Do yourself a favor: drive your vehicles slower to save money

William Atkins
Sunday, 06 July 2008 22:06

Opinion and Analysis

There are also other ways to decrease your fuel costs in YOUR vehicle.

Car-pooling to work is one good way. Find a fellow employee that lives close to you, and share the duty of car pooling to work each work day.

Stop accelerating and de-accelarting rapidly, what is called jackrabbit starts and stops. Such motions add to fuel consumption. Use your cruise control and remain at a steady speed.

Moving (weaving) in and out of traffic, and accelerating, also adds to your fuel inefficiencies and also causes other drivers to brake due to your actions and, thus, decrease their fuel efficiencies. Remain in a position on the road and go with the flow of traffic.

Going to work outside of peak driving times is another way to increase your mileage of your vehicle. If you can go to work before rush hour or after rush hour, you can avoid the slow stop-and-go traffic normally associated with morning and evening commutes back and forth from work.

If possible, work at home on some days if your employer allows it.

Avoid taking trips for one purpose. If you need to go to the grocery store, also fill up gas at the same time, go to the pharmacy, pick up the kids, etc. Make one long trip, rather than several short ones.

Rather than waiting at the drive-through at your local fast-food place, park your car and walk inside the store. You’ll get some exercise and save gas.

If you know you’ll be idling the engine for more than one minute, turn off the engine. You’re wasting gas.

When driving up to Wal-mart, or other retail stores, find the first parking space and use it. Stop driving around for minutes finding the closest parking space, or waiting for someone to pull out of a space. It’s another good way to get some exercise and save money on gas.

Probably the best way to add miles to your driving is to obey all traffic laws. They are there to keep you safe, and also to improve your gas mileage.

One way or the other, we all will be altering our lives due to the oil crisis. We can do it based on government directives or we can do it voluntarily. There are many effective ways that YOU—individually—can save your expenses related to oil.

Check out the Web and find out for yourself how to save energy costs—in your car, at home, and all around your world. I did a Google search on “Save Fuel Costs” and found

Bankrate.com: “16 ways to save on fuel”

ConsumerEnergyCenter.org: “10 Ways to Reduce Your Fuel Costs, NOW!”

FuelEconomy.gov: “Save Money

TopUpFuel.com: “TopUpFuel”

You can change your little part of the gas/oil-consuming world. If we all do it, we can help to alleviate the global oil crisis. No, we can’t solve it. Long-term improvements need to be made. But, you can do something NOW to help yourselves out.