It just makes sense. Each day, 40,000 preventable tons of CO2 are released by idling. Idling damages your car, the environment, and your wallet.- It helps your engine. The most commonly cited reason for idling is that it helps your engine run, but that is not true. Since the 1980s, cars have been built with an electric ignition meaning that idling isn’t necessary before you start driving. The truth is that idling damages your engine’s performance in the long term by forcing it to operate inefficiently.
- It stops pollution. Your car’s engine isn’t able to operate efficiently when idling and so it releases just as much pollution as driving. Car pollution has been linked to increased rates of asthma, allergies, and heart disease. There’s no reason to let idling increase those numbers.
- It saves you money. Every day, drivers in the U.S. waste approximately 3.8 million gallons of gas through voluntary idling. If your car is idling for 10 seconds or longer it uses more gas than restarting your car would, costing you money that could easily be saved by turning off your engine. The average US family could save between $113 and $241 annually by cutting out five minutes of idling a day.
