Teaching an old dog new tricks

No, not Seamus. He’s just perfect exactly the way he is. It's me. I live 27 miles from my office. I live even farther than that from my mom, from most of my friends, from the good stores, from my favorite Indian restaurant. I drive a lot. That, along with my environmental worries, is why I bought a hybrid last fall. And just in time too, since I hear it is quite difficult to get your hands on one now.

However, I have never even come close to getting the kind of miles per gallon that they claimed I would get when I bought the car. Don’t get me wrong, the mileage I get is good, and better than I got with my non-hybrid Civic, but it is not the spectacular MPG that one might expect. “No big deal,” I always said, “there are more reasons than just MPG to buy a hybrid.”

Of course, the problem had very little to do with the car or marketing claims (although I do think they exaggerate a bit) and a lot to do with the fact that I’m a speeder. Yep, I drive fast. Way faster than I should. Well, I generally don’t get to speed in the mornings, since that is when I spend my quality time sitting in traffic on 270. But I typically stay later at work or go to the gym, which means that there is more open road available on the drive home. However, everyone says that driving slower helps improve your fuel efficiency (pesky rules of physics), so I’ve been trying – really trying very hard – to stick to the speed limit lately.

And what do you know…it makes a pretty big difference. This is DC though, so you can’t ever go exactly the speed limit. Certainly not on the highway, but I’ve slowed down considerably. There are even benefits that go beyond using less gas/saving money. For example, I don’t have to worry about getting pulled over for speeding. That’s a nice change of pace. And I find I’m calmer behind the wheel. Since I’m trying to be courteous to the other drivers, I’ve moved out of the left lane to do my slower driving. I just cruise along at my previously determined appropriate speed, paying attention to what I’m doing (ok, perhaps paying a little bit too much attention, as watching the MPG indicator zoom up and down can get hypnotic), and not worrying about the jackasses who drive slow in the left lane and make everyone crazy. And by leaving the left lane, I’m also generally out of the way of the people who want to go 90 mph. That’s not to say that I don’t occasionally zip around someone who is going ridiculously slowly – for example, the guy who pulled in to my lane today and then dropped his speed for no reason. I thought maybe he needed to get over for an exit ramp or something, but no, he was just a moron.

And I definitely backslide from time to time. Driving slow is not as easy as you might think. I’ll look down and realize I’m going much faster than I mean to be, or I’ll see the MPG number start to drop. I’ll keep trying to make a permanent change to my driving behavior. I have no idea if it will take or not, but I’m giving it a shot.