Driving tips from Dad
My dad, Dave Furlong, died in 2012, and I miss him dearly. He provided me with inspiration and encouragement throughout his life. His memory endures, not least because he’s a rich source of stories. Here’s one that might bring a smile to your face.
When I first started learning to drive in dad’s unprepossessing Austin Allegro, he pointedly told me to treat the control pedals as follows:
Foot on the accelerator - spend money!
Foot on the brake pedal - waste money!
Like many people who had grown up during the harsh times of the 1930s, dad had a tendency not to spend money unnecessarily. His choice of car and preferred driving style were no exception.
He had a point. Having left school at 14, he was largely oblivious to the Laws of Thermodynamics, but he was a practical thinker, and he knew that to get something moving, you needed to apply a force. His time in the Royal Navy had taught him that the application of force always demands energy consumption, and energy costs money. Conversely, bringing something to a stop also requires force and further expenditure of energy. In this instance, his son’s heavy foot on the right-hand pedal was costing a pretty penny. Dad was at pains to point out that slamming my foot on the brake pedal merely scrubbed out the effect of my clumsy use of the accelerator moments before – emptying his wallet in the process.
Dads’ wisdom lives on, and in the main, it has turned me into a careful and considerate driver, which is more than can be said for the guy in the large black Range Rover who overtook me on a blind bend driving well over the speed limit a few days ago. The driver ended up a mere two cars in front of me at the next set of traffic lights. Apart from wondering why guys in large black Range Rovers always tend to drive like this, on seeing the idiot slam on the brakes to avoid colliding with an oncoming truck, cutting me up in the process, I was also reminded of another of dad’s catchphrases: “What’s the most dangerous component in a car? The nut behind the wheel.”
In 2021 there is another downside to inconsiderate driving. The consumption of petrol and diesel is directly linked to climate change. Poor driving results in unnecessary environmental damage. The UK government’s greenhouse gas reporting conversion factors suggest that the typical petrol car driven on UK roads produces around 180g of carbon for every kilometre driven (Diesel 173g). Generally, bigger, faster cars have higher emissions, although newer vehicles are more efficient, and my hybrid Toyota has a claimed carbon impact of 110g per kilometre.
Driving has become less carbon-intensive over the years and, thanks to COVID19, I’m driving far less than I used to. Nonetheless, dad’s wisdom still holds true, and every time I hit the accelerator or the brake pedal, I’m conscious that I’m spending money and harming the planet too.
Whilst COVID19 has pushed me and millions of others towards home working, rendering my car little more than a rapidly depreciating lump of metal on the drive, remote working does not free me from a damaging carbon footprint. The role of the stuff that we pump into the hole at the back of our cars in causing climate change is well understood, but many people are less aware of the impact of their email and web browsing habits. According to the Boston Consulting Group, ICT accounts for 3-4% of global CO2 emissions – twice as much a civil aviation. The surge in demand for digital networking during the pandemic resulted in telecommunications companies consuming more energy than ever and expanding their carbon footprint as a consequence. Internet service providers are looking at their sustainability metrics with some concern. Given that global data traffic is expected to grow by 60% year on year, there’s a new problem looming unless we see some big investment in energy efficiency.
Here at Cogent Content, we aren’t in the business of fixing the carbon footprints of Amazon and Google, but we try out best to put our own house in order and help our clients to do likewise.
Back in July, I received an email to a group mailing list regarding a routine employment matter. Within 72 hours, the inquiry had generated over 350 responses due to over-zealous use of the ‘Reply All’ button. More than 350 emails to be opened, read, and promptly deleted. Irrelevant email using up precious storage space on mail servers. But there’s more…
Every email we send uses electricity to display it, and the network connection uses electricity while the email is being transferred. As the email travels across the internet, each server will use some electricity to temporarily store it before passing it on. According to recent research, an email generates 4g of carbon dioxide (much more if the email contains images or large attachments). This suggests that the response to the original inquiry had generated 1.4 kg of global warming gas, equivalent to me driving 12 miles in my car – but only if I stick to dad’s rules. This may seem trivial on the face of it, but imagine this scenario is repeated regularly in organisations all over the world?
Hitting ‘Reply All’ is just one of the bad habits we address in the Cogent Content Email Charter. Feel free to download a copy, amend it and rebadge it to suit your own circumstances.
Forty years after passing my driving test at the first attempt - thanks to dad’s patience and sound advice - much has changed. Unsurprisingly, the Laws of Thermodynamics stay the same. Nothing comes without a cost, and all human activity has a price. Smart thinking will save energy, money and lives wherever you are, be it behind the wheel of a car or in front of a computer screen.
And it can save the planet too.
If you think a little bit of smart thinking from Cogent Content can help your business, get in touch.