Green driving

To my big surprise (and pride) I have managed to leave the car in the driveway for the last few days. I have done the shopping on foot, walked to the school and even walked to the various weekly ballet, swimming and gym classes, but today I had to make a journey that was just not do-able by either foot or public transport. So in recognition of the fact that I am not able to completely say goodbye to the car I decided to do a bit of research on green driving.

There are plenty of websites giving hints and tips on how to be more fuel efficient , but I opted to try out some of the tips given by a couple who supposedly managed to drive round the world on only 24 tanks of fuel ( http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/drive-smart/articles/article/19/), you would think they should know a bit about the subject.

Some of the hints I thought rather pointless for the real world, e.g. 'don't drive when you are angry'. So next time I get stuck in traffic with two fighting and screaming kids in the backseat, I will just stop the car and get out - or what?


Anyway most of the tips could be split into 2 categories, the ones that dealt with maintenance of the car, and the ones that were about driving techniques. Most of the ones about maintenance I happily skipped, to be honest I barely know what a spark plug is and getting a mechanic to check all the bits and bops on a regular basis doesn't agree with the bank balance. But I decided to give the suggested driving techniques a go, after all it could make me slightly greener, save me money and it wouldn't require too much effort (thankfully they didn't suggest to push the car in order to save fuel...)

Tip no 1: Get to the highest gear as soon as possible, so change gear before reaching 2000 revs. This actually worked quite well, I found myself checking both my speed and the revs, and it definitely made me change gears a lot sooner. (Please don't tell my husband, he has been nagging me about this for years)

Tip no 2: Drive safe. What can I say - I am a woman driver, so of course I drive safe...

Tip no 3: Keep the windows closed, or you will increase the wind resistance. Well this is Scotland and the likelihood of anybody wanting to open the windows is limited, after all they probably got in the car to avoid the rain in the first place.

Tip no 4: Don't go too fast, the suggestion is to stay 5-10 mph below the limit. Now this one was a bit more tricky as I have always had a tendency towards speeding, but I managed to keep the speed down for some time (maybe I was too busy watching the rev counts?). While I was happily cruising along thinking of my fuel efficiency, I realised that in one strike I had turned myself into one of these extremely annoying drivers who drives a bit too slow and tends to hold up traffic, and who would under normal circumstances make my blood boil. Aaargh! Even worse if all the tips were to be followed then by making other drivers angry I guess I was likely to make them drive less efficiently?
But after due consideration I decided that I can only be held responsible for my own actions, and if other motorists were getting agitated by my green driving, it would be their responsibility to get out of their car until the anger had disappeared. So I stuck to my green promise and duly stayed in the slow lane behind the trucks, while trying to cheer myself up by thinking of the fuel I was saving.
And the end result? I got to my destination in good time and I don't think the journey really took me any longer than it would have normally.

So I have to conclude that greener driving is definitely possible with out too much effort. I now have no excuse for burning excess fuel - I just need to remember to bring a baseball cap in the car to hide my face from all the angry motorists...