In the midst of the gloomy economic news, Rosalyn Mitchell wasn't feeling much joy. The software saleswoman was topping off her rental car at an Arco station near Los Angeles International Airport for $1.79 a gallon before returning it and flying back to Phoenix.
"It's like this momentary good feeling in the middle of a general sense that we're all doomed," she said.
Maninda Khalsa of Folsom, Calif., felt much the same way. The Khalsa household, which includes his wife, his mother and two children, wasn't planning to ease up on the new efficiency the family had achieved in running errands.
The Khalsas previously would hop into the family's 2000 Toyota Corolla to do a single errand. Now they wait until they have accumulated as many as two dozen tasks before they take a single drive to handle all of them.
"I think there is a general realization now that these low prices are not going to last," Khalsa said. "I don't see myself going back to my old habits when what we are doing now leaves money in our pockets."
In fact, there is a sense that many Americans haven't gotten over last summer's record gas prices and are feeling insecure about their financial situations.
A weekly online poll by GasBuddy.com, a website that posts gas prices spotted by a small army of members, found that about 74% of the 16,513 respondents to the current survey fear that oil prices will hit $100 a barrel again in less than two years, and 52% think it will reach that price in less than 12 months.
Another recent poll of more than 39,000 members showed that 54% were still limiting their driving and combining multiple errands into single trips. An additional 16% said they had reduced their driving speeds and weren't planning to speed up again. Only 18% said they hadn't changed their driving habits to save fuel, and 2% said they had gone back to their old ways of driving.
"Under normal market conditions, all of this effort to conserve would have been reversed, but people are not feeling secure about their jobs. They aren't feeling good about their financial situations, and they are saving all of the money they can," said James Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates, an oil trading advisory firm.
Ritterbusch said he had just spoken to a woman in Minneapolis who said she was riding her motor scooter to work instead of taking her car, in spite of the drop in gasoline prices.
"She just puts on a snowsuit and off she goes," he said. "If she's doing that in Minnesota in December, you know a lot of people are doing similar things in places that are a lot warmer."
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ron.white@latimes.com
