Aug

Gas-Saving Moment of the Day: Yes, Really, Check Your Tires

Posted by Published in Car Buying

We don’t like to get involved in political food fights, but the hash amoung John McCain and Barack Obama by checking your tire pressure has gotten fairly absurd, culminating in "Obama Energy Plan" tire gauges.

As we recommended earlier, keeping your tires at the proper inflation will improve your vehicle’s fuel efficiency by 3% to 4%, according to the EPA, and yes, whether every driver in the country did that it would save us more oil than can be found drilling offshore.

For instance, the office of Energy estimates that, in 2005, Americans wasted 1.2 billion gallons of gas considering of underinflated tires, which equates to roughly 61 billion barrels of oil. Yet whether the government opened every final

spec of the ocean now closed to offshore drilling, the station of the Interior estimates it would only find 17.9 billion barrels of oil.

McCain continues to ridicule Obama for the statement, but by the government’s own numbers, the Illinois senator is right, with about 43 billion barrels of oil to spare.

The lesson? Actually put that tire gauge to use.

How Air in the Tires Became a Gauge of Candidates (Detroit Free Press)

Related:
More Gas-Saving Moments of the Day (KickingTires)