When President Nixon signed into law the national 55 mph speed limit it was meant with a lot of resistance.The law was meant to help ease the fuel shortages that were happening in the 70's and decrease the incidence of highway accidents. I know I have a fondness for 60mph and I enjoy that 70mph out there on hwy 81 but for the past few weeks I have been experimenting with my personal gas consumption. This is the World Wide Web so I won’t go into detail with my driving habits but I compared my normal driving habits with driving the speed limit and not going over 55.  The results have not been phenomenal but there is an improvement in my gas mileage. I drive a Jeep wrangler and around here in the mountains I have been getting 17 to 18 mpg. Slowing down has increased that to 18.5 to 19 mpg. As I said not a phenomenal improvement but that is a 5% increase in fuel economy. It takes less than 5 minutes longer to get to work and at 55mph a Wrangler is not as noisy by a long shot as at 60-70mph (interstate 81) so I save a little gas and am more relaxed when I get to work.  Will I always go 55, probably not, sometimes I will have to use the interstate ;-) but I will slow down when I can that 1 extra mile a gallon saves me about $3.00 a tank and since I fill up on average every 5 days that about $220 a year.