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Individual_Ad2579 t1_ires3qy wrote

Man I hope they didn’t do that on highways

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[deleted] t1_ires7yf wrote

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Individual_Ad2579 t1_iretsny wrote

Haha could you imagine the road rage these days if we all did 35mph on the freeway?

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insiderRaiding t1_irexhn3 wrote

Most of the interstate freeway system wasn't built until the 50s. The rural highways in the article were often 1 lane roads in each direction. People in the 40s didn't generally choose to live so far from their workplaces as we do today.

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Individual_Ad2579 t1_ireyucn wrote

It’s a good thing I mentioned “these days” then

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Smooth-Dig2250 t1_irfgzxo wrote

The implication is that the interstate freeway system would have a higher mph rating. Which, it got, @ 55mph as the "most efficient speed". You're comparing two situations that are dissimilar in the important aspect.

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Individual_Ad2579 t1_irfos9x wrote

That’s why I used the word “imagine” and “these days” it was a hypothetical situation on how it would be portrayed these days IF they made it mandatory for 35 mph on the freeway

Edit: don’t understand the downvotes on what was clearly stated in the comment I had posted. Some salty ass people I guess. Or just Reddit culture to downvote anything they see downvoted.

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AZymph t1_ireuol1 wrote

I can't imagine having to go that slow for any serious length work commute let alone full highway travel. Trying to visit family would have been a nightmare

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[deleted] t1_irex7zr wrote

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BanzaiTree t1_irf16ef wrote

They were, they simply didn’t travel as far as we commonly do today.

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[deleted] t1_irg8hm7 wrote

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madsd12 t1_irg2gfi wrote

In the early to mid 40´s, germany had alot of tourists.

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gramathy t1_irggu8z wrote

>I can't imagine having to go that slow for any serious length work commute

are you kidding, this is an upgrade in LA and the bay area

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ShalmaneserIII t1_irget8i wrote

That works. Cutting out long discretionary trips seems like part of the plan.

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Zealousideal_Role189 t1_irh9ohq wrote

I can’t imagine any sort of voluntary participation thing that we could get even a third of the country to reliably do. Anything coming from the top-down automatically loses half of the population.

Sometimes I think about everything we use social security numbers for and all the different uses they have in a modern technology-driven society. Can you imagine if the federal government told the citizens of today that they were going to assign everyone a number to help keep track of them? I don’t think it would go over smoothly.

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BanzaiTree t1_irf12t5 wrote

This was before the freeway system and the concept of “highway” was a lot more primitive than what we have today. Long distance travel via automobile was also vastly less common vs. train.

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AudibleNod t1_irf32tf wrote

At the start of WWII, Route 66 was about 15 years old. And it was leisurely and romantic as the song implies. Road trips in those days was one part Griswold Vacation, one part Conestoga wagon train, one part diarrhea apocalypse from all the roadside diners.

My Grandma talked about a 6 day road trip from Denver to Salt Lake City in the middle of the war. She made it seem like half the time they were waiting for cattle to move.

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zuxtron t1_irexp9x wrote

Because the title forgot to mention it, the nation in which this happened is the USA. Pretty important detail to leave out.

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[deleted] t1_irey2n2 wrote

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Slurms_McKensei t1_irfhejh wrote

Hey you also forgot to mention that the US was founded in 1776, the list of founding fathers, the various religious sects at play within the states in question, and the impact those believes had when mingled with our economy in order to form a practice conveniently unaligned from our new enemies.

Everyone knows you've gotta invent (and show your math for) the wheel to make a reddit post. /s (Sorry for your downvotes.)

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Intelligentseal t1_irfnee4 wrote

People in this country can't even be asked to wear a mask inside of walmart....could you imagine if this was re-instated today?

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El-Gatoe t1_irfpgqn wrote

Yea I’m sure the outcome would be what happened back then too, a lot of tickets were handed out and the department made a pretty penny.

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pineappleshnapps t1_irh4yg8 wrote

I think whatever modern measures people were asked to put up with they would, for a war of that magnitude.

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BABA_Kurland t1_irgdvjy wrote

Why would it be reinstated today? Vehicles are much more efficient at high way speeds than 35.

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Camero466 t1_iriv4ky wrote

I wonder, would this actually save on gas? Slower does mean more time to get to a place—had they figured out this was the most gas-efficient speed?

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Numerous_Oils t1_irl56nd wrote

Air resistance ruins gas efficiency past 55 mph, it worsens quickly any higher.

Highway speed is better MPG due to (as I recall) other cars already cutting that air for you, essentially paving a less resistant path through the air, making that travel at higher speeds more efficient. So it's not so much the speed, but cars in front of you cutting currents through it to make it easier.

In general, the lower the speed, the less air resistance, the greater the efficiency.

At really low speeds, like 5 mph or whatever, you're burning more gas than you're using to move the car, energy wasted. 35 mph is the first generalized "sweet spot" and the next is 55 mph.

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Flaxmoore t1_irne0f6 wrote

And a lot of cars in that era had terrible drag coefficients- even the fairly sleek Beetle.

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Numerous_Oils t1_irnhlmh wrote

The fact that modern cars aren't more thoroughly streamlined is still silly to me.

Give me a giant pill, man. Screw the aesthetics.

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Flaxmoore t1_irnrf9d wrote

And it takes very little to change the efficiency.

I had a car bra for my 3 series- E36, the last of the boxier models- and with nothing more than smoothing out the bumper/fender transition and adding a couple small wedges to direct air a little I got a full mile per gallon highway improvement.

That's over a full summer of testing, with the same drives done over 50 times. Held up nicely- 30mpg highway without it, 31 with.

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Mission_Bee7894 t1_irj6z4y wrote

In which nation? You seem to not have mentioned.

Presumably the one nation on Earth that doesn't think it has to specify.

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Deathbyhours t1_itsj1ke wrote

It probably wasn’t that difficult to enforce. New tires were good for only 12,000 miles, and that was if you took care of them, and each registered car was allowed four for the duration of the war. There were no newly manufactured automobiles for the duration except those ordered by the military, and those were all of the same models that had been introduced in 1941. Of course, gas was severely rationed as well, despite the fact that the US was the world’s largest producer of petroleum, but restricting gasoline made tires last longer, and rubber was the chokepoint.

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Glacial_Self t1_irgamy7 wrote

And today you'd have half the country intentionally hitting 100mph everywhere they drove just to "stick it to Biden's commie speed limit"

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contemptious t1_irgw7sx wrote

Yep. We've already seen how that set responds to calls for self sacrifice

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