic, and even dangerous lane changes. Driving on public roads mixes a wide range of driving skills and reaction times. The reality is, when things go wrong you need to have an ‘out,’ and too many drivers don’t think that far ahead.

The concern is that we will forget the hard lessons learned from high fuel prices. For some, memories may be short when it comes to driving habits. But for the majority, let’s hope four bucks a gallon was a true wake-up call.