another spin off: have any of you radically changed your driving habits lately

[Nicole M]

...because of gas prices?

 

about 7 years ago, I cut way back on my driving -- not that we drove all that much to begin with. (I'm a bicycle girl and we live within a mile of our work and within 1.5 miles of grocery and necessities.) in the last year I was able to average less than 20 mile / week, but that's hard with various kid activities this summer. our oldest will be taking the bus to work soon; I just picked up bus tickets for him today.

 

I read that most Americans are cutting back on other luxuries, like dining out, instead of reducing their driving. what about you? how are you coping?

[elegantlion]

We've only had one car for some time. We had planned on buying another soon, but are holding off for now. So, yes, it's affecting my driving.

[Guest Virginia Dawn]

This sounds funny but dh has told me to avoid idling the car, don't turn it on till absolutely necessary, whenever possible take your foot off the gas and let momentum carry you, avoid turning on the AC, keep to the speed limit, avoid fast starts and stops. We try to combine as many errands as possible at once and cut out frivilous travel. We also take advantage of bargain gas prices in areas where we shop anyway.

[RebeccaC]

I try to do all my shopping once a week. I try to do the post office when I am doing my shopping. So in a way yes. We have not cancelled driving to scouts and other activities but I do try and combine trips when possible.

[nakitty]

absolutely. We just moved back home to the northwest...and we were very excited to be so close to family again....however, with current gas prices, a roundtrip to visit them costs us $120....SIMPLY TOO MUCH! :angry:

[homeschoolmom]

We already planned our outings so as to maximize gas. Eg If traveling to such-and-such town, thinking of all the errands that could be accomplished in that round trip.

 

That said, yes, it's affecting us as we drive less and less. Extra, social trips are pretty much non-existant.

 

We're also more careful HOW wee drive. We don't gun it, ride the brake, etc. Slow and steady means less gas consumed.

[Brindee]

My dd's piano teacher takes the summer off, so that saves us driving the 15 or so miles each way to her home for the lessons. When she is having lessons, we have that be our shopping day. There's a Walmart on our way, so after her lesson, we stop there and get groceries and other items needed. We don't do the quick runs to town to get one item anymore. It only takes 5-8 minutes, but town driving, with the stops and go's takes up a lot of gas.

 

You know, I've wondered about idling the car. My sister was told that if you are waiting in the vehicle for someone to do a quick errand, that it takes less gas to idle for a few minutes than it does to stop and restart the car. So she always does that and feels she is saving gas. Anyone have any ideas on that?

[Nicole M]

Very interesting. I thought folks would pipe up and say, "I ride my bike now!" I had no idea there were all those tricks about the actual driving to make it more gas-efficient.

 

I also try to make errands efficient and all that, but there are plenty of errands I can do that require no car at all. Fortunately, our summer here is actually feeling like summer (which is rare in the Pacific Northwest). Heck, we've had like two whole weeks of temps in the upper 70s! So riding and walking are more enjoyable than in previous summers.

[Brindee]

Well see, we live on a hill, only about 5 miles from town, but absolutely NO WAY can we ride bikes to and from town, or walk either. So that CAN'T be my answer. Too bad too. If we were closer, and it wasn't such a big hill, we WOULD walk or ride!

[Guest Virginia Dawn]

We live in a little rural town with no real amenities, so we have to drive to the closest big town or city for most things. I'm hoping that this will actually encourage people to open up useful business in some of the empty storefronts in town.

[Jenny in Atl]

Not yet. I get pretty good milage and don't too much driving during the summer. Not sure what will happen this fall. Classes I thought we were taking I pulled out of do to no $, so we may stick by the homestead more than usual.

[Nicole M]

Well see, we live on a hill, only about 5 miles from town, but absolutely NO WAY can we ride bikes to and from town, or walk either. So that CAN'T be my answer. Too bad too. If we were closer, and it wasn't such a big hill, we WOULD walk or ride!

 

Oh, you are such a nice mommy! I grew up on the side of a mountain in Colorado. there was a thousand foot elevation between my house and my high school. I rode my bike there in 8 minutes flat. Once I was going so fast that a police officer shook his finger at me as I started to pass him in his car. But the ride home? A least a good 50 minutes. Nasty ride! Wicked, wicked mommy!

[ereks mom]

My sister was told that if you are waiting in the vehicle for someone to do a quick errand, that it takes less gas to idle for a few minutes than it does to stop and restart the car. So she always does that and feels she is saving gas. Anyone have any ideas on that?

 

I guess it depends on how long "a few minutes" would be, exactly. Maybe Mythbusters will do a segment on this!

[KAR120C]

I'm irritated enough about the cost of gas (whiny baby that I am... LOL) that I've cut back on driving just to spite it. ;)

 

We're actually spending less on gas right now than we have at a lot of points in the past -- we moved into town four years ago because of the amount we were spending on gas... like $500/month. Just think what it would be now! eek! It was a combination of where we lived and where we worked... and I quit my consulting business because what I could charge and what I spent to get to client offices and back wasn't really balancing out much in my favor -- again this was two years ago, before prices really started going up that much. And DH took a job a year ago 3 miles from our house, down from 25 miles (which itself was down from "all over creation" when he was consulting!) We're still 3 miles from a park-and-ride bus stop, so we weren't completely clever about it...

 

DH's car is on its last legs (260,000 miles on it!), and we might replace it with a cute little Honda scooter instead of another car... My car is doing fine, but I've cut back on driving as much as I comfortably can. I still spend about $25/week on gas, and I could probably cut that in half if I was really REALLY careful. We have two unavoidable errands each week that if we're lucky can be combined starting in the fall, and I'm willing to drive the 3 miles to the park-and-ride and take the bus from there. If we do both of those things, I'll be down to $10/week on gas. It all depends on DH's job though -- if he had to take another one it would almost certainly be 25 miles away again... there's a chance at 5 miles, but not a terrifically great chance.

[3lilreds in NC]

I make an effort not to go anywhere unnecessary. Since going on a cash-only budget, I can't just run out and go shopping anyway. :D We do live just a few minutes from a grocery store, so I do my shopping at that one unless we will be nearer to a different one because of another errand. I wait until we have more than one thing to do in town and then go.

 

It's been a little hard on the kids, because we don't see many people. They're doing the neighborhood swim team and horse lessons though so they have something going 5 out of 7 days.

[nakitty]

Well see, we live on a hill, only about 5 miles from town, but absolutely NO WAY can we ride bikes to and from town, or walk either. So that CAN'T be my answer. Too bad too. If we were closer, and it wasn't such a big hill, we WOULD walk or ride!

 

I live at the top of a very large hill...(also in Washington, btw) and I walked up it ONCE...and almost died. LOL And that was without groceries in hand. :auto: for me, thanks....though we do take the bus when we go into Seattle...I hate finding parking downtown.

 

Also, I can't ride bikes...I know HOW to...but I have pointed sit bones and it causes me great pain to ride bikes...and I have tried pretty much every seat on the market. :crying:

[charlotteb]

We have really cut back on driving lately. We used to travel all around town to different homeschool activities, but now I only focus on our small local group. We used to do weekend trips often or even just go for drives to entertain ourselves. Not anymore. We try to do all of our outings on Sunday since we are driving out of town (about a 45 minute drive) to church. There are several stores on the way home so we try to save gas money by shopping then. Church is the one thing I won't compromise on though because we *love* our church and know that is where God wants us to be.

[milovany]

I've read very recently (and from reliable sources, although I couldn't tell you where, lol -- probably somewhere like yahoo news) that the idle time is something like 15 *seconds*. Anymore than that and you should turn the car off and start it up again.

 

We went down to one car more than a year ago and are walking tons more than we ever have in our lives. I got my bike up and running a couple of weeks ago and am trying to use that for quick shopping trips instead of firing up the Suburban. My dh walks to work every morning (about a mile), and I've stopped helping the kids on their paper routes by driving them. Our trips "over the mountains" (to where family and some friends are) have dwindled down to a couple of times a year it seems like, and when we do travel at higher speeds, we keep it at about 60-65 mph. I think we're down to spending about $125-$150/month on gas by doing these things.

[Brindee]

 

Oh, you are such a nice mommy! I grew up on the side of a mountain in Colorado. there was a thousand foot elevation between my house and my high school. I rode my bike there in 8 minutes flat. Once I was going so fast that a police officer shook his finger at me as I started to pass him in his car. But the ride home? A least a good 50 minutes. Nasty ride! Wicked, wicked mommy!

I TRY to be nice, but I'm also smart. :D There's NO WAY I'd allow my kids to ride down that hill! Also there's NO WAY we could get all the groceries I need for two hungry teenage boys back home---not all the stuff we get at Costco! :tongue_smilie::001_smile: So we limit our trips to once a week or less now! Oh, and walking? That'd take a long time! Way too long. We'd have have a whole day to walk down and back! We don't have the time!

[Tammy]

but...I would probably cut back on other things first....

 

Tammy

[Parrothead]

I never go any where any way so there hasn't been much of a cutting back. Now if I could convince myself and dh to walk two blocks to the post office to pick up the mail we would be doing great.

[HSMom2One]

This sounds funny but dh has told me to avoid idling the car, don't turn it on till absolutely necessary, whenever possible take your foot off the gas and let momentum carry you, avoid turning on the AC, keep to the speed limit, avoid fast starts and stops. We try to combine as many errands as possible at once and cut out frivilous travel. We also take advantage of bargain gas prices in areas where we shop anyway.

 

We are doing the same here exactly. Another thing I've been trying to do is make right turns as often as possible instead of left turns. UPS has been doing this and they claim to be savubg huge amounts of money on gas. If you think about it, left turns usually mean a long wait for traffic while the car idles.

 

:auto:

 

Blessings,

Lucinda

[Just a Jen in Mississippi]

Yes, we are cutting back. We used to ride around for the joy of it and no longer do that. We're eating at home much more and are even walking to Starbucks! It seemed like it was a lot further, but it's actually only a mile away. It gives us exercise and saves gas! We've actually enjoyed it. I drive a Suburban so I have to really be careful right now. I filled up ($96) on June 13 and that tank lasted the whole month because of cutting out unnecessary things. It would have lasted even longer if we hadn't bought a new stove and Lowe's gave us the wrong items to install it (twice!), so we had several trips to town dealing with that. I'm at the point of wishing I could ask companies to reimburse gas for crap like that......or when you get home and realize that you didn't get your burger and fries you paid for in the drive through and have to drive back.....grrrrrr :lol:

[cricket1178]

I find myself evaluating every necessary trip in the car we take. I've always been cautious with driving because we live in a rural area so everything is at least 15 miles away, but with the gas prices so high we are definitely driving less. We are currently in need of updating our vehicle and are also considering a smaller car instead of a minivan which we have had for the last 11 years. We've loved our minivan! Gas prices are definitely changing things at our house.

[dirty ethel rackham]

Well, I do ride a bike more often now. I do not particularly like bike riding due to the pain in the area that comes in contact with the seat. However, our weekly trip to the library is on a bike. Most of our grocery shopping is now done by bike (we either bring several kids with back packs or bring the Burley. We have started riding to our homeschooling park meetings. We are also doing more trip chaining and combining trips.

[StaceyinLA]

Maybe it's where we are, or maybe the people around here, including us, just don't seem to think $1/gallon makes that much of a difference, but I am seeing ZERO changes in people's habits around here.

 

The restaurants are still PACKED ALL the time. The malls are crowded and people have packages. The traffic is a horrific nightmare! I'm paying $3.89/gallon for gas. Yes, it's affected the cost of the fill-up, and yes, it hurts the budget a bit, but my husband says to get over it, add more gas money to the budget and move on. He has forbidden me to whine about it anymore.

 

We haven't really changed much at all. I can't really conserve because I'm working this summer (40 miles from home at that) finishing up a project for an attorney that I started last summer. Once that's done, I'm sure I'll go back to somewhat limiting my trips, but we live too far out to count on saving too much. I HAVE to drive 12 miles each way to get to a store! And I have to drive 40 one way to get to the places I really like to shop.

[caitlinsmom]

Yes it has changed our habits. We live in a rural area so we always had to plan our outings anyway but instead of going 4 times a month we now only shop 2 times a month. We dont go into town unless its a must. My dh boss lets him take a work truck home now. If I run out of something I call dh and he picks it up before he comes home. We dont eat out EVER anymore. We have had to cut our grocery bill by close to 100 (from only 300 for 5 people) a month jsut so we can alot enough money to get to and back from the grocery store. I make very frugal meals because of this. Thank heavens we had a small food storage set up already, we live off that quite a bit.

Everyone I know has cut back drastically. I think our town is feeling it. I know my dh boss (owns a gas station and propane company) is feeling it BIG time. It makes us worried.

[sassenach]

Here are the things that we've changed-

 

1) I'm driving a lot slower than I used to. I've noticed that a lot of people are. I stick to the slow lane and go between 50 and 55. In California, that's unusual.

 

2) I'm consolidating my trips. I used to thing nothing of running to the grocery store every other day. Now I'm doing one big errand run a week.

 

3) We're cutting back on extra curricular activities. We won't be doing sports teams this year because they involve 3+ days of driving every week.

 

4) my dh is taking his motorcycle to work 4 out of every 5 days.

[WTMindy]

Not really. My dh has always been pretty picky about conserving trips and not going out if we don't have to, so we have always been pretty conservative with how and when we drive across town.

[sassenach]

absolutely. We just moved back home to the northwest...and we were very excited to be so close to family again....however, with current gas prices, a roundtrip to visit them costs us $120....SIMPLY TOO MUCH! :angry:

 

That's just like us. We just moved back to the west coast, but we're about 6 1/2 hours away from family. They are all complaining because we haven't visited since March, but it costs us $350 round trip to do the drive. We just don't have it!

[sassenach]

Maybe it's where we are, or maybe the people around here, including us, just don't seem to think $1/gallon makes that much of a difference, but I am seeing ZERO changes in people's habits around here.

 

The restaurants are still PACKED ALL the time. The malls are crowded and people have packages. The traffic is a horrific nightmare! I'm paying $3.89/gallon for gas. Yes, it's affected the cost of the fill-up, and yes, it hurts the budget a bit, but my husband says to get over it, add more gas money to the budget and move on. He has forbidden me to whine about it anymore.

 

We haven't really changed much at all. I can't really conserve because I'm working this summer (40 miles from home at that) finishing up a project for an attorney that I started last summer. Once that's done, I'm sure I'll go back to somewhat limiting my trips, but we live too far out to count on saving too much. I HAVE to drive 12 miles each way to get to a store! And I have to drive 40 one way to get to the places I really like to shop.

 

Because I drive a gas-guzzler and don't really have a choice (4 kids+wheelchair=BAD milage), everytime gas goes up a dollar, it adds about $100 to our monthly budget. For us, that's HUGE. For others, maybe not so much. When we moved here 9 months ago, gas was 3.25, now it's 4.50. We're spending at least $125 more month than we did before. It hurts.

[Sara R]

I finally got a bike, so now all of our family have bikes. It's my goal to be able to do most errands on the bike. I bought an xtracycle attachment for my bike, which is supposed to hold a lot of groceries and a kid. It's not attached yet, so I can't say whether or not it works. I've been surprised how much fun it is to bike. Dh is riding his bike to and from work. I probably will accompany my oldest to and from her charter school (3.5 miles one way) on the bike next school year.

 

We were finally getting to the point where we were considering starting up extracurricular activities for my kids. We decided against them partly because of gas. I hope the people in charge of city soccer reorganize the program so you don't have to drive 15 miles to go to a game, which is ridiculous.

 

We are considering selling one car and replacing it with a CNG (natural gas) car. It's inexpensive in Utah and I'd like for us to be able to use another fuel.

 

In Utah we see a lot of people doing what we're doing. I've seen a lot of new "normal people" biking. (Before there were people who biked, but they were spandex-clad fitness types, not utility bikers.) I'm visiting family in a southern California suburb now and I don't see that. There may be more homeless-type people on bikes. Bikes are doable in this particular town. There are bike lanes and trails, and I rode to the library with my kids, but people just aren't doing it. A lot more SUVs on the road in California too, seems like. I wonder what the difference is. You'd think with all of the foreclosures that more Californians would be on the economic edge than Utahns. Maybe the Californians are putting it on credit cards still.

[GSMP]

Yep!!! I :auto: the speed limit now....My van gets better mileage when I keep it at 60 mph or less.

[Kris]

...because of gas prices?

 

about 7 years ago, I cut way back on my driving -- not that we drove all that much to begin with. (I'm a bicycle girl and we live within a mile of our work and within 1.5 miles of grocery and necessities.) in the last year I was able to average less than 20 mile / week, but that's hard with various kid activities this summer. our oldest will be taking the bus to work soon; I just picked up bus tickets for him today.

 

I read that most Americans are cutting back on other luxuries, like dining out, instead of reducing their driving. what about you? how are you coping?

 

Since we were pretty much down to the bare bones *before* gas prices went up, there's not much room for improvement. We're not sure what we're going to do -- it's getting serious pretty quickly.

[Guest Virginia Dawn]

Thanks for the extra tip.

[Margaret in GA]

My dd's piano teacher takes the summer off, so that saves us driving the 15 or so miles each way to her home for the lessons. When she is having lessons, we have that be our shopping day. There's a Walmart on our way, so after her lesson, we stop there and get groceries and other items needed. We don't do the quick runs to town to get one item anymore. It only takes 5-8 minutes, but town driving, with the stops and go's takes up a lot of gas.

 

You know, I've wondered about idling the car. My sister was told that if you are waiting in the vehicle for someone to do a quick errand, that it takes less gas to idle for a few minutes than it does to stop and restart the car. So she always does that and feels she is saving gas. Anyone have any ideas on that?

 

The rule of thumb is 10 seconds... if you are idling, turn off your engine unless you'll be moving again within 10 seconds. There's some more good info here:

 

http://consumerenergycenter.org/myths/idling.html

 

They also say: " For every two minutes a car is idling, it uses about the same amount of fuel it takes to go about one mile. Research indicates that the average person idles their car five to 10 minutes a day." Wow. 10 minutes a day. I gave up almost all idling about a year ago for environmental reasons- didn't realize how much money I was saving ;)

 

Margaret, idle-free

[mumztheword]

We're actually saving a lot in gas compared to a few months ago:

 

1. The kids are home instead of at school, which was a 45-minute trip EACH WAY. We're sticking pretty close to home, with a few longer trips here and there (camping/beach, etc).

 

2. We traded off our Minivan and bought a Mini Cooper. My husband drives this to the train station which is probably 7 miles away, and then takes the train to town. He's always commuted by train, though, so not really anything new.

 

So between getting rid of the van and not driving to/from school, we've seen a huge difference. I'm hoping my little Subaru will last another 100K miles...