Turn off your car

Some interesting facts about idling and turning off your car.

  • 10 seconds of idling uses as much gas as restarting your car. As a rule of thumb, if your car will be stationary for 10 seconds or more, turn it off to save gas and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
  • The wear on components by the additional starting of your car will equate to about $10/year.
  • An idling engine releases twice as much exhaust fumes as a moving vehicle
  • If every light-duty vehicle's driver reduced idling by 5 minutes a day, this would result in 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emmissions in Canada annualy.

It's kind of fun to see how far you can coast with your engine off, but beware that power brakes and steering don't work when your ignition is off. If you're going to try this, make sure to practice with no cars around, especially mine :)