Gas price Web sites see skyrocketing traffic

GasBuddy.com, GasPriceWatch.com seek to serve deal-hunting drivers

By Robert Weller

The higher gasoline prices go, the more money business Web entrepreneur Jason Toewes makes.

He started an Internet site, GasBuddy.com, in 2000 to track daily gasoline prices using volunteers to e-mail what they find. "Hardly anybody ever used it," Toewes, of Brooklyn Park, Minn., recalled.

By 2004, 1 million people were visiting the site daily, although the numbers dropped when prices went down.

But at the pace hits were being recorded Thursday, the site was likely to break its record of 4 million visitors, Toewes said. As gasoline prices have risen, so have the hits on his site and another, GasPriceWatch.com.

"We have had to buy more servers and it looks like we will need more," he said.

GasBuddy.com offers information from 180 locations in the U.S. and Canada, including every major city. The site said the average price nationally in the U.S. was $3.22 for unleaded Thursday afternoon, compared with $2.86 a year ago.

Brad Proctor, founder of GasPriceWatch.com in Centerville, Ohio, said his site has added prices for ethanol, biodiesel, truck diesel and ultra-low-sulfur diesel. Hits on his site have doubled. As many eight people log in every second during peak periods, he said.

Dan Gilligan, president of the Arlington, Va.-based Petroleum Marketers Association of America, said the system is a good idea but warned consumers to remember that if they drive more than 10 miles to save a nickel, they are losing money. He also said there's no guarantee the price will be the same when they arrive.

"Many retailers are getting price increases twice a day. You may have a price increase within six hours," he said.

Other businesses are also tying technology to drivers' increasing efforts to find a deal.

A cell phone provider, Mobio Networks, launched a free service this week telling its customers the cheapest gasoline prices in their area.

BetUS.com, a sports betting Web site, was posting odds of the national average exceeding $3.50 before the end of the year.

Toewes' company, GasBuddy Organization Inc., claims to monitor 900,000 stations with several hundred thousand registered volunteers. GasPriceWatch.com says it tracks 170,000 stations.

People can send a message to gas(at)gasbuddy.com with a ZIP code in the text area, and the site will reply with the cheapest nearby stations.

The Web site also has a national map for those planning trips.

Relying on volunteers for price information does have its flaws. People occasionally make false reports of unrealistically low prices, Toewes said. "We do monitor them and we take them off and ban the person who sent it," he said.

He also gets calls from time to time from stations embarrassed to be on the list with the highest prices. "They don't want to be seen as gouging people," he said.

Supermarkets and stores such as Costco Wholesale Corp. locations often are the cheapest "because they use gas as a loss leader," Toewes said.

Calls and e-mails to the Web site lead him to believe the shock of $3 gasoline has worn off.

"People are budgeting for it," he said. "But many people will just put five bucks in until they can find a cheaper station."

Toewes said despite its increasing number of hits, the Web site has not made millionaires of him or co-founder Dustin Coupal, an ophthalmologist.

"But we do have enough advertising to sustain the operation," he said.

For Columbine survivors, anger and resignation

Those touched by Columbine violence say few lessons have been learned

Associated Press

When the topic turns to school violence, Tom Mauser usually lectures about guns.

Mauser became a national advocate of gun control after his 15-year-old son, Daniel, was among those slain in the April 20, 1999, shootings at Columbine High School.

But resignation punctuated Mauser’s remarks Monday when he learned of the killings at Virginia Tech.

“I am not going to just say gun laws are going to take care of this,” he said.

“I think my primary thought is about anger. Anger and suicide. Why do we have so many people who think they have to take others’ (lives) with them when they take their own?”

Other Columbine victims and experts on school violence expressed similar thoughts about the Virginia killings.

Brooks Brown, a former Columbine student who knew the gunmen and repeatedly tried to warn authorities about threats they had made, said the Virginia slayings didn’t surprise him.

“Once you’ve reached the point where you have lost everything it is not hard to be pushed in any direction,” he said of campus shooters.

Brian Rohrbough, whose son, Danny, 15, died at Columbine, blames school shootings on a society that tolerates, even glorifies, violence.

“We teach students that anything you want to do is up to you and you can decide whether anything is right or wrong,” he said.

Incomplete probe?
Rohrbough said the investigation of the Columbine tragedy was incomplete and left unanswered questions about the psychology of school shooters.

Authorities did learn that Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold played violent games, made violent videos at school, and were the victims of bullying because they befriended the Trench Coach Mafia, a group of students who clashed with school athletes.

Rohrbough and others have fought for public disclosure of depositions given by the teens’ parents, Wayne and Kathy Harris and Tom and Susan Klebold.

They argue the depositions could provide valuable insights into the home lives of the two teens, who killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before killing themselves.

But a federal judge two weeks ago ordered the depositions sealed for 20 years.

“That is why we were fighting so hard to get that information — because we need to know what was going on inside the heads of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold,” said Delbert Elliott, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado.

‘The main motive is revenge’
Killing others before committing suicide is not a new phenomenon, though the Virginia Tech numbers are shocking, said Tom McIntyre, coordinator of the Graduate Program in Behavior Disorders at Hunter College in New York.

“Freud said homicide is just suicide turned inside out,” said McIntyre, who began studying school violence after Columbine. “The main motive is revenge.”

In the past, a pre-suicide killing usually involved a specific target — as in the case of a husband finding his wife with a lover, Elliot said.

The victims in the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings appeared to be random targets, he said.

“I don’t know how many times we have to go through things like this before we can try to learn what is going on,” Elliot said. “I think there is an element of wanting to go out and creating a huge media effect, although that is only a part of what is going on.”