A License To Eco-Drive
by April Streeter, Gothenburg, Sweden on 11.28.07
Starting next week, all Swedes hoping to get a new driving license (a more intensive and expensive process than in the U.S.) will need to have learned how to "eco-drive." The principles of eco-driving are here. The Swedish Road Administration (SRA) says too many drivers - half of taxi and bus drivers and two-thirds of truck drivers - regularly speed, using up fuel and spurting out carbon dioxide unnecessarily. SRA makes the bold claim that 220,000 tons of CO2 could be saved annually if drivers obeyed the speed limit. How does SRA know this stuff? Using data from the odious big brother cameras that can be seen on more and more highways.
So to save lives, gas and CO2 emissions, SRA is including eco-driving in both its 'knowledge' and practical driving tests. SRA says eco-driving doesn't necessarily mean driving slower, but that drivers can expect to save between 4 to 10 percent on gas usage - and don't forget it costs more than $6 a gallon in Scandinavia - by sudden speed-ups and slow-downs, never pressing more than halfway on the gas pedal, switching to higher gears fairly quickly, and maintaining the speed limit. But while SRA is giving more weight to new drivers learning and demonstrating this knowledge to get a license, the agency also knows old habits die hard. In the recent speed report, SRA noted that speeding has increased rather than decreased since the last set of data was analyzed last spring. Perhaps Stockholm's drivers are going faster hoping perhaps to somehow outrun the congestion tax, which is tallied by road cameras and can cost a driver up to $10 per day. Via ::SRA web site (Swedish and English)
What's this about "odious big-brother cameras?" Speeding not only wastes fuel, but makes roads inhospitable to pedestrians, bicyclists, etc. Why would you object to a speed camera if you didn't plan to speed? And why would a treehugger speed?
No matter how much I hate speeders and how much they scare me when I am bike-commuting with my kids, I don't believe in surveillance cameras. Though philosophically I can see that in an overcrowded, resource-constrained world laws and taxes may be the ways to make individuals conform, I think they are wrong, wrong, wrong.
I have been trying for two years to persuade highway officials in California, where I live, to support Eco-Driving with occasional succinct messages on the state's freeway and highway digital changeable message signs, such as:
'SLOW DOWN, SAVE GAS, REDUCE CO2.'
In other words, let's reach the driving public with fuel-efficient driving messages While They Are Behind The Wheel, for crying out loud. Websites, eco-videos, and magazine articles are fine (I've written and co-created all of these, and don't fault these efforts), but nothing can beat in-context edu-suasion.
I originally suggested Earth Day 2006 as a good time to introduce an Eco-Driving message. Then Earth Day 2007. I have been completely stonewalled on this enterprise by the California officials responsible for the state's Statewide Traffic Awareness Response (STAR) program and the state's changeable message signs, despite the early support of my state assemblyman and the continued support of his successor.
Now approaches Earth Day 2008, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe Earth Day '09? Or maybe we should just wait until the northern arctic region has completely lost its ice and North America is in permanent drought (and Bangladesh is underwater) to ask the freewheeling American auto driver to show a little carbon consciousness.
I have come to believe American politicians and officials are afraid of offending their car-crazed carbon-spewing cheap gas-combusting constituents with even the simplest and truest admonitions to show a little self-restraint in the service of lowering carbon emissions, reducing petroleum imports and the need for oil wars, and more easily avoiding collisions with other vehicles, children, senior citizens, animals and infrastructure.
Speaking of eco-videos:
'Light on the Pedal, Light on the Planet' is a one-minute web video promoting 'CO2scious Driving' that some colleagues and I produced for the Treehugger.com Convenient Truths Environmental Video Contest in early 2007. Check it out:
Treehugger page: http://truths.treehugger.com/video/contest_entry_light_on_the_ped.php
YouTube page: www.youtube.com/nicholasdragon
MSN 'Soapbox Page': http://next.video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=f2556652-9ce7-44d6-8664-8ff2fca8d551
Blip.tv file: http://blip.tv/file/158283
MacWebGuru: www.MacWebGuru.com/2007/11/29/light-on-the-planet/
Commentaries re Links to "Light on the Pedal, Light on the Planet":
Should America Restore the 55 mph Speed Limit?: www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/should_america.php#ch01
and the follow-on piece, Slow is the New Fast: www.treehugger.com/files/2007/10/survey_slow_is.php
Constructive ideas on how to get Eco-Driving messages onto the roadside changeable/variable message signs of any state or country are welcome!
Gregory Wright greg[at]newciv.org