The environment and the driving instructor

By: Adolph-Eugen Bongard

Date: Saturday, 05. May 2007

Professor A. E. Bongard is research professor at the Technical University of Berlin and president of the Institute for Traffic Education of Berlin.

Traffic safety educators have, up to now, been almost exclusively concerned with the safety problems caused by automobiles. But perhaps we should widen the view and see the larger picture of the dangers for all of us that result merely from the fact that millions of automobiles are driven on our earth, and that more and more automobiles are being driven daily by more and more people.

We look at the thin global skin that sustains life on our planet today, and must sustain the lives of all who follow us, and realize that it took millions of years for this skin to evolve to the conditions in which it can sustain human life. What we have to realize now is that it will take less than 100 years to destroy this thin skin that sustains us, unless we change our way of life.

We cannot continue to waste energy and spoil the biosphere, as we do now. The enormous power of modern technology is constantly placing stresses on our environment, breaking vital links in the web of biological and physical processes that sustain the ecological system in which we live.

Technology has allowed humans to increase crop yields, generate countless kilowatt hours of electricity, and move millions of people from place to place by automobile. But unregulated and indiscriminate application of technologies that have brought us such high productivity and comfort, have also resulted in an assault on the environment that produces a grim and risky accumulation of biological debts.

Some 20 years ago, the Encyclopedia Americana stated: "The automobile is a familiar illustration of the dual nature of technology and the difficult, but clear, choices open to us. Designed to provide swift, easy transportation, the automobile is also the single most important source of air pollution in the U. S.

"Air pollution is only one of several serious effects automobiles have on the ecosystem. They also dictate land use, requiring millions of miles of streets, roads, and highways, and consume many resources, the extraction of which leads to other pollution problems. The manufacture of cars requires great amounts of electricity which is generated at high cost to the environment. Automobiles that are discarded or abandoned create major disposal problems."

Other technologies, such as those for mass transit, may have to eventually replace the automobile, the Encyclopedia stated, but in the meantime, short-term solutions such as emission control and conservation techniques must be pursued.

Ten years later, in 1980, the world's environmental situation and prospects for the next 20 years were graphically described in "Global 2000," a report prepared for the U.S. State Department and the President's Council on Environmental Quality. As expected, the report predicted continuing environmental deterioration unless international conservation efforts were stepped up dramatically.

Germany's driver education initiatives

In November 1990, the German government decided to reduce national CO2 emissions by 25% by the year 2005 and to start an extensive information and explanation campaign on an environmentally friendly way of driving and using motor cars.

The results of these decisions are not very convincing. A June, 1992 study by the Ministry of the Environment indicates that by the year 2005, traffic-related CO2 emissions in the former West Germany will grow by 24% over 1988 levels and by 147% in the former East Germany - because of an increase in traffic. The information and explanation campaign has not yet started.

Research has been done, studies published, conferences held, but nothing has been done. Why? The problems are (a) that CO2 has no toxic effects, (b) the dangers are invisible, (c) we are unable to imagine the huge numbers of automobiles.

Let's look at the different ways that people deal with the details that I've reported and that are, in fact, well known by now:

Many people simply ignore the environmental problem. They drive and use cars the way they always have and don't bother to change.
Others minimize the problem and understate the automobile's assault on the environment because it is not in their best interests to admit it. They point to catalytic converters and improved fuel efficiency as solutions.
There are also many who take seriously what has been reported of the fatal effects of motoring, who want drastic measures to be taken, expect remedies from auto companies, governments, local boards, from almost everybody but themselves. They think their own contribution would have little effect.
There are also, at last, people, mostly young, who are highly conscious of environmental problems and not only know what to do but are already changing their behavior, their habits, and their way of life. It is most instructive to see what difficulties they experience, where they succeed and fail. They are the pioneers of the traffic to come - traffic with less motoring, fewer cars in towns, and (as we must admit and accept at last) and less mobility.

The role of the driving instructor

What can driving instructors do in this situation? Nobody expects them to decry the automobile and they would be wrong if they did. The automobile is a wonderful thing. This is not a matter of belief but a common life experience. The problem is, and has always been, the misuse of the automobile.

Since so many traffic accidents still occur, it has remained the primary objective of driving instructors to promote safer driving. But if you look at traffic from another point of view, safety obviously is not the primary objective in the eyes of a society that declares efficient movement of traffic to be an absolute necessity, and that accepts traffic as we have it, despite so many serious accidents.

The traditional aims of driver education will not suffice in the face of the dangers we have to meet and the needs of the traffic of tomorrow. Today's problem is the unrestrained use of the automobile and lack of consciousness of its negative effects. What we badly need, and want, is a culture of driving. We need to encourage usage of the car in a civilized, undemonstrative, cultivated way, a way that could, for example, compete with the culture of dining.

We are forced now to create better driving manners in order to reduce stresses on the environment and give back to our cities a quality of life that has been degraded by unrestrained, uncivilized motoring.

In this respect, the task of instructors has become more complicated. They should teach their students to be safer drivers, and also to drive an automobile with consciousness of its effect on the environment. Teaching them to drive with less power, less pollution, less noise, and less inconvenience to others, in a manner that reminds them of gliding, could be a first step to realizing a culture of driving.

Such ideas were the subject of a project conducted at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) research driving school during the past few years. The main part of the project was sponsored by Umweltbundesamt (the Supreme Administrative Court for the Environment), and was supported by the Volkswagen company.

The topic was "The Teaching of Environmentally Conscious Behavior in Driver Education." The report was published by the UNESCO connecting office for environmental education. What follows is a short abstract from this report:

"The task we set ourselves was to create the prerequisites that would enable driving instructors to teach their students in an environmentally conscious manner, as provided for in Article 2 of the German Road Traffic Act since 1986.

"First, a "standard profile of an environmentally sound driving behavior," in keeping with the latest engineering findings, was defined by an interdisciplinary group. A curriculum which can be integrated into theoretical and practical driver instruction was then developed and tested several times at the research driving school of the TUB.

"The driving behavior of beginners trained at the school was compared repeatedly (after completion of the curriculum and again six and 12 months later) with conventionally trained drivers. In test drives conducted in a test vehicle, the environmentally conscious driving behavior curriculum was found to have had positive effects.

"Training courses of three days' duration for driving instructors and examiners were then developed and tested to initiate the implementation of the curriculum. Courses using the curriculum were successfully held in Berlin and several other federal states. Interest in the curriculum is coming from more and more experts and instructors in the countries around Germany.

"The special conditions in some countries may require the curriculum to be altered somewhat. In Germany, most drivers use cars with a manual gear shift. They're used to driving to high engine rotations (RPM) before shifting to the next gear. Except for the moments between shifts from lower to higher gears, they don't take advantage of the momentum. They overuse the accelerator to maintain or increase speed, and overuse the brakes or the engine to reduce it. In driving this way, they waste fuel. This can easily be demonstrated.

"We teach our students to shift gears sooner, avoiding RPM over 2,000. We teach them to be aware of momentum and to take advantage of it, shifting from any higher gear to neutral and letting the momentum of the car keep it moving along when a stop or slowing is indicated from a distance.

New style must be demonstrated

"We learned, from many courses with driving instructors and examiners, that it is insufficient to explain the new style in words. It needs to be demonstrated in order to convince experienced drivers who, at first, will not believe that one can drive safely while using it.

"Instructors have reported to us that it takes about three months to adopt the new style of driving, which involves gliding through traffic elegantly, and not at all slowly. Experienced drivers can save up to 30% on fuel consumption. Beginners trained at the TUB driving school saved one litre per 100 kilometres on average, in comparison with conventionally trained beginners. This is more than we ourselves expected and it's quite an impressive amount.

"According to a report published by the well-known ARAL gasoline company last year, West German drivers could save 1.5 litres of gasoline per 100 km, 13% on average, by using energy saving driving techniques. That would save 3,400 million litres yearly.

"Reducing emission by better driving is, as we see it, only a first step and it will help make students more conscious of environmental problems that are connected with the use of automobiles. Driving instructors who have realized the necessity to reduce motoring must also teach their students to avoid the use of the car whenever they can use an alternative such as biking, walking, or public transit. They can teach them, too, to avoid superfluous mobility.

"Booklet number two of this year's Shell Briefing Service on "Motoring and the Environment" states that "a cooperative approach between governments, auto manufacturers, and the oil industry is needed to ensure that the benefits of the motor car as a fast, convenient form of transportation are not outweighed by its negative impact on the environment."

This will not suffice. The most important factor is that the people who drive cars must learn to reduce motoring. We must all change our attitudes towards the automobile and motoring, and young people must be helped in this by those who teach them: competent, environmentally conscious driving instructors.