This is something I wrote about a month ago that I sent to a few news organizations. Nobody responded. I thought this site was a the right forum:

Title: War on Idle Worship: Or, otherwise stated, “American Idle”

I’m not a “car” person. When someone asks me what kind of car someone else drives, even if I have ridden in that car with that person repeatedly, my answer will invariably be “a blue car.” Even car shopping, as my husband and I have hopped from dealership to dealership all day, I still refer to each vehicle we’ve inspected their colors, rather than their make and model. Suffice it to say, I know little about cars.

In today’s economy, however, I would guess it’s prudent to have a little knowledge about your car’s gas usage. I actually pulled out my van’s maintenance booklet and looked it up recently.

All this extra thinking about cars and gas came together in my mind as I lingered in the drive-through yet again the other day. How much gas am I using here?

Well, the fact is: I didn’t know. I don’t know a lot about cars; but I do know a little about the Internet, so I checked into it. What I learned was this: Cars of many years’ past used less gas idling a few minutes over shutting down and restarting. The cars and SUVs we’re driving today use “fuel injection” technology that changes that dynamic. That means you’re burning significantly more gas in your car at the drive-through at McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Hardee’s, Arby’s, KFC, Long John Silvers, White Castle, your local pharmacy or the quickie market with the Drive-through – than you would be if you just parked and went in.

Now, I’ve already admitted I’m not a “car person.” I’ll also admit I’m not a “math person.” “How much gas, and therefore money, is it really going to save me if I choose to park and go in rather than relax in my car for a few minutes?” you ask. I don’t really know. In your mind, you’re balancing the pure ease and convenience of your personal experience and thinking, “I’m willing to sacrifice a few extra cents to stay in my car – especially in the chill of winter or the heat of summer.”

Ok. I’m an American. I can relate to this kind of logic. But before you write this off as a convenience issue, I’d like you to do a little factoring in your brain: What is the LONGEST you have ever idled in the drive-through? For me, I would say roughly 20 minutes. What is the average length of time you have idled in drive throughs? I’m going to say it seems to me to be roughly 4 to 5 minutes, wouldn’t you agree? Sometimes the line is longer, and sometimes it’s shorter, but, generally, you’ve got at least a minute waiting to order, a minute between the order speaker and the pay window, a minute between the pay window and the pick-up window, and another minute at the pick-up window.

You could just sit in a parking lot at the closest fast-food restaurant for an hour on your lunch break and watch gas burn to imagine how this “idle” situation affects our total gas consumption in a day, a week, a year – as a nation. I just looked up the population of the United States on the Internet, however, and I can reasonably say, there are a LOT of us - 300,000,000 of us, roughly. Taking a rough assumption that there are equal parts adults and children, let’s estimate 150,000,000 potentially car-driving adults. Generously assuming that only 50,000,000 of us are driving on any given day, and generously assuming that only 1 out of 5 of us are going to visit a drive-through today, that’s still 10,000,000 cars idling in drive-throughs for an average 5 minutes each, for just today, in the United States alone!

I’m not a car person, a math person or a research person, but I’d like to see someone who is all of those things work on that query! I don’t even need to know the answer in any specific way to know that it would be alarming.

The next question I put before you is a big what if. WHAT IF we conducted a HUGE experiment in the United States? WHAT IF we could convince everyone to stop using the drive-through for one week? I’m not saying don’t go to McDonald’s or Wendy’s –as a former McDonald’s employee myself, I can attest, they need their jobs, too – I’m just saying STOP THE CAR, GET OUT, WALK IN and PLACE YOUR ORDER. Forego the convenience for just one week.

Yes, we’re Americans. We love our instant gratification. Even more so, I believe, we love our country. We’re all hurting, to various degrees, by the continuously rising prices at the pump. What if by making just this one change in our routines, we could affect the situation in a positive way?

If we all did it together, how much wasted consumption would we eliminate?

Let’s declare a weeklong “War on Idle Worship” in our country. No idling in the drive-through, no idling in your driveway, at your friend’s house while you drop off the dress you borrowed, at your mom’s while you pick up her mail because she’s out of town or at the quickie mart as you run in for a cup of coffee. In this case, “Just DON’T do it!” – Apologies to Nike.

Pass it along, and let’s see what happens…

shut up man your hella wrong..

Yes it is true that Americans can save big in the fuel consumption if they would simply relax and follow these simple suggestions. BUT Americans are not able to do that. In this country people have to be first, ahead, leaders, aggressive, self centered and so on and so on. The simple truth in driving is Americans just don’t know how to drive. They can’t read signs, they can’t hold a constant speed, they can’t merge, they can’t get the cell phone off the side of their heads, they can’t focus on a task and they get behind the wheel and they are instantly stressed.
It would be wonderful to merge onto the freeway someday and find everyone breezing along at the speed limit with smiles, space between cars, nothing fixed to the side of their heads, slower drivers in the slower lane and so on and so on. BUT I don’t expect that to happen. Not at least in my lifetime.
I would like to focus some attention on another matter in this regard, a little more that half the price of every barrel of oil at today’s rate is TAX. Of the remaining half, one half of that is made available to a handful of people that need to wallpaper their palaces in gold leaf and commute on multi million dolor yachts and Lear jets. All of which burn more fuel in a few days that I will burn in a year. Surely the government and that handful of people could make an adjustment or two. BUT why bother when the rest of us are out here trying to figure out what how to coast to a light or something along those lines.
Wake up America. How deep does the crap have to be before we all suffocate? Look at the big picture, not the gas gage.
If I have miss-spelled anything, please forgive and forget. Remember the BIG PICTURE. We can change things if move our attention to the real problems, GREED AND TAXATION.

Mike:
What do you have against America? Or is it you just have something against Americans? Can’t help but wonder since you refer to us as aggressive, self-centered, so on and so on.

I believe you will find those bad characteristics in people in any country you visit. I suspect you will find good characteristics in people in all countries as well. I will point out that when it comes to charity and giving, Americans provide more (per capita) to people in need than any other nationality (not exactly indicitive of self-centeredness).

In addition, I have driven in different countries all over the world (including America) and have found that you run into drivers in all countries who drive badly–can’t read signs–are distracted–and sometimes rude. I have also found that in countries all over the world you also find excellent, focused, and yes even “polite” drivers (including America)

I have no problem with some of your suggestions–just get off of the “American Bashing”. The “American Bashing” greatly removes all credibility from your ideas and suggestions.

I AM a PROUD AMERICAN (who loves her homeland and has found wonderful things traveling abroad as well).

Susan,

I read Mike’s posts, and it has nothing to do with America Bashing at all. He is just making an opinion on his self reflection of our society. From a sociological standpoint, our Western Philosophy and culture promote what Mike says. It’s not bad or good neccessarily, just how we are.

We have marathon races and the focus of our culture, influenced by our media, is to see the man and woman that finish first. We offer a prize, but only to the people that are first or in the top “n” spots. Contrastingly, there are Native American tribes that historically held races, and the “winners” were anyone that finished the race. The first and last place finishers were deemed equal as they both finished. Other cultures have this philosophy.

Hypermiling follow more of the Native American philosophy and sociology. You get there,…you just aren’t first to the next light. You don’t have to have the fake feeling of control by being the one who passes and not the one being passed.

All Mike did was make an honest, open, self reflection of what we are as a culture and society. In the upcoming olympics, there will be those countries, for which their perception of their athletes’ success will be that they were at a level to be able to “compete” on the world stage. For the U.S., anything less than gold medals in specific competitions, world records, and overall country weighted medal count (gold counting more than bronze), will be considered failure.

It’s who we are, Susan. You really have to be able to look in the mirror, and see America for who we are. You can be a Proud American, and admit that you (and the U.S.) is not perfect, and that there also might be things that are different (not better/not worse,…just different) than other cultures.

Part of Hypermiling is changing our mindset, our philosophy, our culture, our society. Mike’s just the person telling “the emperor” that “his new clothes aren’t really clothes at all” instead of living and keeping the “emperor” in a state of fantasy and denial. So don’t hate, OK?

We are a great country. I love my country no less than you. I too have found “wonderful things” abroad. I too, have found poor drivers and people abroad. But when you step back, outside the nationalism, and look at us as human beings living in different areas, influenced by different variables and constraints, you see that the people living in the area commonly known as “America” have philosophies, cultures, morals, and other sociological components that go against Hypermiling.

I don’t know if this is what you want to hear or not, but I drive a 2006 Lincoln town car. I recently moved from a house I had lived in for 15 years. In that place I only purchased 100% gasoline. After I moved I found this station where the gas was always 10 cents a gallon cheaper than anybody else. So I thought I would just give it a try. I did this for about 2 months when one day I looked at my gas gage and saw that I was almost empty. I then looked at my mileage and saw that I had only driven about 270 miles. That seemed strange because I had always filled up after my mileage was around 330 miles. When I started to fill my tank up that day I looked at the little sign on the gas pump that said this gas contains 10% ethanol. My mind started to crank up and I left with getting any gas. I drove back to the old station I used to get gas and filled up. A week later I saw I was about empty but my mileage indicator reading was 331 miles. So to satisfy myself I went from one gas station to another for the next 8 weeks. And the sad truth is that even though ethanol is better for the environment, It was costing me 10% on my gas mileage. And at 4.00 dollars per gallon that 10 cent saving was costing me 30 cents a gallon… I’ll try from now on to help the enviornment some other way.
I suggest everybody test their car for the gas they use. To me it’s worth over 500.00 dollars a year.

It’s true what Charles says about Ethanol. I too, noticed that when I pump 10% Ethanol gas in the car it definitely, without a doubt, doesn’t last as long as if I pumped 100% gasoline. Not only that, but the cost of food is now going up because farmers prefer to sell their corn and sugar and other primes to make Ethanol instead of selling them for food because they make more money that way. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn if the U.S. was selling oil to other countries instead of using it here because at $125 it’s a hell of a deal to sell oil than to buy it.

>>>>within a few years Plug In cars will be able to give huge energy efficiency over what is available right now.>>>>I keep hearing this statement Jon but it begs one question..where will all the electricity for the “plugging in” come from? The dems won’t allow new nuclear plants to help accomplish that need…plug in cars are a moot point in the current political climate….