Auto Fuel Economy - Reduce Your Car Use
Here are some ways to slash your car use and so get better auto fuel economy!
We have already considered the best ways of . Now it's time to look at painless ways of reducing car use.
Auto fuel economy - ways to cut your car use and still get everything done!
Buying a 
can be fraught with dangers. And new cars are hideously expensive for most of us, even if we don't need to access finance.
Once you've bought your car, paid the tax and insurance and maybe HP payments, paid out more cash for servicing and maintaining it, it seems crazy not to use it at every opportunity. And many people, especially new drivers, just love driving and will think nothing of driving five miles just to buy ice-cream or a six-pack!
But with the spiralling cost of petrol and the knowledge that every journey contributes to climate change, many people now want to reduce their car's mileage any way they can.
Already, in response to the credit crunch, motorway traffic is down - in Britain, around 12% according to a report by Trafficmaster and the RAC Foundation (2008).
But there's more to be done, with or without economic pressure. Car use can account for around 70% of our personal carbon footprint, so it's a worthwhile thing to reduce!
Here are a few pointers to this particular method of achieving auto fuel economy.
Auto fuel economy - ways to cut your car use:
1 Lift share schemes
The biggest lift share scheme I've found is called just that Liftshare.com.
The idea is simple. You log the details of the journey(s) you want to do and you log details of journeys you can offer. Other people who have registered can then look. You receive or make offers for lift sharing. The way this works best is for regular journeys, commuting to work being the obvious one.
The software is pretty good and the interactive map helps a lot with planning journeys and seeing who is nearby. The only problem with it is that there does not seem to be any way of expanding your profile so that people can get a sense of who you are (in order to build up trust).
Many on-line communities now offer this kind of thing. Done well with some additional verification strategies, it can help people to feel confident when making arrangements on-line.
You are able to access people's phone numbers if they have entered them, so you can speak directly to them about your journey needs. If they have not, you will receive requests and offers through the system. You can look at other people's planned journeys on a map display or on a chart which lists likely matches.
There are now more than 250,000 registered users of liftshare.com and the number is growing fast.
You can ask for a contribution towards petrol but it should be realistic, not exploitative! Anything else could invalidate your car insurance.
PickupPal in Canada operates a similar scheme:
In the UK there are also some schemes which are more tailored to local need...
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