The pavement deflection research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSH) was the focus of  "Study Finds $15 Billion in Annual Fuel Savings From Building Roads With Harder Surfaces" in the March 11 issue of Transport Topics. The article reports that although the effect of deflection is very slight for individual vehicles, the aggregate effect on the entire road network can be significant, with trucks having notably larger changes in fuel consumption than passenger cars because of their heavier weights.

"We’re wasting fuel unnecessarily because pavement design has been based solely on minimizing initial costs more than performance," Mehdi Akbarian, an MIT doctorate student and co-author of the study said in the article. "Better pavement design over a lifetime would save much more money in fuel costs than the initial cost of improvements. And the state departments of transportation would save money while reducing their environmental footprint over time because the roads wouldn’t deteriorate as quickly."