Saving gas can be achieved in a very simple way: always turn right. This tip helps everyone financially, reduces the risk of accidents, and is good for the environment. No, this is not one of those virus scams that are spreading around the internet but don’t work. This is a fact that has been used by North American express delivery company UPS for two decades, saving millions of dollars every year, and that everyone can also apply in their daily lives, because it is based on a mathematical algorithm that appeared about 65 years ago.
The discoverer of this “technique” is the American mathematician George Dantzig, who is known as the father of linear programming. His theory was developed to reduce military costs during World War II, but it has been used by many companies since then and still solves many practical problems today. In fact, this unique recycling method allows UPS to save nearly 3.78 million liters of gasoline every year, reduce 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, and deliver 350,000 more packages.
What is it based on and how does it work?
At first glance, it might seem unlikely that always turning right will help you save money. In many cases, it can cause you to drive in the opposite direction of your final destination and have to make a larger turn to get there. But the math shows the opposite. In countries where driving is in the right lane, you are obliged to give way to vehicles traveling in the opposite direction at intersections where you must turn left. That is, you have to brake, stop, wait for the right moment to start and veer in a new direction.
Stopping and restarting means wasting fuel. In addition, the risk of collision increases significantly. Turning only to the right, while you may need to travel a greater distance, ensures that you have a preference at the junction and do not stop frequently, thus maintaining a more constant speed and reducing consumption.
Jamie Heineman and Adam Savage, famous stars of the TV show “MythBusters,” came to the same conclusion in their attempt to test urban legends and other popular beliefs. They wanted to take George Danziger’s approach a step further and, in addition to proving that it worked, they also tried to calculate the fuel and time savings.
To do this, they used two delivery vans with the same destination. The first one can turn in both directions, requiring 8 turns to the left, 4 turns to the right, and driving 8.3 kilometers in 52 minutes to reach the designated location. The second car kept trying to turn right, taking longer (61 minutes) and traveling 10.8 kilometers. Or equally, it means arriving later and traveling longer distances.
But there are considerable fuel savings, as just turning right requires 1.81 liters of petrol, while further left turns consume up to 3.08 liters. So, considering current fuel prices, saving more than a liter for every three trips won’t be bad.