For Most of Us, Our Styles of Driving Reflect Our Modern-Day Eco-Sensibilities

When my father taught me to drive 45 years ago he passed along his best advice on the subject, one piece of which I remember quite vividly:  Don’t back up one inch farther that you need to.  He told me, “You’ll have at least 1000 times more accidents per mile driven going backward than you will have going forward.”

When I taught my kids to drive just a few years ago, I made sure they got that too, but I also passed this along as well:  Anytime you touch either of those two pedals you’re spending money.  The one on the left should be used only when you need to slow down to avoid what would otherwise be an unsafe or illegal situation.  If you’ve already spent your money converting chemical energy (gasoline) to kinetic energy (the forward motion of your car), don’t convert it to heat energy (braking) unless you need to.

The pedal on your right is needed more often, but there is no reason to use it either without a reason.  Going down a hill?  Approaching a stop sign or red light?  Coming up behind a slow-moving car that you’ll be unable to pass?  Just coast; you’ll save gas and your brake linings, and you’ll also worry your passengers a whole lot less.

In the few short years since my kids were 15, our society has made even more progress vis-à-vis use of the accelerator in at least two areas:

• Feedback:  we now have extremely accurate and obvious real-time data on our instantaneous MPG.  No one with any sense wants to make that reading dip into single digits.  Obviously, those driving electric vehicles have even more at stake: they want to maximize the range they get on a charge.

• Eco-sensibilities: most of us understand at some gut level that needless acceleration is both a safety hazard (both to ourselves and the drivers/pedestrians around us) and it’s bad for our environment.  Even youngsters today, as reckless as many of them are, don’t drive like the idiots kids were in the 1970s when I was growing up.

There is no doubt that an ever-increasing density of police plays a role in this, but I would like to think that our children have some enhanced regard for the world around them.