Extreme Petrol Saving Tip: Don’t Turn Right
August 25th, 2008 No Comments » | POSTED BY ROB
Here’s an extreme way to save petrol, courtesy of Wisebread – avoid right-hand turns as much as possible.
Here in the UK, where we drive on the left, turning right often involves waiting for other traffic to pass, the engine is left burning petrol during the wait. If you can plan your journeys (and lets face it, you’ll probably only consider doing this for a regular journey, such as going to work) to minimise right hand turns, without going out of your way and negating the benefit, then you might be able to save a little petrol by doing this (of course, this translates to left-hand turns for the US / most of the rest of the world). It probably works best in big cities where the wait to turn right is often longer because of the flows of traffic in the other direction.
On a large scale, UPS has apparently saved a lot of petrol by doing this, so it can work – just don’t expect to see any massive increases in you MPG. This is the sort of tip that should be considered after you’ve already started doing the normal things to increase your mileage – driving sensibly, keeping tyres inflated to the correct levels, minimising weight carried in your car (here are some more petrol saving tips).
On a related note, Wisebread is offering a free ebook on saving petrol if you subscribe to their blog by email or RSS feed – it’s well worth a look, plus Wisebread has some great money saving content on their site so subscribing to it is a good idea, even without the lure of the ebook.
photo credit: Lee Jordan
