Intersections
If you drive an SUV, minivan, truck, or other "large" vehicle, please be more observant and considerate of drivers of cars with better gas mileage at intersections.
Specifically, if you are making a LEFT turn at an intersection with traffic lights, and the light is RED, please stop BEHIND the line and do not inch forward needlessly. This allows people making right turns to see around the large obstruction that is your vehicle, in order to safely make their turn.
You gain absolutely NOTHING by inching forward and blocking off the view. The light is not going to change any faster, and you are, in fact, creating a hazardous situation for those around you at worst, and at best, a nuisance.
I'll have more tips on driving later, including a little bit of applied game theory. But this one is just plain applied common sense.
Comments
Automatic transmissions create the potential for that annoying behavior. The world would be better off if everyone drove manual transmission-equipped cars.
Posted by: tony | December 7, 2003 4:41 AM
I shouldn't say "create the potential for" so much as "make it easier for people to engage in."
Posted by: tony | December 7, 2003 4:44 AM
2 things here:
This situation does not just apply to the small car.
I think you are showing a bit of ignorance in inferring that all SUV's, minivans, vans, etc. are these gas guzzling creations. Your vehicle needs to be in the 30+ mpg catagory to be considered more efficient than mine, and recently, the norm for cars is about 25.
Posted by: haglund | December 7, 2003 4:46 PM
How do you figure that, since based on www.fueleconomy.gov for a 99 Jeep Grand Cherokee V8 4WD the gas mileage is 15 city/19 highway?
Certainly not all cars are more efficient than all SUVs or trucks. I mean, my 99 Ford Mustang GT Manual only gets 17/24... and there's probably some SUVs that do better than that. This is something that I'm considering during my next vehicle purchase more than I have in the past (the Acura TSX, which is the current front-runner, does 23/32).
The inaccurate part of my statement was to include minivans. The laws that govern fuel efficiency specify passenger cars (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.cgi?TITLE=49&PART=531&SECTION=5&YEAR=2000&TYPE=TEXT), and light trucks (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.cgi?TITLE=49&PART=533&SECTION=5&YEAR=2000&TYPE=TEXT) Minivans are actually included in the passenger cars standard, which today is 27.5 MPG average across the fleet. For light trucks, it's 20.7. That's the efficiency that manufacturers have to maintain on average across their fleets by law. Above 8500 pounds Gross Vehicle Weight, there aren't any standards (so vehicles like the Hummer and Excursion can burn as inefficiently as their manufacturers would like). In any case, there is a double standard, and as a class, light trucks (SUVs included) are less fuel efficient as allowed by law than passenger cars. These laws, by the way, were enacted in the Ford Administration with the allowance for lesser fuel efficiency for the light trucks because they wanted to make sure manufacturers could produce trucks that would still be affordable to farmers, and to include them in the stricter standards for passenger cars would have caused a great deal of hardship in that sector. In any case, the manufacturers have taken advantage of this well-intentioned law to drive down the overall fuel efficiency of the fleet since the booming popularity of the SUV hit during the 90's (it hit the all time high in the late 80's and has been going down ever since).
In any case, none of this fuel efficiency discussion really matters at that intersection... the simple point being: if you have a big vehicle, try to minimize the obstruction you pose to others.
Posted by: jet | December 7, 2003 8:38 PM
22/27 biotch!
Posted by: vince | December 7, 2003 9:06 PM