How Can I Improve My Gas Mileage?

A short list of easy driving techniques that can help you beat the gas crunch and lower greenhouse emissions

I first compiled this list in 2002. It is based on many years of experience including several solo cross-country trips and three years as a professional driver. These tips will improve your mileage whether you have a car with a carburetor or a fuel-injected engine, whether you have a manual transmission or an automatic.

Of course the best way to save gas is to use none: walk or ride a bicycle. You can also buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle, combine trips, carpool and so forth. Great ideas all. But how can you save gas when you are actually operating your car? The following tips increase my mileage by about 20% and other drivers who have followed them have reported similar gains.

1. Keep your vehicle and engine in good running order: change the oil every three to five thousand miles, and especially make sure tire pressure is correct. A poorly running vehicle wastes a lot of gas.
2. Drive at or below the speed limit, rather than 10 or 15 miles per hour over it. The faster you go, the more gas you waste.
3. On the expressway, and when possible to do so without obstructing traffic, drive no faster than 65 mph. At higher speeds, your engine burns fuel at such a rate that you end up using far more gas even though you arrive only a few minutes sooner.
4. On the expressway, drive with all windows closed. This makes your vehicle more aerodynamic and thus it burns less gas.
5. Open the vents and set the temperature to cool rather than using the air conditioner. The air conditioner takes a heavy drain on your engine, making it work harder and thus burn more gas.
6. Shift into neutral when driving downhill for a length of road. Your engine burns much less gas in neutral than it does while in gear. This technique saves gas whether you have manual or automatic transmission, although the benefit is higher for the manual.
7. Shift into neutral when slowing down. Again, this burns less gas.
8. Shift into neutral when idling at red lights. Just keep your foot on the brake.
9. Turn off your engine if you are going to idle for more than thirty seconds, such as at a drive-through window, at a long red light, or while stopped at a railroad crossing. It causes more pollution and wastes far more gas to idle than it does to re-start your engine.
10. Don’t leave your car idling just to run your car’s air conditioner. This doubles your contribution to global climate change: your air conditioner is adding more heat (air conditioners expel heat as exhaust) while your engine is adding more carbon monoxide.
11. Accelerate at a moderate rate of speed rather than flooring it. Quick acceleration wastes gas, is more dangerous, and doesn’t get you there any faster.
12. Decelerate at a moderate rate of speed rather than jabbing the brakes. Avoid quick changes of speed unless necessary.
13. Stay in one lane as much as possible rather than weaving in and out of traffic. Lane jumping wastes large amounts of gas because it causes more acceleration and deceleration. It might get you to the next red light faster, but you are only wasting more gas to get there faster just to idle at the light.
14. Slow down rather than jumping into another traffic lane to dart around a vehicle ahead of you that is slowing down to turn. Coast in neutral if possible. You car will burn less fuel and you won’t become a hazard to traffic. Always leave yourself plenty of forward room (no tailgating) and you will only need to coast for a moment.
15. Drive at a steady rate of speed as much as possible rather than speeding up and slowing down a lot. Drivers who jab the gas, jab the brake, jab the gas, and so forth, don’t get there any faster, but they do burn a whole lot more gas.

Final note: Safety is the number one concern every time you get in a vehicle or get near a road, even as a pedestrian. Always abandon these tips whenever following them would be too dangerous.

Copyright © 2002, 2004, 2006, 2009, by Gwen Foss, a.k.a. Book Doctor Gwen. Permission is hereby granted to copy and distribute this item as long as the item is reproduced in full, and as long as the author’s name is attached.

What is The Church Where People Laugh?

It’s the world’s best collection of jokes for and about Universalists, Unitarians, and Unitarian Universalists!

I started compiling this collection some time in the 1970s while I was in the youth group at the Universalist Unitarian Church of Farmington, Michigan. After many years it was just too big to keep in a looseleaf so I had to publish it.

We Unitarian Universalists, or UUs for short, tend to have great senses of humor and we love to laugh at ourselves. It was not difficult to put together this great collection, though it did take a few years. There are over three hundred individual jokes, quotes, and anecdotes in this little book.

For those of you who have never heard of Unitarian Universalism, it is a liberal, post-Christian religion which grew out of Universalism -- “God is love” -- and Unitarianism -- “God is one” -- two radical beliefs that have been around since the early days of Christianity. Each of these beliefs was declared a heresy after having been accepted for hundreds of years.

Today, UUs celebrate diversity of belief and the right to think for yourself. We have no concept of heresy except as an accusation against those who exercise free thought and freedom of conscience.

While you’re here, please visit Alan’s Used Books (link on the right) where you can order The Church Where People Laugh and many other great books.

What is The Church Where People Laugh?

It’s the world’s best collection of jokes for and about Universalists, Unitarians, and Unitarian Universalists!

I started compiling this collection some time in the 1970s while I was in the youth group at the Universalist Unitarian Church of Farmington, Michigan. After many years it was just too big to keep in a looseleaf so I had to publish it.

We Unitarian Universalists, or UUs for short, tend to have great senses of humor and we love to laugh at ourselves. It was not difficult to put together this great collection, though it did take a few years. There are over three hundred individual jokes, quotes, and anecdotes in this little booklet.

For those of you who have never heard of Unitarian Universalism, it is a liberal, post-Christian religion which grew out of Universalism -- “God is love” -- and Unitarianism -- “God is one” -- two radical beliefs that have been around since the early days of Christianity. Each of these beliefs was declared a heresy after having been acceptable for hundreds of years.

What's a "Book Doctor?"

Book doctor is a term from the publishing business, which I was in before I got into the used book business.

The term means, basically, an emergency editor. A book doctor gets handed bad manuscripts -- ones that the publisher has already paid for -- and has to fix them up in fast time. I was in the business of nonfiction so when one of these messes was handed to me, I would check and fix any misspelled proper names, check and correct any incorrect facts, and so on.

A similar term in showbiz is a script doctor.

Now, if you thought I was someone who fixes old, damaged books, sorry, I'm not. For that you need a bookbinder or a document restorer, not a book doctor.