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what the voices in my head tell me to write
Friday, April 02, 2010
I would love to be a green motorist
I live in a small cottage in the country. For some reason I don't want to move. I work as a web developer. Nearly all the jobs at my level are in major cities, normally London. Surprisingly working for home is not really an option for the vast majority of these jobs.
That means I spend 2 1/2 to 3 hours a day in my car driving to and from work. I drive a Renault Clio 1.3 Diesel which gets around 50 mpg most of the time (apparently the version with the turbo and intercooler is faster but somehow more economical but far to expensive). I try to drive carefully. Change up quickly, leave it in a higher gear while decelerating, cruising instead of rushing, keeping the car maintained etc.
I earn a good wage and could buy a very nice car indeed, sometimes it would be handy to have more space or a bit more comfort. But we stick with the clio as its cheap to run, cheerful and perfectly adequate.
What really annoys me are comments like this on the guardians site. As soon as someone mentions any ways of saving money on your driving costs the first comment is "get a bike". I live 60 miles from my place of work, 10 miles from a decent supermarket or any decent shops. We have 4 buses a day come through the village. To get to work on public transport would take me about 4 hours each way and still involve about 4 miles of walking. My wife and I work long hours between us so its hard to be around when tescos or whoever deliver. We do grow our own veg to some extent but we cant do it all.
If I lived in Islington and could walk, bike or take the public transport to work I would. But there is no way in the world I would want to live in a city.
So we do our best. We have to drive a car to do anything though. We so all we can to minimise the impact we have on the environment when we use it though.
Permanent link and Comments posted by Rob Cornelius @ Friday, April 02, 2010
