{"id":176,"date":"2008-08-04T15:17:54","date_gmt":"2008-08-04T14:17:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=176"},"modified":"2008-08-04T15:19:58","modified_gmt":"2008-08-04T14:19:58","slug":"heres-why-increasing-road-tax-wont-decrease-co2-emissions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/176","title":{"rendered":"Here&#8217;s Why Increasing Road Tax Won&#8217;t Decrease CO2 Emissions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, I don&#8217;t drive very much when I am at home.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8211; often going out and returning within 10 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from being just plain lazy, there are a number of more serious downsides to using a vehicle in this way, as highlighted by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iam.org.uk\/pressroom\/newsarchive\/A+light+right+foot+will+do+more+to+reduce+CO2+than+retrospective+road+tax+says+the+IAM.htm\" target=\"_blank\">some new research published this week by the IAM<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The first two miles of a journey can use <strong>double <\/strong>the usual amount of fuel, thanks to a cold engine and inefficient urban driving.<\/li>\n<li>Repeated cold starts and short journeys cause disproportionate wear and tear to a vehicle, as it never warms up properly<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Even if we accept the reality that most people don&#8217;t really care that much about the environment, there is a serious cost aspect to this (the main reason I don&#8217;t do it&#8230;).<\/p>\n<p>You might think that the situation gets better once out on the open road, but there&#8217;s more bad news here, too:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Under-inflated tires &#8211; a common sight, despite 20% under-inflation causing a 3% increase in fuel consumption and poor handling<\/li>\n<li>Unused roof racks and boxes &#8211; up to 20% more fuel at motorway speeds<\/li>\n<li>Aggressive driving &#8211; up to 15% more fuel used<\/li>\n<li>Speeding &#8211; driving at 80mph can use 15% more fuel than driving at 70mph<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iam.org.uk\" target=\"_blank\">Institute of Advanced Motorists<\/a>, driving in the manner I&#8217;ve described above can mean that even small, low-emission cars like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ford.co.uk\/ns7\/focmca\/foc_models\/foc_model_econetic\/-\/-\/-\/-\" target=\"_blank\">Ford Focus ECOnetic<\/a> can end up spewing out as much CO2 as well-driven larger cars, like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ford.co.uk\/ns7\/galaxy\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\" target=\"_blank\">Ford Galaxy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And when driving a larger vehicle &#8211; like a lorry &#8211; the cost implications can run into \u00a3&#8217;000s each year, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.roadtransport.com\/Articles\/2008\/08\/04\/131336\/fuel-saving-driving-styles-will-save-a-fortune.html\" target=\"_blank\">highlighted by this report from RoadTransport.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It kind of makes a nonsense of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.direct.gov.uk\/en\/Motoring\/OwningAVehicle\/HowToTaxYourVehicle\/DG_4022118\" target=\"_blank\">different VED (road tax) rates<\/a>, doesn&#8217;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 &#8211; and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/58\" target=\"_self\">we already pay enough tax on fuel<\/a>, don&#8217;t we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Increasing road tax (VED) to discourage people from buying vehicles with higher CO2 emissions could be a complete failure in environmental terms. Driving technique plays a much more important role in managing emissions, as has been highlighted by two new reports this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[37],"tags":[359,59,272,358,102,101],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}