Driving Chills

My car - I think a 2006 Impala - has a monitor at the base of the dashboard that can tell you a bunch of stuff about the car - tire pressure, miles traveled, average fuel economy, oil life, etc. I always keep it on "instantaneous fuel economy" so I can see how many MPG I'm getting at any moment. Alternatively, I can put it into metric mode and see how many liters per 100 kilometers I need.

Whenever you accelerate, your fuel efficiency becomes extremely low - like 2-6MPG - and so every time I accelerate I see that come up on my dashboard. And at the same time you can sort of feel the gas rushing through the car and the engine revving and the RPM meter goes up to 3000, and this weird thing has started happening. I sort of get a chill up my spine every time I accelerate. I can't really help it, and it really does happen a lot, especially if I accelerate from stop up a hill or something like that. I don't know, I guess it's a good thing - it's a strange and visceral reminder of how terrible I am being to the environment and it really does make me want to change how I affect it.

I do try to drive as efficiently as possible (although I know that that's not enough). I do what truck drivers do and slow down long before red lights so that you don't have to accelerate from stop - if you're lucky you can accelerate from like 35mph, which saves you a ton of energy - and I try to be a little better about following distances so that I don't have to brake as much, since that kills energy. Coasting is also a good way to go - for the last mile basically of my ride home, I use essentially zero gas. I have to be really aware when I'm going around turns since I sometimes have to take them a little wide to not brake and not use gas, but it helps a little bit.

Sigh. But yeah. So whenever you drive with me and I accelerate you'll probably see me cringe a little bit and shake my head. I need to do more. Workin on it.

Peace out.