Don't give it everything the car has, but push down when you're going to shift, using maybe two-thirds of the available power, and change through the gears relatively quickly. Another time when gasoline was saved was during braking. Then you should take your foot off the accelerator and use air resistance and friction to help slow the car. The program was designed for standard-transmission cars, which are far more popular in Europe than cars with automatic transmissions. But the program can be adapted to automatic transmissions, Dougherty said.
Fuel economy is a big issue here.
Driver education programs that stress fuel economy were more popular in the United States after the gasoline shortages of the 1970s, said Philip Patterson, an economist in the Office of Transportation Technologies at the Department of Energy who works with automobile companies to make vehicles more fuel-efficient. It's time we started working on this again. Van der Voort acknowledged that some of her dashboard-delivered advice, however sensible, was going to be a tough sell in a world full of people who often either ignore warnings or paste black electrical tape over them. For example, New York City cabbies, if not the ones in Enschede, are sure to reject the advice to turn off their engines after idling in traffic more than 30 seconds. E-mail this story to a friend.