by

I know the title of this post isn’t anything revolutionary or unknown, but hopefully this underscores the importance of reducing the amount of time your car is in idle.

According to Fueleconomy.gov, over 17% of your car’s gas is wasted by simply being in idle.Â Obviously, the more you do to reduce the amount of time you sit in idle, the better your gas mileage is going to be.

This is one of the main reasons why hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius, Honda Insight and the Ford Escape HybridÂ get such great gas mileage: when the car isn’t moving, or is moving at a relatively slow speed, the car’s engine stops using fuel and runs primarily on battery power.

Here are some simple ways to reduce the amount of time you sit in idle and ultimately increase your gas mileage:

Avoid being in the car during rush hour.Â Even stagering your commute by 30 minutes can have a big impact on the amount of time you sit idling in traffic.

If you know of times when your car is going to sit in idle (running in to a friend’s house, going in to Blockbuster to drop off a movie, etc.) go ahead and park the car and turn its engine off.

Instead of turning on your car and then putting on your seatbelt, adjusting your mirrors, picking out which CD you want to listen to, etc., go ahead and do all of those things before you start the car.

In the winter, don’t let your car sit in idle while you try to warm up the inside or scrape frost off of your windows.

Same thing goes for air conditioning during the summer.

Avoid using drive throughs.Â Just park the car and go inside.

With all this in mind, try your best to reduce the amount of time your car sits in idle and you should see a nice increase in your car’s gas mileage.