i drive an 08 is 250 and on the display console my average speed seems to be wrong.. is it just me or others have the same problem? i am going about 60 to 70 and it shows me moving in about 50s.

 

ChickenAss, this is the overall average speed of your entire trip, not just what you are doing at the particular moment.

 

lol i thought chickenass was an insult, until i looked at his username

 

Are you going 60 to 70 in the city?????? Yikes!!!!

 

Gotta be one of the best names on CL, I laugh whenever I see a ChickenAss post!

 

2nd ^^^^

 

Cool name, no one will ever mix u up with anyone else! 2 thumbs up ChickenAss!!

 

+1 very funny and clever!

 

lol thanks guys, been puttin quite a few miles =[ i have about 780 already and i picked up the car a month ago!

 

The average speed is simply the distance driven since the car was started up divided by the time since it was started. When I drive to work in the morning, I find it difficult to average even 30 MPH even though I reach 80+ MPH a couple times.

 

Yup, people need to think about weighted averages. If you leave your car at a stop for 1 minute, then zoom up to 60 MPH (ignoring the 15 seconds or so it takes to get up to speed), then go for another minute, you are only averaging 30MPH. You go for another minute, and you're up to 40, even though you felt like you got a good stretch of 60 MPH in there...

You can verify your avg speed simply by tracking how many miles your trip was and divide that by the time it took, from the time the engine is on to the second before you turn your engine off.

 

Our speedometers are off a little (I think they read faster than we're really going). I wonder if it would be an accurate way to gauge just how off they are, would be to set the cruise control to, say, 60 mph, and then reset the avg speed while driving, and see if the number changes any after about 3 or 4 minutes. The longer you drove, the more accurate the avg speed reading (theoretically, anyway). Then, would the percentage error apply to all speeds, or not?

 

You know I found that kind of interesting one time also. Because I'm usually going 60MPH(the fastest legal speed limit here) and when I fly by someone, I'm just thinking their just driving slow. But now.....I even got more curious that day because I was flying by everyone and my speedometer still says its going 60MPH. So I've seen a post a while back about some guy noticing his RPM would also stay stuck at 4k and not move for a couple of seconds even i he took his foot off the pedal. So for me, I just wanted to try it also to see if the speedometer might just be stuck, but no. It slowed down with no problems. So basically, I'm just curious also if the speedometer is just reading faster then it actually is going.

 

all spedometers have a margin of error.... manufacturers calibrate them to be a little over than a little less... for obvious reason...

 

So when you get clocked by a Cop and they pull you over and say, "Do you know how fast you was going?" You can give them and honest answer because if you are driving in speed limits(as your car shows) you wouldn't be hiding anything. So who would the Cop blame?!(Probably wouldn't believe the driver anyway)

I'm not sure also though, because sometimes or some days when I do drive 60mph I seem to be going slower then what it was before.