Green Daily

It's an age-old question that's been brought into sharp focus again these days as fuel prices arc ever higher. Is it more energy efficient to turn your car off at a stoplight (so that you don't waste gas by sitting there idling) or is it best to let it idle, as turning it on again using a bigger push of fuel than idling would?

This is one of the questions that Jonathan Welsh answered yesterday in his Wall Street Journal column, Me and My Car. He says that once a car is warm, the extra fuel used to turn it on is negligible and that it is actually standard practice in Europe to turn the car off at long lights. However the savings are minimal and an argument could be made that it puts unnecessary wear and tear on your starter motor.

If you have a car like mine (15 years old and 140,000+ miles) turning it off at the light isn't much of an option as you never know if it will turn on again. I thank my lucky stars each time it starts and don't like to tempt the fates.