springswood |
06-04-2019 12:15 AM |
Wasting other people's fuel
Most of us think a lot about what we can do to improve our own mpg figures. A post here got me thinking about how we drive affects others.
I can't find where it was but the gist was leave lots of room when parking so you don't have to waste fuel reversing. My problem with that is it is the kind of driving which turns on-street parking for four cars into space for only three. Put another way, if we park close up there might be up to 30% more parking spaces. Realistically even 10% more spaces would reduce the fuel wasted looking for a spot.
Of course you can't trace directly your actions to your mpg figure but on average more of that driving must reduce your mpg.
So then I've been trying to think of others. Now, I live about a mile south of Saltaire, a Victorian philanthropist's model village and world heritage site. So they're not going to bung a dual carriage way through to ease congestion. Traffic regularly queues back to the end of my road. What I've noticed is when you get to the traffic lights in Saltaire and they finally go green people 'save' fuel by accelerating gently. Add to that the dopey ****s who finish whatever text they were sending before pulling off and maybe 10 cars get through when 15 could. So is it worth spending a bit of fuel getting cars through the bottle neck to save on the petrol wasted in the queue? Again, only works if most people do it.
Just one more. I don't have a problem with the economical driver who sticks to a steady 60 mph on the motorway. But when they reach the inevitable lorry doing 59 mph their refusal to spend a little bit of fuel to get past quickly so often leads to congestion and a much greater waste of fuel (and time) for all the other cars waiting for them to get back into the inside lane (if they even do)
I'm quite aware this is a case of me finding a fuel economy argument to justify my already impeccable opinions about how everyone else should drive but I wonder what you think?
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