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The Fuel Cost of Obesity
thecarchik writes "America loves to complain about gas mileage and the cost of gasoline. As it turns out, part of the problem is us. How much does it really matter? A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a 1.1 percent increase in self-reported obesity, which translates into extra weight that your vehicle has to haul around. The study estimates that 1 billion extra gallons of fuel were needed to compensate for passenger weight gained between 1960 and 2002."
One key finding was that almost 1 billion gallons of gasoline per year can be attributed to passenger weight gain in non-commercial vehicles between 1960 and 2002--this translates to .7 percent of the total fuel used by passenger vehicles annually.
So they found it had nearly nothing to do with it. Spiffy.
offsetting this by the fuel savings coming from reduced family size. People simply have fewer children on average than they used to.
Wow you really can make numbers say anything you want. Remember that thanks to all the SUV's, the weight of the average car has increased since the 60's, not decreased as you would expect from losing the chassis and moving to a monocoque design.
But hey, let's bash fat people. How about that fat tax?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Although 1B gals sounds like a lot, consider that Wiki says the US alone used 138B of gas in 2006. So saving 1B gals over the course of 20 years globally is a relative drop in the bucket.
What someone needs to do is track the relative fuel cost based on the weight and number of vehicles over the years, and it should be come apparent that we should be driving motorcycles and lightweight double passenger cars rather than trying to wrap our minds about how human weight affects oil consumption.
"Rule 1: Cardio. When the zombie outbreak first hit, the first to go, for obvious reasons... were the fatties."
ridin' Obese; they hatin'.
... but not quite enough. A typical car weighs 3000lbs. The article (ok, the summary -- I didn't read the article) doesn't say what the weight gain is, but let's assume the difference between "obese" and "not obese" is 30lbs. A typical car has a drag coefficient of .4. And we're driving 45mph. There's also an unknown amount of parasitic drag in the drivetrain.
.7% is pretty high.
The equation
Ok, I don't have the time or inclination to figure this out. But I bet
Whale
Less than what the US could save by making sure their tires are properly inflated (1.25 billion). let alone what we could save by cleaning out our trunks, removing our winter bags of sand, or other weight just sitting around in the car. Both are much easier than getting people to lose weight, but I doubt if they are getting done. Good luck on getting people to stop being obese to save an non-detectable part of their gas bill. For that matter, it would probably be easier just to appeal to get them to keep from diving as much (which if they walk or bike would also cut into the obese issue).
Remember, if you rub your food on a piece of paper and it turns transparent? It's your window to success!
I know something that America loves to complain about more than fuel prices. Fat Americans. Get over yourself.
Do you have any idea how much carbon I've sequestered in fat? Get off my roly poly back.
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Yep, this matters. 1.25871×10^11 Gal Used.
America has one of the cheapest fuel prices in the world. Stop complaining. it's about 6-7$ a gallon here.
Reading all these posts is making me hungry. Someone pass me another bag of cheetos and a coke.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
This sounds like a perfect argument for regenerative braking... The easy conclusion: fat people should all drive hybrids because they store more kinetic energy
Adding 42 years worth of data results in big number!
The cost of (relatively) cheap gasoline? War, war, and more war. That cheap gasoline is only cheap because we're willing to bankrupt ourselves to get it.
-kgj
In the grand scope of things, 1B gallons over that time span is piss in the ocean.
1B gallons / 31 gallons per barrel = 32,258,064.5 barrels. Thats less than the US consumes in 2 days.
The game.
We can melt down all the fatties and use them as bio-diesel.
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
Airlines could do a lot to reduce carbon emissions, and also encourage better public health, by requiring passengers at checkin to stand on a large weighing platform along with their bags, and pay for the total weight. I strenuously object to subsidising the fares of obese people.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
1 billion gallons / 150,000,000 (guesstimate of the average population of the US over the 42 years) / 42 years /365 days = .000438 gallons per person per day.
Because the government subsidizes corn, so it's cheaper to use than cane/beat sugar... I'm sure there's more than enough politics behind it (and now a national dependence) that it's not going to go away anytime soon.
We've all been forced(?) into consuming HFCS in just about everything from soft drinks to breads. Recently McDs has been selling sweet tea with sugar in it and I've found that if I drink one without eating I tend to get what I can only describe as light headed and I have to eat something to calm it down. I'm sure I have diabetes creeping up on me though. Of course, that's a lot of sugar for one drink so I don't have them often. ;)
Enjoy what you have!
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Did they compare the Fat guy in his 40's who doesn;t go out much to the skinny d-bag jock type that is always driving out to bars three or more times a week to pick up women?
The Study is flawed because it doesn't take to effect that the fat people don't go out driving as much as thin socially active people.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Fuel economy has done well, not as good as it might have, but gasoline engine improvements are measured in percents.
When you start with an inefficient process your not going to get remarkable numbers without some major innovation.
Direct injection, turbo charging, start/stop, and other technologies are helping. Yet cars are heavier now because of all the creature comforts we desire and all the government regulations demanding the vehicles transmit the minimal amount of energy to the occupants in a crash.
Crashes that would have killed everyone in your example vehicles and left a vehicle barely recognizable now leave occupants nearly untouched and with some vehicles actually repairable.
Crashes that could not be avoided in your cars these days can be. Situations that were dangerous to drive in are very much less so.
No cars have come far, the race between efficiency and safety is erring to the side of safety.
While people throw out the bogeymen of SUVs and the like they ignore the fact that the majority of sedans get crap mileage as well.
Old beetles usually did 28 to 32 on the highway, took almost twenty seconds to reach 60. You could probably crash an infinite number of them into a new beetle before the new one was not drivable. You of course would have a lot of scrap old beetles laying around afterward.
Taking the mileage out of context does not make your argument better except at a cursory glance.
Frankly I would not dare drive most older cars everyday. Their brakes were horrid and their suspensions not much better.
As for the carb versus fuel injection comparison, get real. What you can do with direct injection shames a carb in both efficiency and pollution.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Well, if you ride bicycle more, not only would you reduce the gas consumption by not riding a car, but you would also loose weight and spend less fuel when you actually needed to ride the car. Perhaps you could start doing that a bit. I remember Washington and NY where quite flat cities from when I was there, so it wouldn't be difficult.