Smart Driving from the Start | Green Driving America

NOTE:

FOR 2025 & 2026, FUNDING FOR THE CLEAN TRANSPORTATION PATH PROJECT IS NOT ANTICIPATED

Smart Driving from the Start© has been a funded presentation under The Clean Transportation Path© project intended for Driver Education classes.

(The Clean Transportation Path project also offered The Clean Transportation Path funded presentations intended for high school STEM and social studies classes.)

Our goal with Smart Driving from the Start webinar presentations has been for students to take with them information that makes them SMARTER and SAFER drivers.

Among our smart driving tips, ACCELERATE AND BRAKING SMOOTHLY and WATCH YOUR SPEED especially show students the benefits of efficient driving that can save them more than $200 annually in fuel use, maintenance, and repair costs while making them safer drivers - a WIN-WIN!

THE PROBLEM: Most of us are not aware of it, but here's a few inefficient, highly impactful driving scenarios played out millions of times daily!:

• continuing to accelerate after a traffic light ahead turns red, ending in a hard stop, hoping to be the first in line, only to have a car the next lane over gently coasting to a stop but not stopping because the light has turned green

• speeding, tailgating, weaving in and out of traffic

• sitting in a mall parking lot, idling continuously with the engine on, browsing on a smartphone

• driving a gas guzzling, polluting vehicle (even with such vehicles, employing our smart driving tips will improve fuel economy and lessen tailpipe toxins)

HOW A DIFFERENCE CAN BE MADE: With our Smart Driving from the Start presentations, student drivers are primarily shown the benefits of smart driving practices. Also shown is an introduction of low- to zero-emission vehicles, the future of road transportation. Plus, a brief segment on alternatives to driving.

The benefits:

• saving money in fuel use, maintenance, and repair costs

• how being a smart driver equates to being a safer driver

• plus, the reduction of CO2 emissions, energy waste, and pollution

Smart Driving from the Start Presentation Details

For the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, Green Driving America (GDA) has offered Smart Driving from the Start (SDFTS) presentations under The Clean Transportation Path project.

Smart Driving from the Start for driver education classes has been a webinar presentation that includes a 45-minute slideshow, including two videos. Student drivers are shown the benefits above, realized in two ways:

1. How they drive: economical smart driving practices in gas-powered vehicles such as accelerate and brake smoothly, watching speed, and avoiding unnecessary idling1 (when parked)

2. What they drive: an introduction to low- to zero-emission vehicles including how they operate and differ from gas-powered vehicles, their reduced maintenance/repair costs, a state’s growing charging station infrastructure, purchase/lease incentives of new and used versions of these vehicles, and how they perform in cold weather

These guest-speaking webinar presentations have been intended for driver education classes (having a required set number of hours of live classroom instruction2). For 2024, thanks to GDA grant awards from the Climate Catalysts Innovation Fund of the Vermont Council on Rural Development, these presentations have been given at no cost in the State of Vermont.

SDFTS presentations have been conducted virtually3 (such as with Zoom) by one of our trained college level interns4; these interns have been volunteers, paid a stipend. Occasionally, GDA executive director Wayne Michaud has conducted presentations5.

A two-page PDF handout supplementing presentation content is included: customized for each state; Vermont shown.

Engagement: intern presenters asks the audience several questions during the slideshow; if additional time, a Q and A / discussion session follows (interns are provided knowledge of transportation efficiency and, when applicable, electrification beyond presentation content)

An optional, on-the-spot Quick Quiz is given to students if an extra five minutes is available. The quiz has nine, mostly multiple choice questions to help reinforce what they were shown. Answers are revealed in a following slide.

The PowerPoint is customized for each state, for example showing a state's particular anti-idling laws/regulations, EV charging station locations, and available EV incentives/rebates/credits.

1For the State of Vermont, we cover the Vermont driver education course mandate on instruction of the adverse effects of idling and of the state law

2Why not California (GDA base location)? Many states currently require this type of driver education instruction. However in some states, including California, the classroom driver education instruction portion is mostly limited to a student self-taught online training program; this is currently not conducive to our presentations

4Some states may limit guest-speaking in driver education classrooms to be in-person only

5Intern information provided to educators upon arranging for presentations

6Wayne is present at start of all presentations to assure interns are ready to present

THE CLEAN TRANSPORTATION PATH PRESENTATIONS TIMELINE & TEACHER RECOMMENTATIONS 2022-2023-2024

Our Experience in the School Community

Green Driving America Inc. evolved from an organization that specialized in conducting educational projects in the school community. Most of this work was in Vermont. The organization, then called Idle-Free VT, was awarded grants to implement these projects starting in 2013. They were split into two efforts:

1. measured idle-free studies/campaigns at 17 schools from 2014 to 2025 (12 in Vermont; five in California)

2. the work we had continued to go forward with: an updated version of green driving guest-lecturing presentations that were given in more than 120 Vermont drivers education and science/math educator classes from 2013-2016.

Presentation PowerPoint, Videos, Student Handout

Slide from the Smart Driving from the Start presentation:

SMART DRIVING TIP: Accelerate and Brake Smoothly

FOR INTERESTED EDUCATORS: Below is a YouTube video of images (advancing in 12 seconds each), not narrated, from the full animated Smart Driving from the Start PowerPoint slide presentation shown in the classroom; the presenter provides elaboration on the slides. NOTE: this video PowerPoint may not be the current version shown (also note that this is the PowerPoint for Vermont; it is customized for each state).

Also shown are YouTube videos of the two videos included in the presentation.

NOTE: The Smart Driving from the Start© presentation is copyrighted and the property of Green Driving America Inc. It may not be used or recorded without permission. The other videos below are open source and may be freely used.

SMART DRIVING FROM THE START STUDENT HANDOUT

(customized for each state; Vermont shown)

FUEL REDUCTION & MONEY SAVINGS FIGURES: The Driving More Efficiently page of fueleconomy.gov, the official U.S. source for fuel economy information, shows the average fuel reduction percentages and amounts of money saved by practicing smart driving with gasoline vehicles (does not include EV benefits). Driving sensibly and observing speed limits clearly yield the biggest results.

WHAT WILL THE DIFFERENCE BE?: Our educational sessions will make a difference as a percentage of students will grasp and apply the compelling information shown. They (and by extension, some of the adults around them) will learn to be more efficient and environmentally responsible drivers as well as being shown the path to cleaner vehicles. As the existing fleet of internal combustion engine vehicles continue to predominate for the next 15 years or more, the Driving More Efficiently figures at fueleconomy.gov show that each of these smart drivers will avoid the consumption of many hundreds to thousands of gallons of fuel, which will also result in significant reductions of CO2 emissions and energy savings.

HOW SMART DRIVERS ARE SAFER DRIVERS: In the practice of smooth acceleration and braking, smart drivers avoid jackrabbit starts and tailgating. And this helps them to be more mindful of the flow of traffic around and ahead of them. This is the art of defensive driving: anticipating hazards to allow for more reaction time to perform evasive maneuvers. And of course it is also safer to comply with speed limits.