Have high fuel costs changed the way you drive? Poll results/discussion

Og_Troff

I drive a Citroen C2 and never drove aggressively, but now I am driving much more carefully, I am getting 91 mpg. I have a 1.4 Diesel.

Accelerate downhill, expect to slow down uphill, anticipate the road ahead and try not to worry about the car up your bumper.

Tojo_Ralph

....
Call me pedantic, but the poll and thread title would have read so much better and would have been more accurate had it read, Have higher fuel costs changed the way you drive?

Soubrette

I drive more carefully, I try to combine trips for example, shopping on the way home rather than a special weekend shop and I've registered with a petrol price website so I can fill up at the cheapest within a five mile range (I also fill up more often if I'm passing a cheaper station rather than wait until the car is empty. The difference in price can be as much as 4p a litre.

Sou

goldingwebb

I work for a fairly small Housing Association. We make our own electricity as a by-product of a heating system we installed. We therefore got a grant to buy 3 electric cars which arrived last week. We hire these out to tenants at a cost of £5 per day and it only costs us 80 pence to charge them!

I was sceptical at first but I've driven them alot since they came and I absolutely love them. If the scheme takes off I might even ditch my own car. These little cars are quite nippy and great for local driving. There's no road tax and very little damage to the environment.

We're the first Housing Association in Scotland to do this but it's a great way of encouraging people to ditch their cars that they only use for shopping - I wish more places did this. Three local shopping centres have recently installed charging points so maybe it'll catch on?

Only downside is people stopping and staring but it's great fun!

tripled

Where's the option for 'I use an alternative fuel'?

I currently run my car on 60-40 veg oil to diesel, with veg oil costing ~86p/litre compared to 125.9p/litre for diesel at my local petrol station at the moment. Average cost - around £1.02 per litre, saving me ~£40 per month.

Over the winter I might experiment with using waste veg oil to reduce my fuel bill further!

tonygch96

I have started to Drive better and more slower and found that I get more than 5 mpg better than before. :j

I would like to convert from Petrol to LPG, is there any postings on this subject? I would like to hear the comments on those that have gone down this route.

MaxEnder

I drive less and make note of where cheap petrol is so save pennies that way

sal-ad_daze

I voted K (I think) as we de-clutterd the car (not that it was excessively cluttered anyway) when we changed our Motability car.
We don't drive any less because we're restricted to necessity driving only anyway - we can't afford anything else! An extra hospital visit or two and that's it petrol tank empty!
It's a joke really, you qualify for a motability car to make 'life' more accessible and then you can't afford to run it on the disability benefits you're entitled to!

cazrobinson

I voted J...

we run two cars though we can't really afford it (use xmas bonus to pay for both cars, mot, ins, RAC etc).

so have despec'd my car to 1.1, use my bike (cycle-to-work scheme) for part of the journey and drive more efficiently (avoid dual-carriageways and use river-bed routes (flat)).

used to lift-share, as that was very economical (£50 a month), but the guy was a !!!!!!, coming out in his PJs as I was sitting in the car waiting! duh!

would love a elcetric assit bike, but as i can just about cope with fixing my bike, don't think i can manage an electric one, and dead-weight on back would be sooo frustrating!

tonycree

one thing to consider here
when you're doing your 56mph on the motorways;
hgv drivers...
we have limiters -
it is annoying when a driver is plodding along
and we're trying to overtake and they're sat there -
thinking they're clever, being fuel efficient, snarling up the road...
saving 'nowt' really...
do 60, get in the middle lane
and give the rest of us frustrated drivers a little bit of stress-free...
thx.