| Penguin |
01-07-2011 11:35 PM |
A lot depends on driving style and location, including braking and highway vs. city. When I am traveling on a long interstate trip, I might not use my brakes for 300 miles at a time, as contrasted to the daily commute I use to do during rush hour where at least mild braking was required about once a minute. I'm not very aggressive most of the time and am currently at 21K with my Brdgestones. Measuring the tread, it looks like I might get 30K out of them (the less tread there is left, the slower the wear rate becomes).
But then on my old Explorer I got 86K out of the original Firestones, and didn't need brake pads until around 85K. My 2005 Focus is still on it's original brake pads and shoes at 65K. I'm a mild braker, and look ahead a lot... I'm always surprised how many drivers will continuing accelerating when the next light turns red, only to brake hard when they are a couple of hundred feet from the light that just turned red. It seems a lot of drivers only react to the bumper and brake lights of the vehicle immediately ahead of them. That's hard on brakes and fuel economy. Not that I'm against the spirited driving, but shooting from one stop light to another using hard acceleration and hard braking, in my experience, doesn't get you there any faster...
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