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Out on Britain's motorways, traffic speeds seem to be creeping up in inverse proportion to the prices displayed on petrol station pole signs.
This is a purely unscientific observation from a casual observer of the behaviour of homo automobilius, but it does appear that average speeds in the motorway fracas have returned to "normal" now that petrol has dipped back below £1 per litre.
Cruising at the legal limit not so long ago, you could keep the same company for miles and suffer only occasional turbulence from passing white vans whose drivers seem to be impervious to speed restrictions. Almost everyone seemed to be trying to eke out a few extra mpg to offset the sudden spike in petrol costs.
It hasn't taken long to reverse the process and get everyone on the motorway partying like it's 1999 (when petrol was only 60p per litre, incidentally). Clearly, one of the many things they still don't teach people at driving school is that atmospheric drag on a vehicle increases by the square of its velocity.
In other words, if your drivers react to a 10% fall in fuel prices by driving 10% faster, they will end up burning more cash because the extra juice they use outweighs the saving at the pumps.
This is a variant of Jevons' law, which says that efficiency savings tend to be swallowed up by increases in usage. In this case, fuel is cheaper but drivers respond by going further or faster on the same amount of money instead of taking the chance to keep their speed down in order to line their pockets (or their employer's balance sheet).
It is easy to assume that this return to "normal" traffic speeds won't make a measurable difference to operating costs. However, evidence has emerged from a perhaps unexpected quarter that it will. Two credit hire companies have issued profit warnings, blaming lower speeds and traffic for a drop in crashes and therefore weaker demand for their services.
Presumably, we will soon be hearing similar reports from body shops. Maybe motor insurance premiums will come down too (well, we can all dream).
My point is that the "abnormal" conditions in the summer resulted in at least a few welcome outcomes for some fleets - lower emissions, higher fuel efficiency, fewer accidents, lower repair costs and reduced risks. Granted, the extremely high cost of fuel largely wiped out the financial gains but what's important is that those savings are still there for the taking provided that drivers can be persuaded to carry on driving efficiently.
In a recession, fleets and businesses face a considerably tougher challenge than the one posed by the relatively short-lived fuel price shock of Summer '08. Employers took the rough when fuel costs were going through the roof. Can they afford to let their drivers enjoy the smooth now that pump prices are coming down again?
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