My tires tend to average half the rated mileage and that's not from peeling out. Conversely, I tend to beat the EPA rated highway mileage in a combined cycle averaged over a tank.
I was going to leave it at that, but I thought I'd add this. It's kind of long.
When I had PTSD and things fell apart, I considered being a smuggler or getting into high end security driving. I never cared much about racing for myself (except maybe rally as it's more applicable to real world driving than any track stuff), so I concentrated on evasion and tracking. About the only thing I haven't been able to practice is road block ramming. With a lack of motivation and a little luck in finding just acceptable enough legal work, I didn't pursue that career line (I wrote books about it instead). However, one of the best days of my life was finally being able to validate some of what I learned. After getting fired for storing first said book on my work hard drive two months before the company was set to move to Malaysia (same job where I was called into HR for scaring people while pulling J turns when leaving the parking lot every day even though I never came remotely close to anyone), they sent me a relatively huge severance check via Fed-Ex that even included paying me up until the date my whole department was supposed to be let go. It was late in the day, so I decided I'd deposit it the next day. Driving to the credit union, I see a Honda Accord behind me with a 3-digit license plate—7N1—that rings a bell for me, but I can't recall how. OK, PTSD means hyper vigilance and most of the time I think I'm being followed, it turns out to be nothing. Leave the CU and get on the highway. Two cars back: Honda Accord 7N1. Hmm. Late morning, no traffic, connecting ramp coming up to turn around, so let's see how fast he can take it. Not as fast as me. From the far side of a tractor trailer on the other route, I finally catch the Honda plowing its way onto the highway followed a little back by an X-Terra with stickers all over the wind deflector for the roof rack. He doesn't notice me and passes and I decide to follow him from a few cars back. So, now I know I'm being followed. Before confirmation, I was worried it was Feds as my books are about a smuggler for a criminal organization and it's shortly after 9-11 and everyone could be a terrorist, blah, blah, blah, but now I figure if this doofus is a fed, we're royally screwed, so he must be corporate security (huge parent company). I finally realize that's why the car rang a bell—I had seen it the day they fired a shipping and receiving guy who threatened to beat the bag out of one of the managers in the parking lot (the manager was a real weasel who copped a plea with the SEC in a stock fraud scam and got away scott free while upper management went to jail, so I would have liked to have seen that. Stupid security!). Back on that very stupid security (Remember, they fired me for the book—which they read—whose main protagonist is a weapons transporter for a criminal organization and they send two dolts to follow me?! It was plain insulting. Wait, did I say two dolts?), I decide to mess with him now that I'm not worrying about actual trouble. The highway has an offramp-onramp parallel road to get to/from an industrial park and I often use it to bypass the traffic bottleneck that backs up on the main route. I do that and pass him, stuck behind slower cars on the main highway. I beep and wave as I go by, but I'm not sure if he notices. I rejoin the highway ahead of him and he maneuvers through the cars to get behind me. I take another exit a little ways down onto a 2-lane and I pull to the right and do 20 mph in a 40, forcing him to either pass or really give himself away. I count on pride thinking he doesn't know I've figured him out and, sure enough, he goes around me after about a half mile, but I notice something else: a black X-Terra with stickers on the wind deflector behind me. NO WAY! They have two guys following me! I'm so excited by this that my brain has an erection that could embarrass Bezos' rocket. Anyway, cutting this down to the highlights partly because I forget the order of how it all happened as this was almost 20 years ago, I make the Honda follow me the wrong way up a short one-way, drive into the Witch City and do a circle of the Common with the Nissan behind me (Honda lost by then). By the third turn, the X-Terra figures out I suspect him, too, and he stops . . . he just stops in the middle of the street instead of taking the last right turn. Laughing like a maniac, I floor it and go back halfway around in the general direction of my apartment knowing he can't see me by then and figuring he'll assume I'm going back there and will take the main road to meet me there while I'll take a side street that goes the same way and wait so I can pull out behind him. It would have worked were it not for a big truck coming down the street I was now blocking and I hate to be rude like that. Oh well, let's jump forward.
Home for a few hours, I go outside of my top-of the-hill apartment to see the Honda at the bottom of the hill slinking into the perpendicular dead end street at the end. He must see me standing there because he accelerates into the dead end street and I jump over my hood like Dukes of Hazard and race down the hill as he comes booting out of the side street. I get to the end and I see him backing behind the abandoned hut of an old superfund site (which is now overpriced condos I don't know which overpriced condos I'd choose to live in if forced—former superfund site or haunted former Danvers State Hospital where they tortured psychiatric patients) and I drive up and pull in next to him, getting within inches of his door and blocking him from being able to do anything. I put my window down and tell him I'm visiting my mother and if he doesn't know where that is, he won't find it trying to follow me, so he might as well just hang out for a few hours until I get back. He pretends to read the paper. Dude, who are you fooling? If you were a regular guy, you'd look at me, like WTF, not just ignore me and hope I go away like some bad advice on dealing with bullies! He doesn't follow.
Back home a little later because a friend was picking me up so she can drop her Jeep off at a mechanic (where else?) and pick up a loaner from a guy and she wants me along just in case. I tell her the story and I can tell she just thinks I'm paranoid. Coming back to drop me off, we see 7N1 sitting under a street light about a block from my apartment. From his distance over the crest of the hill, he never saw me leave with her and, of course, my car never moved. She sees him and realizes I wasn't making it up and we laugh. Should I put a potato in his exhaust? A banana? Does that even work? We discuss this briefly before she leaves. I have no potatoes or bananas at home (and Myth Busters later disproved that to little surprise to me), but I ride past on my bike to scout him out—maybe I can loosen a valve stem or two on him—but he's too far from anything I could use as cover to crawl up to him, anyway. Eh, if he's there the next day, I'll either have a pizza delivered to him or call the police and say I feel threatened. Next day, he was gone. I guess they figured if I was some kind of a threat, I would have done something. Ah, I feel exhilarated just writing this down again. Oi, I am so boring now.
. That was in my younger days. I now drive the speed limit or at least I stay with the general flow of traffic. I found out when you drive leisurely on the freeway and let the packs of crazy, tailgating speeders fly by you arrive at your destination without being all jittery and stressed out. I give them lots of room so when the poop hits the fan I won't be anywhere near the pileup. I just hang in the right lane and listen to my music. I also get a kick out of the people who fly by me as I am coasting into a red light only to get to the red light first and slam on the brakes. Then when the light changes they'll often sit there looking at the phone.
