It's an interesting question, all right: Just how far will your car continue to cruise after the gas-tank warning light comes on?
It was an interesting question back in June when we profiled the debut of a Web site called Tank on Empty that has dedicated itself to collecting hard data and harrowing tales from motorists who push their vehicles to the brink and beyond.
And it will be an interesting question tomorrow night when John Stossel and ABC's "20/20" air an interview with Tank on Empty founder Justin Davis, a 24-year-old Web developer whose day job involves working on PeakFlow X, enterprise network visibility software from Arbor Networks. As you can read on Stossel's blog and see in this promotional video, the hard-bitten newsman - often bitten by media critics - has also ripped a page from a memorable Seinfeld episode called "The Dealership" to help illustrate the story.
(Update June 2, 2008: "Tank" still running full-speed.)
The Tank on Empty idea is simple enough: The site invites motorists to ignore the fuel-warning light for as long as they're comfortable, note the number of miles they drive before refueling, and input the data online. For example, 30 of my fellow Toyota Corolla owners report having driven an average of 52 miles after the light, with one fearless soul checking in at an astounding 99 miles (of course, there's no way to verify these claims).
I caught up with Tank on Empty's Davis via e-mail this morning, and, as might be expected, he's bracing his site for what will likely be a significant traffic spike during and after the airing of his star turn on "20/20."
"I'm as ready as I'll ever be for the traffic," he says. "I'm going to be caching about 95% of the site's views, and updating the cache every few minutes as traffic permits. I'm a bit curious myself as to what will happen ... for all I know, my provider will think it's a DDoS and take me down themselves :-)." (More on his prep in update below.)
What will also be interesting is to see if Stossel ventures into the controversial aspects of this search for maximum miles: namely, that running your tank dry is reportedly a bad idea from the standpoint of proper car care (not that I'd know). That original Buzzblog post in June elicited a number of such warnings.
"It probably isn't a great idea to run your tank dry - I think they'll discuss it on the 20/20 episode - but by some reports it's not as bad as it used to be," says Davis, who oddly enough has yet to test the riding-on-fumes limit for his own vehicle. "It will probably make your fuel pump warmer than it should be, which can contribute to shortened life."
So far, about 1,000 car owners have thrown caution to the wind and registered reports with Tank on Empty, with a good number having checked in since "20/20" began promoting tomorrow's show. Davis is expecting "a huge explosion" of contributors beginning tomorrow night.
Will be interesting to see how the site holds up.
Oh, and in related news, John Stossel is someone's favorite reporter. Go figure.
(Update: I asked Davis to elaborate on his preparations for the traffic spike; he says: "Normally when you visit a Tank on Empty page about a given car, it calculates the stats by querying a database backend and adding, subtracting, etc. This puts my database as a huge bottleneck (this is all run on a VPS). This normally runs through a python backend, but on Friday I'll cache up the most viewed pages (index, findcar, viewcars) and serve them statically. Based on some tests I've run, it'll increase the page-serve rate by about a factor of 25 or so.
"Since I really only expect a one-time hit, I haven't done a lot of changes to architecture (my 'caching' system is just a script that wgets the pages and then serves the html statically through lighttpd). Since I'm not sure what the load will be like (maybe the server will be running 100% load? 50%?), I'm going to update the cache manually (re-run the caching script) as opposed to setting up a cron job, based on traffic and how busy the server is.)
Welcome regulars and passersby. Here are a few more recent Buzzblog items. And, if you'd like to receive Buzzblog via e-mail newsletter, here's where to sign up.
This Year's 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries.
Attrition.org nails another nitwit ... this time with Monty Python's Holy Grail.
"I have a lost laptop horror story for you."
Kellogg's and LEGO team up to teach kids to choke.
Court rejects music industry's wild promo CD copyright claim.
Can early tornado warnings create Darwin Award winners?
The REAL sticking point between Microsoft and Yahoo!
Times breaks out xkcd-to-English translator.
Top 10 Buzzblog posts for '07: Verizon's there, of course, along with Gates, Wikipedia and the guy who lost a girlfriend to Blackberry's blackout.
Advertisement: |
The Leader in Network Knowledge
Silliness
The real question is, can or should Justin Davis feel remorse when an inattentive mom smacks into the back of another vehicle killing her kids?
I've seen plenty of knuckleheads changing tires in driving lanes, and plenty of minor fender benders taking up two lanes, when they should pull to the side. These types of mistakes kill people.
Davis has the right idea, but his method just encourages more dead steel and rubber on the highways, just waiting for a crash.
The point is valid, but is it really worth the ineviatable life, maybe even the lives of kids?
Classic case of idealism gone wrong. I'd hate to be Davis when his traffic report tells him a three year-old died smacking into a car with an empty tank.
Bill
Get a grip, Bill
Or are you one of those people who just never goes outside, because, well, that's where danger lurks? Dead children? Geesh.
Huh.
Must be a real slow news month. That's one of the dumbest things to do a story on that I've ever heard of!
However, I found out many years ago that my Toyota would go at least 90 miles on the expressway once the light turns on. Stopping at that point, the supposed 14.5 gal tank took 14.0 gallons to fill...
However, that was pre 10% ethanol gas. I get about 3mpg less on the 10% ethanol stuff, so I don't know that I'd get 90 miles if I tried it today...
Allowing your vehicle to run
Allowing your vehicle to run out of fuel completely while driving is bad for the fuel injectors. They are cooled by the fuel passing through them, and damage may occur if they run dry and continue to operate on numerous occasions. Also, in cold weather areas the chance of getting condensation (water) in your fuel increases drastically on an empty tank. All around, it is not a good idea to operate a vehicle on empty to see how far it will travel. Power assisted braking and steering are also dependent on the vehicle's engine running on most vehicles for operation, and if you are cruising down the freeway and run out of gas, you may cause an accident.
Mark D. Brush
Detroit, Michigan
ASE Certified Automotive Technician and State of Michigan Master Auto Mechanic with over 15 years of career level automotive service industry experience.
Oh, and I forgot another
Oh, and I forgot another important aspect of this article, a nearly empty fuel tank carries a greater chance of explosion. How, you might ask?? Well, the fuel vapors of gasoline are more volatile and more flammable than the liquid themselves. Hence the signs these days at filling stations telling you not to return to your vehicle while re-fueling, as the static electricity generated while entering and exiting the vehicle has been known to ignite gasoline vapors. If you were to ever get something welded underneath your car near the fuel tank, the welder may ask that you fill the fuel tank all the way up to reduce the risk of a fire/explosion hazard. I've actually seen people put out a lit cigarette in gasoline before (not a good idea to try). Strange but true.
- Mark D. Brush
Also not a good idea for Prius owners
Because you'll wear down the battery too much, which could damage the thing.
In terms of the Web-site backend, however, that's cool that he's thinking in terms of caching and static pages, since dynamic sites don't hold up at all well under heavy loads without some attention to such things (such as, oh, the software that powers this page).