We’re all over it when the gas prices are rising. How about when they’re falling like a lead balloon? Gas on my street is $2.52 this morning.
From the Raleigh News & Observer:
Gas prices are falling faster than Isaac Newton’s apple, and even faster than the Dow Jones average.
Times are bad, but this is good.
Triangle drivers paid $42.51 for a 15-gallon fill-up Monday (at an average $2.834 a gallon for self-service regular). That’s the cheapest gas we’ve seen since last Halloween.
It’s a drop of $16 per tankful in the past month, and $5.35 in the past week. At this rate, that price will lose another $2 or $3 by Friday, when Halloween rolls around again.
We’re talking real money here.
Sure, we know that what comes down must go up again. But not yet — given the stunning decline in oil prices to $63 a barrel Monday. Not yet.
Cheaper gas is not the only good news to spring from the continuing global economic shrinkage.
We Americans began cutting back on our driving last fall — and we turned more to public transit — when gas prices were shooting toward the $4 mark. In August alone, Americans drove 15 billion miles less, or 5.6 percent, than during the same month in 2007, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
Gas prices have fallen by more than $1 since then, but our overall financial problems are worse. So economists say we’re still driving less.
Until prosperity returns, we can take cheer in the benefits of reduced driving: cleaner air, fewer traffic jams on Interstate 40, and fewer deadly crashes on our streets and highways.
State troopers report a 17 percent decline in North Carolina highway fatalities so far this year — 190 fewer crash deaths than during the same period in 2007.