No Left Turn Policies One Way to Save Fuel
In 2008, at the depths of the gas price wars, companies big and small made serious efforts to reduce fuel consumption, while delivering goods and services more efficiently.
One solution became great material for news magazines and late night talk show hosts:
Avoid Left Turns.
The study was apparently well-documented and the intent, quite serious. When the general public stopped laughing long enough to give it some consideration, “Avoid Left Turns” actually began to make a bit of sense.
Drivers spend an inordinate amount of time idling at stop lights, waiting for traffic to clear, before maneuvering a sweeping left turn. Right turns are shorter. They’re easier accomplished and hence you wait less. And then there’s the safety factor: Right lanes are safer, because the driver is not crossing an opposing lane of traffic.
Why else would bureaucrats in the upper echelon of the U.S. Government see fit to pass the “Right on Red” rule? Because Right is Safe; Left is Waste.
All this silliness was quite taken to heart by the corporate world. Companies which adopted “Avoid Left” policies include the United Parcel Service. They use a software tracking system to plan their routes in a loop, with as few left turns as possible. Little changes can add up fast over a year’s time. UPS reportedly saved 3 million gallons of gas in a year after adopting “Avoid Left Turns.”
Of course today, a much more exact, and proven method of cutting mileage and fuel dependency is GPS tracking technology. A GPS tracking system shows and records everywhere a vehicle goes. Satellites send out signals and the GPS tracking receiver “reads” them to determine its position. This happens every few minutes; in some cases every few seconds.
The vehicle tracking system also records the vehicle’s direction and speed. Every stop is noted.
When these vehicle trips are overlaid over a map on the Internet, someone can clearly plan how the vehicle can get from Point A to Point B, using the least amount of fuel.
In December, 2009 in Fort Wayne, IN, county commissioners voted to install GPS tracking systems in 20 municipal vehicles. After a Department of Health shakeup three years ago, where six workers were pressured to resign due to personal errands on work time, the county decided to get a handle on how and where the county cars are being used. The 20 cars on GPS tracking are considered a trial sample, to determine potential savings in fuel, maintenance and labor costs. It will cost the county about $10,000 to put real-time GPS tracking units on the test group. If the cost is recouped in a short time due to lower operational costs, GPS tracking will become standard-issue for all 280 Fort Wayne county vehicles.
GPS tracking today is routinely used in many, many municipalities. Governments are run on tax dollars. Tax payers will suffer no fools with egos, lead feet or lazy dispositions.
LandAirSea Systems, a leading manufacturer of vehicle tracking systems since 1994, counts several branches of the federal government as its customers. The GPS Tracking Key, GPS Tracking Key Pro® and Victoria GPS Tracking System are the vehicle tracking systems of choice for the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Marshals and the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, among others departments.
Live or real-time GPS tracking systems like the Victoria GPS Tracking System will let a manager/operator at the command center observe the vehicles in action; all at the same time on the same map. If the manger saw a driver in error, he or she could order an immediate correction. Or that dispatcher could easily make last-minute changes to driver routes.
Passive GPS tracking systems – which log travel data for later retrieval – will save a government money because they uncover patterns of wasteful driving habits: speeding, overlapping trips and personal errands on work time. Passive vehicle tracking systems document travel history with amazing detail. There can be no dispute when poor driving habits are brought to the driver’s attention.
If you’d like to try an “Avoid Left Turns” policy at your company, a GPS tracking system would be a good way to do it. Vehicle tracking systems will measure the true effectiveness of a “No Lefts” rule by marking changes in mileage, travel times, and engine idling.
“When operating costs go up across the board, the guy that does something just a little bit different will get the edge,” said Z. John Zhang, a marketing professor at University of Pennsylvania.
GPS tracking could be that edge.
For those wondering if travel is possible with no left turns; probably not. The driver eventually ends up going in a circle or an expanding or narrowing spiral. But Avoid Left Turns is absolutely possible. One left turn could be substituted with up to five rights. There are plenty of No Left Turn mazes available on the Internet for practice.
Source: Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
Tags: GPS Tracking, lane, left, maze, Tax, Traffic, turn, Vehicle Tracking
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