How to be an Eco Driver

There is the new type of driver on Canadian roads. Eco drivers are actively helping to reduce green house gas emissions. Prolonging the life of their vehicles and saving money on fuel cost. They can accomplish all of this by making a few simple changes to their driving habits. To begin your new life as an Eco driver, you must first be come aware of your old driving habits and their effects on your pocket book and the environment.

First, try keeping track of your fuel use and mileage. This simple exercise will help you to keep track of your progress. No matter what type of vehicle you have there are four simple changes you can make, that will greatly reduce your fuel consumption and help save you money. First, remember to accelerate gently, every time you put your foot down on the gas pedal you feed fuel to your engine. The harder you apply the gas the more fuel your engine uses and the more emissions your car produces. Apply light pressure to the gas pedal, as if there was a water balloon or egg under your foot.

Maintain a steady speed and stick to the speed limit. It's tempting to increase your speed on the highway but it's been shown by reducing your speed from 120 km/hour to 100 km/hour, you can lower your fuel consumption by 20%. A great way to help minimize fuel use is to anticipate traffic flow, try to gauge the flow of traffic and keep a buffer zone between you and other vehicles and drive at a consistent speed for as long as possible. Whenever possible avoid cycles of hard acceleration and breaking.

People are creatures of habit, we use the same roads and spend the same amount of time every day stopped in our vehicles. By learning the traffic patterns in our daily route, you can plan your route in order to reduce fuel consumption. Also when you notice that traffic ahead is slowing or stopped, remove your foot from the accelerator as early as possible and coast to a stop. This approach will reduce both fuel use as the car uses less fuel when coasting.

When after implementing these techniques, the test driver found that they only apply the breaks seven times compared to 13 times before following the Eco skills. He was also able to reduce the average consumption of fuel from 10.3 per 100 km to 8.1 per 100 km. Based on this the calculated fuel saving would be about 25% or roughly $500 a year or $2500 every five years. Not to mention that by applying Eco driving skills CO2 emissions could be reduced from 5200 Kilograms of CO2 per year to 3900 Kilograms of CO2 per year. That's the reduction of 1300 Kilograms of CO2.

Here are few more quick tips you can try, combine air vents whenever you can and avoid driving in rush hour traffic and that whether when possible.


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