Time to Judge Yourself if You’re An Engine Idling Parent

What do you think when you see a parent waiting for children outside school, with their engine running?  Are you one of the parents engaging in this polluting and health-damaging behaviour yourself?  Do you question your impacts?  How are you being judged?

All questions are being posed by vehicle technology and security specialist, HH Driveright, founder of the first Idling Awareness Day (May 17, 2023).

To support its call for drivers to switch off their engines when it’s not necessary to have them running, it commissioned research.  This discovered 54% of people view parents who sit outside schools with their car engines running as “irresponsible”. Do this and you will be judged even more harshly by women 57% and the over-55s (65%).

Where you live will make a difference too. In the South West, 67% of people view such engine idling as irresponsible. More than six-in-ten (62%) feel the same in the East Midlands, Wales and East of England.

Why are people engine idling?  Well, somewhat depressingly, only 52% of people are worried about the impacts of air pollution on children’s health – despite all the statistics that highlight air pollution’s impacts on health, respiratory problems and morbidity.

And many of us have just got into really bad habits, with 38% of us never turning our car engine off, once we’ve started driving, until we park up again.

Maybe we just like wasting fuel, with HH Driveright having shown that one hour of idling in a van costs £7.87 and wastes 4.5 litres of fuel, wasting around £2047.50 per year in money terms.  Or perhaps we just like to pump out noxious chemicals into the environment totally unnecessarily?  In a van, that same one hour of idling results in 11.9kg of CO2 being emitted, for no good reason - over 3100kg per year.

Do we just want to pick up a fine?  The Highway Code actually states that engine idling should not take place when a car is stationary.

“Next time you keep your engine idling unnecessarily, stop and think.  Judge yourself as harshly as others may be judging you and become part of the solution, rather than the pollution, by switching off,” says HH Driveright’s managing director, Rebecca Hall.

To get the information that might convince you to stop engine idling, head to  https://www.hhdriveright.com/idling-awareness-day/  

Research was carried out amongst 1000 adults by independent research company, Censuswide, in April 2023.

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Editors notes

HH Driveright is an award-winning vehicle security and compliance specialist, with exciting and advanced solutions for van drivers, caravan owners and car drivers wishing to protect their vehicles, livelihood and reputation. It won the 'Keeping Your Show on the Road' award at the 2022 Logistics UK Van Awards and is continually finding ways to achieve that goal, to keep vehicles and their drivers or owners safe and protected.