Since it's impossible to legislate driving habits...
 

I've figured out a way that would definitely help make people better drivers for FE.

Speed limits are useless, and upping enforcement makes fewer cops for helping with victims of crime.

I've also been one to abhor the idea of additional legislation, one to believe as much as possible in freedom of choice for everyone.

But, there is a very simple little thing that can be mandated in all cars. It would be neither expensive to add nor difficult to add, so there is no reason for the car companies to complain.

A mandated instant FE gauge, that cannot be changed to any other display.

If right in their line of sight there was a display showing exactly how much gas stomping the petal or speeding used, I'm betting a lot of people would start to drive in a lot more docile, controlled manners.

I got the idea from a friend's girlfriend, who has a jeep liberty. Whenever we switch the display to show instant FE, she gets quite upset, as she doesn't want to know how wasteful her driving is. "I don't want to think about that!" And she promptly switches it back to the compass.

But if it were right there, unable to be turned off, everyone who drove a new car would have to think about that.

Good idea, but what's to prevent your poster child there from duct taping over it?

Nothing, really, except they wouldn't want duct tape on their shiny new car interior. Or if you had it like many guage clusters are (recessed behind a sheet of glass/plastic), then putting a piece of duct tape on the surface would do little good.

It's something that's less to turn them into an instant FE monitoring hypermiler, and more just something to jolt them into awake of how wasteful their driving habits are.

Wife and I took a drive yesterday in her Jeep Liberty to pick up some hand held CBs for our off-roading trip this weekend. We were in a hurry to get there so she wouldn't let me plug in the ScanGauge that I received that day on the way there. Before we came back, I plugged it in displaying her corrected for big tires MPH, Current MPG, Trip Average MPG, and Tank Average MPG. At first she said she wasn't interested, but after a while I noticed her glancing at it and she was neutral coasting more than she usually does. When the Trip AVG hit 20 MPG she made sure to mention it cause I like to tell her that Green gets better mileage for our long trips that don't require 4-Lo.

As I mentioned in another thread where this idea was proposed...while I'm usually against legislation for stuff like this, I like this particular idea. It's pretty harmless and I think it would really have an effect.

You can't stop the few people who really want to be jerks, but it would really help a lot of apathetic people.

That's my point. Very small, non-invasive to freedoms, wouldn't be very expensive for car companies to impliment, and would just be an eye opener to those people complaining about gas prices, but not really doing anything about it.

That is very true, every prius I've ever ridden in, the driver has had it set to the mpg display. I'm sure this helps out their overall mpg.

Otherwise, I'd imagine doubling the price of gas would have a greater effect on vehicle selection (I doubt most people will ever break their bad habbits). The chances of that getting through legislation... 0