Want to know how speeding affects your fuel efficiency? Want to know how to identify this behavior?
Watch out for maintained high speed vs. infrequent high speed.
When looking at the Fleet Red Flag Report, the one thing to watch for is maintained speed. This report shows a list of every time a vehicle was speeding, the posted speed in comparison to theirs, and the address being passed.
To identify maintained speed, you’ll want to look at the time stamps. The FleetMatics gps tracking system refreshes at a 90 second rate, so if the high speed is maintained, it will reflect this in the time stamps, showing the speeding over a prolonged period of time. Other vehicles will show spaced out time stamps, with hours in between, and no maintained period of time.
When you maintain a high speed over a long distance, you waste more fuel than a driver who accelerates once in a while to pass someone or to get onto a highway.
As far as the impact of maintained speed, please see below for a quote from the U.S. Department of Energy.
“Speeding can lower your gas mileage by 33 percent at highway speeds and by 5 percent around town… You can assume that each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.31 per gallon for gas.” – U.S. Department of Energy / www.fueleconomy.gov
Just think of all the money you would save in a month if you were able to decrease your driver’s speed by a mere 5 mph!