Ticking off

The idlers are back in force. The temperature has dropped, the mornings are dark, it’s November, and once again everybody is idling! As I walk London’s streets, I estimate that I encounter a parked vehicle with its engine ticking over at least once every 150 metres. In fact my experience is that the majority of occupied parked vehicles have the engine running. And I’m not even talking about the thousands of cars stuck in traffic, sitting in long jams – amongst those, the proportion idling is close to 100%, even where it’s apparent that nobody is going anywhere any time soon.

I go through phases of asking drivers of stationary vehicles to please turn off their engine. Here is a brief but representative medley of the responses I get.

Oh don’t worry mate, I’m going in a minute

I’m charging my phone, my car battery will go dead if I turn the engine off

It’s none of your business, it’s my car

It uses less fuel than turning it off and starting it again

Many people simply ignore me, refuse to make eye contact and keep their window up. Once in a while, remarkably, somebody listens and turns off their engine. But most people are fairly hostile, because they don’t like being told off, especially by some smug, interfering stranger. Yet I don’t see why the air that I must breathe should be polluted because somebody else wants to keep warm for 10 minutes while they wait to collect their child from nursery, or finish a phone conversation, or sleep, or check their Instagram.

They should all turn their engines off! We have a climate emergency! We have dangerous and illegal levels of air pollution in our cities! Everybody knows it. I suspect that most drivers see their own idling engine as trivial in the big picture; and each has his own justification for idling – just as he also justifies his own need to drive, while being irritated by other road users, who form the traffic blocking his path.

But the problem is not trivial. Our cities are filled with gridlocked traffic, all day, every day – tens of thousands of cars, which spend most of their time stuck in a jam with their engine running. It is not the exception; it’s the rule.

It seems to me that if people did one little thing to help tackle our dire pollution issue, it would be to turn off their car engine whenever they could. It’s so little effort, just the turn of a key, or the press of a button – but the effect across our cities would be huge. Immediately, the combined emissions of our vehicles would reduce, our streets would be a little quieter – and car owners would also all be a little better off, as they would save fuel.  

Why not?