Fuel consumption unimportant?

[apersson850]

I spent some part of this year's summer holiday in Britain. Travelling by car, of course. The main route within the UK was Dover - Falmouth - Dover.
In the Southern part of England, there are just a handful of good roads. In Devon and Cornwall about - one, the A30.
The rest are the same as I experienced when I visited Cornwall the first time, back in 1990. Narrow, windling and from all points of view inefficient to drive on. Which is easily noticeable with today's trip computers. My car consumes 10-20% more fuel in England than it does when driving in Sweden.

There's of course nothing the driver can do about this, except maybe vote for politicians who want to improve the British road network. If there are any such politicians? I don't know.

But another observation I made was that a great deal, a clear majority, of the British drivers seem to not care at all about fuel consumption when they are driving. It's brisk acceleration for 800 meters, then hit the brakes the last 200 into the queue in front of the next roundabout. Which places them one car ahead of me, who accelerated mildly for 600 meters and then coasted into the roundabout, well aware of that any hurry in the beginning wouldn't pay off when reaching the queue. Not more than being two seconds ahead, at least.
The price for that is 20-40% additional fuel consumption, to gain one position in the queue.

Do you, who live in the UK, have any comment on this?
Are you generally so wealthy that you don't care about the additional cost?
Are you so much in a hurry that you care about the cost, but considers it well spent money?
Are you unaware of the effects such driving habits have on fuel consumption?

I'm just curious. We had a nice holiday. Most drivers we encountered were very helpful in traffic.
If anybody cares, here are some photos.

[wimorrison]

Sums up the numpties that drive over here pretty accurately I suggest.

[jonnyf90]

When I first got my licence when I was 18 and drove a Ford Ka, I didn't care.

Now I drive a 940 Turbo, economy is everything. Especially now I have a decent commute. Managing to get 35mpg is a minor triumph, and I do everything I can to achieve this.
Of course, I have the odd day (Sunday morning) when I give it the beans. But then it's all about the smiles per gallon

Cheers, or should I say, tack!

[john.wigley]

We attempt to drive economically, but no, fuel consumption is not overly important to us. But then again, we only do about 8K miles pa between us these days. The lack of depreciation on 'our' cars more than justifies their greater thirst than more modern designs in our view.

Regards, John.

PS You are right about driving in Sweden: we did over 30 MPG over there many years ago in our 244 which averaged around 23 at home - couldn't believe it at the time, but felt they must be engineered for that type of driving.

[Harvey1512]

Sweeping assumption. Lots of people do care, they do worry about the cost of fuel and drive accordingly. You just didn't meet them.

[DaveNP]

Personally it's a balance of factors. I drive a 2.5 V70 it's never going to be economical but it gets me from A to B in comfort and on overall economy since the car cost peanuts I accept the ongoing fuel cost. Having said that when I'm driving I generally try not to do a lot of hard acceleration and braking and on longer journeys keep the cruising speed down, as you point out the difference is often just one place ahead in the next queue.
Britain's roads are different to the rest of Europe as our population densities are higher and our urban areas bigger which means the roads are not as clever and traffic densities are higher which does make it more difficult to make good economical progress.

[Clan]

I think there are three reasons why most are not driving with economy in mind :

1, Fuel is quite a bit cheaper this year than it used to be .
2 , There are a huge number of company fuelled vehicles on the road .
3 , Cars use a lot less fuel than they once did .

There are a lot of bad habits too :

Not using the handbrake when stopped , stick there with foot on brake .

Lane changing all the time to get to the front of the queue quicker , no indicators used and slot into a moving gap barely longer than their car . If you leave a reasonable gap you can be sure it is filled in no time at all .

Certain drivers in German cars have big magnets in the doors which drag the car out to the outside lane what ever the driving conditions , as soon as they join a major road , they seem to think it is the quickest way , when usually it is not .. but they haven't figured that out yet ,

Just a few , ...

whilst on the subject , i'm astonished , been using the 343 1400 a lot the last month and getting 42 mpg out of it ... that's not all cruising , a few hard accelerations and steep inclines every 40 mile day .

[green van man]

This really is a problem with D4/5 give it beans and watch the smile.
Also in counties such as Devon and Cornwall as in Ceredigion there are no motorways and few dual carageways so the brisk acceleration from time to time is the only way to clear the car.
Yes I do cruse down the M4 from pont abreham to Cardiff occasionaly but just to get to Carmarthen and the dual carageway is a 45 min drive with lots of speed restrictions.

I manage 40+ mpg on average from the 2wd D4 XC70 with polestar, which means I can get past traffic when I need to.
I live in a tourist area, this time of year you allow extra time for every journey what with visitors and hay making tractors, but can anyone please explain why so many are incapable of driving smoothly, you do not have to brake for every bend, you can overtake the tractor that is chugging along at 25 mph when it's safe to do so, it just needs a bit of foresight and awareness.

Paul.

[MaxK11C]

Depends what car I'm in.
My old 740 didn't have a fuel gauge so I didn't know, and was cautious.
In my Nissan March - all about smiles per gallon
Daily driver (Seat Leon Cupra R) Hrmm :/ the less said the better

[apersson850]

According to the car's trip computer, my average was 7.3 l/100 km across the trip.
Driving at the same average speed here at home I would have been at or below 6.5 l/100 km.
Put in a different way, doing 60 km/h in Cornwall consumes about as much as doing 170 km/h on German Autobahn. The fact that Cornwall has a lot of hills doesn't make it better, of course.

Sorry, but it's too late to figure that out in miles per gallon.

There is by far space enough to make the roads better in Cornwall, so that can't be the problem. It must be lack of interest from the politicians. In the long run, that investment would pay for itself in lower transport cost, but most politicians aren't interested in things that don't give results during the current period they are serving. If there's an election in between, then nope... At least that's the way they think here.

Of course there are people who drive economically. I was just curious about the seemingly large ratio that didn't. Maybe you notice them more on the narrow roads. I'm talking about country roads, not downtown in Mousehole.

No offense intended, I was just curious about your thoughts.