To those who speed up toward a red light…why?
Sometimes we just need pause to take a breath. Life moves by so quickly that within a split second, it seems to be gone. This is also evident with our driving habits. The next thing you know, all those good driving habits are gone. The thing is, habits never really go away. They just change. Everyone seems to be in a hurry these days to get to their destinations. There are problems with having that attitude behind the wheel. Many problems.
Each day during my commute I watch drivers speed up to red lights. Think about it. The light is red, which tells you that you’ll need to stop, but drivers are still accelerating. Why? It’s been happening for years but sometimes you just need to ask them why. So I did.
I was recently retraining a licensed driver for their company. The driver had a tendency to accelerate very quickly from a stopped position when the light turned green and then kept accelerating as the light ahead of them changed to red. While stopped at the red light I asked them why they were accelerating toward a red light. They just looked at me with a blank look on their face.
As the drive continued, they did it again. Once again, I asked why. It turned out they were basically unaware of their own actions. A lack of conscience while driving so to speak. It became a habit for them as the years continued. So I kept asking them; “why speed up to stop?” After a while they said they were often in a hurry. They often felt that if they accelerated toward a red light, the light may change to green before they got there so they were off again without much of a pause. Umm, not exactly.
During the rest of the training I worked to get them to slow early when the light ahead was red or when traffic ahead was already stopped. I explained how slowing early can save fuel and brake wear. They didn’t seem to buy into that idea but kept trying to adjust their driving habits to please me. Weeks after the training they contacted me. They had time to think through the point I was trying to make and had time to practice it some more. It turns out they saw a difference in their fuel economy over those following few weeks, just like I had explained would happen. They were able to travel more on a full tank of fuel. They also seem to feel less stressed because they were in motion more often than being stopped. They also admitted they felt they were wasting time sitting at a red light. They realized this wasn’t the case.
Speaking with cyclists, they often ease off their pedaling while approaching a red light or stopped traffic. The purpose is to keep their momentum until the light changed back to green. It was so much easier to get up to speed while they were already in motion. This works while driving a vehicle too. You have a lot to gain just by adjusting your habits…and your speed.