How to get my wife to drive smarter

[Gealii]

Originally Posted by Weather Spotter

get a device for teens that limits the speed of the car, then set it to say, 56 MPH

Good idea set it at the max speed limit in your area and do it secretly, at least it'll help the mileage once on the hw

[eco_generator]

Got my wife an UltraGauge and now I have to be careful or she'll get better mileage than me!

But my wife had incentive, since we get by on a small income. You have to incentivize your wife or she won't do it. Ex: Save this much in gas money and we take a cruise with that money... The thing being if she learns the habits, they are very hard to unlearn!

[Fat Charlie]

Get her an UltraGauge. Set it up for her. Instant, short trip and trip mpg are the most important things. Throw in instant mpg and you've got four big, easy to read numbers that don't require any interpretation.

I put coolant temp on hers, and ended up removing instant gph to fit ambient temp because she had the cluster set to show the outside temp instead of the odometer (???).

[Frank Lee]

If she don't care, she just don't care.

[Fat Charlie]

Right, but having the numbers on display will bring her around eventually.

[ksa8907]

i had the same issue, then i started talking about how much money per month it would save to drive better... really helped when i could show how much i was saving.

[MPGranger]

Funny thing is that my wife knows I went from filling up 4 times a month to filling up 3 times. Maybe we should do a fuel budget by distance and highway MPG... she would lose money and I would get more! (There is a NG armory across the river selling M1 garands for $500-$1000) But Financially hurting her is pretty hard because we have joint accounts; and if I suddenly set my own up, she will think I have a mistress on the side or something! (A wife and daughter are expensive enough, I don't need to pay for another girl LOL)

And here is the ironic thing, I started hypermiling because she thought me making the mini go sideways in every turn was irresponsible with a pregnant woman (her) in the car. So she complained about my driving habits and I changed after about a week and some research. Although I was heading that way with driving my truck to work in the morning. Rangers aren't really that fun to get sideways...

And I do have a SG2 and an ultragauge. And I have threatened to put alarms on the UG to bug the hell out of her if she is being bad. And she promptly said she would throw it out the window doing highway speeds. (she will, she's crazy)

So I might bring some points up and see how she responds. Thanks for the inputs

[eco_generator]

Originally Posted by MPGranger

And here is the ironic thing, I started hypermiling because she thought me making the mini go sideways in every turn was irresponsible with a pregnant woman (her) in the car. So she complained about my driving habits and I changed after about a week and some research. Although I was heading that way with driving my truck to work in the morning. Rangers aren't really that fun to get sideways...

Yeah, so she worked you over with negative incentives and you changed within a week... lol

You have to give her a convincing reason to try for better mileage and let her be able to control part of it (like what to do with the money saved). Show her the ecomodder garage showing you saved $235 over EPA so far in just 15 fill-ups. Restart the one on her car and have a competition to save some money. But the outcome has to be one that she will enjoy. With a side-effect of permanently lowering your gasoline bill. Now my wife could not stop eco-driving habits even if she had to!

[vskid3]

My wife didn't really care about mileage when we first got our Escape. She wasn't doing terrible, but after seeing what I could get from it, she became interested. Now she strives to squeeze more miles out of each gallon. One of the biggest helpers for her is the Ultragauge showing the instant mileage. She even told me that she wants a Scangauge so she can see what is going on with the hybrid stuff. The best part is that I'll probably have an easier time convincing her to let me do some aeromods to it.

One thing you could do is show her the difference between your tanks or trips and hers. Even better would be showing it as cost per mile (or 10 or 20 miles). One of my main motivations for hypermiling is saving money, its hard to argue with several hundred dollars saved every 10,000 miles.

In the end, though, it all comes down to how far you're willing to push it.

[larrybuck]

If nothing else; pick a wife that is mpg material.
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This could be your nightmare! Aren't you happier now!!????