I live in the centre of a medium-sized town. I can walk, in 5 or so minutes, to a daily market, a wide variety of shops and several takeaways and restaurants.

Needless to say, I don’t drive very much when I am at home.

Many of my neighbours, on the other hand, take a rather different view. I routinely see them driving to places I can walk to in just a few minutes – often going out and returning within 10 minutes.

Aside from being just plain lazy, there are a number of more serious downsides to using a vehicle in this way, as highlighted by some new research published this week by the IAM:

• The first two miles of a journey can use double the usual amount of fuel, thanks to a cold engine and inefficient urban driving.
• Repeated cold starts and short journeys cause disproportionate wear and tear to a vehicle, as it never warms up properly

Even if we accept the reality that most people don’t really care that much about the environment, there is a serious cost aspect to this (the main reason I don’t do it…).

You might think that the situation gets better once out on the open road, but there’s more bad news here, too:

• Under-inflated tires – a common sight, despite 20% under-inflation causing a 3% increase in fuel consumption and poor handling
• Unused roof racks and boxes – up to 20% more fuel at motorway speeds
• Aggressive driving – up to 15% more fuel used
• Speeding – driving at 80mph can use 15% more fuel than driving at 70mph

Everything I have described above is fairly commonplace. Yet all of that extra fuel means that the advantages of owning a car with low CO2 emissions are completely wasted, as CO2 emissions rise when fuel consumption rises.

According to the Institute of Advanced Motorists, driving in the manner I’ve described above can mean that even small, low-emission cars like the Ford Focus ECOnetic can end up spewing out as much CO2 as well-driven larger cars, like the Ford Galaxy.

And when driving a larger vehicle – like a lorry – the cost implications can run into £’000s each year, as highlighted by this report from RoadTransport.com.

It kind of makes a nonsense of different VED (road tax) rates, doesn’t it? Maybe road tax should just be scrapped. It might be much fairer for the cost of our road usage to be based on the amount of fuel we use – and we already pay enough tax on fuel, don’t we?