Drive Better, Drive Cleaner, Drive Cheaper

Sikander Z. Hashmi

Since I got my 2006 Honda Civic as a wedding gift last year, I’ve become bad. Or so I think.

Back in the bachelor (and pre-Civic days), I would walk – or more often jog since I was almost always running late – to the train station on my way to school. I would extol the virtues of taking the train: it keeps me out of traffic, I get more time to sleep or study (on the train), it costs less.

Nowadays, with the Civic, I’m walking less and driving more. I’ve barely taken the train this year – I even drove to school in a snowstorm – and I’m gaining weight. In other words, the car is bad for the environment and bad for my health.

Even with gas at over $1.03 a liter, I still continue to drive. It offers me more flexibility, I get home quicker and strangely, I find being stuck in traffic somewhat relaxing.

So how can I go from being bad to better, at least on the driving front?

Ian Rowberry, Manager of the Ecology Action Centre’s Steer Clean Program down in Halifax, directed me to a web site called Drive Wiser packed with tips for drivers like myself and offered some advice of his own: “Try to avoid driving at peak-traffic times, so that you don't get stuck in go-slows and jams that raise your stress level and your fuel-consumption.”

I try but when I’m rushing to make it to a 9:15 a.m. class, I can’t really avoid rush hour. So that doesn’t really work all the time. Sorry, Ian.

The Drive Wiser site tells drivers they can “add to the life of a tank of gas with a few simple adjustments to driving habits and auto maintenance.”

A chart suggests that driving with dirty motor oil, a dirty air filter, speeding over 100 km/h and idling for an hour a week can increase gas consumption by 42 per cent. I’m pretty punctual with my oil and filter changes and I don’t idle much, but I can definitely work on speeding. I haven’t made any calculations, but on recent trip to the in-laws in New York, I tried to stay under 110 km/h and there appeared to be more gas in the tank on arrival than usual.

In fact, Drive Wise says gas consumption at 110 km/h goes up by 21 per cent, while consumption at 120 km/h is 44 per cent more than at 100 km/h.

The reason: the higher the speed, the higher the force related to air resistance. As speed goes up, the power required to push the car through the air increases.

Drive Wise gives the example of swimming: “The faster you want to swim, the more force it takes your body to move through the water. This is the same with your car. For this reason, time saved by speeding doesn't save you in fuel at the end of the day.”

Andrew Netherton, of Waterloo, Ontario, wishes he could eliminate the need to drive to work, but he can’t. So he started acting on some clean driving tips, such as driving slower, which he says is easy “so long as you can adopt the mindset that you are going for better fuel economy and not just driving slow.”

But it can be a bit bothersome at times, he says.

“Sometimes when traffic is behind me, and impatient with the fact that I'm driving 85 in an 80 zone, it can make driving slow slightly anxious. I don't want to anger other drivers,” says Netherton.

Drive Wiser also says that accelerating slowly and maintaining a steady speed, especially with cruise control on longer trips, is the most fuel-efficient way to drive.

“It takes energy to get a vehicle up to cruising speed, and that energy is lost every time the vehicle is forced to slow down unnecessarily – for example, if you approach other vehicles too quickly.”

The techniques really do work, says Netherton. He had been averaging about 8.3L/100km on his commute, but now, with only a few round trips under his belt, he says he has managed to get his round-trip fuel consumption to 6.5L/100km in mixed rural and city driving.

“Each liter of fuel saved translates into 2.5 kg of CO2 equivalent less in greenhouse gas emissions,” wrote Environment Canada’s Quebec air quality chief Pierre Sylvestre in an email.

I’ll be using Netherton’s example as an inspiration. And according to Drive Wiser, I should really “curb my enthusiasm.”

“Aggressive driving – ‘jackrabbit’ starts from traffic lights and hard braking – reduced travel time by only 4% (the equivalent of 2½ minutes out of a 60–minute trip). However, fuel consumption increased by 37%, and some toxic emissions were more than five times higher.”

So all I have to do to drive cleaner is slow down, drive more gently, and keep my car well maintained. It won’t get me more exercise, but at least it’ll help me minimize the damage to the environment and eventually, help us all stay healthy by breathing cleaner air.