A lateral thought

[Martin Cassini]

The fumes from diesel buses are bad enough, but what about the noise pollution? Often it is due to harsh acceleration by drivers who have no incentive to drive gently. Vast quantities of fuel are wasted and emissions generated by careless driving. Here's a thought. Reward bus and truck drivers for extending the range of their tanks. At a stroke, emissions, fuel use and noise pollution would fall, and quality of life would improve.

[Ian Perry]

Private motorists often accelerate quickly, despite the financial cost to themselves. Some companies produce lists of the prices that their company car drivers pay for fuel and the fuel efficiency that they achieve.
The figures showed large differences between drivers with the same model of vehicle. Some of the improved fuel performance was down to minor adjustments on individual vehicles, some due to traffic conditions on different routes, whilst some fuel efficiency differences were due to the way people drove. Drivers with reputations for “speed” returned the worst fuel efficiency.
Rather than investing in educating people to drive differently, I think it is more advantageous to consolidate freight, so there are less freight vehicles on our roads and to replace buses with trams.