Jun 23, 2008

Save Gas Like a Professional

With the price of gas soaring to record highs every day, drivers are looking for ways they can limit their spending on fuel. Professional chauffeurs, who are on the road all day, have an even greater impetus to save gasoline, and many of them are implementing several simple strategies to help increase gas mileage and save money. As New York-based Valera Global, a premier provider of executive transportation and operator of a large chauffeured fleet, notes, driver behavior and vehicle operation, as well as general vehicle maintenance, all have a large effect on fuel efficiency and can be controlled by the driver.

Here are tried-and-tested best driving practices from Valera Global to combat the ever-growing issue of high gas prices. Average consumers can implement the same practices to cut back on gas consumption, resulting in lower overall costs:

Check your speed Drivers should pay attention to how fast they are going and be sure to drive within the speed limit, because the faster the vehicle is going, the more gas it burns. One way to maintain good speed is to use cruise control when traffic and weather conditions permit. Another good way to control your speed is to keep your focus on what is going on a few vehicles ahead of you. This will also promote safer driving by giving you more time to react to sudden changes.

Pay attention to how you start and stop Drivers should not race their engines or accelerate hard when starting from a stop. Instead, it is important to wait for a few seconds before moving after the light turns green, and then slowly remove your foot from the brake pedal. This will make a car with automatic transmission move forward without the use of much gasoline. After the car has started to pick up speed on its own, drivers can slowly increase their speed by accelerating smoothly.

Plan ahead It is important to always think ahead and plan every car trip. This will help drivers cut back on repeating trips to the same destination a few times a day or week.

Stick to scheduled maintenances Keeping vehicles in good shape by following scheduled maintenance will also cut back on gas consumption. In addition, removing unnecessary items from vehicles makes the vehicle lighter, and the lighter the vehicle, the less gas it uses.

Check tire pressure regularly If drivers keep their tires full, they will experience less rolling resistance and improve gas mileage by approximately 3.3 percent. Properly inflated tires are also safer and last longer.