The One Thing....

In the 1980's I lived in LA, and was married to my 1st husband. He wanted a Cadillac, and he got a spiffy new "compact" (1985 was the year they brought the size down from Yacht to Motorboat) and the bane of my existance was when he made me schlepp around all the (grade school age and younger) kids in that thing. (My car was a VW Van - and the wheelbase was smaller than the Caddy!) Not only did I have to worry about yogurt and cracker crumbs on the upholstery, there was this gadget that kept track of the mileage in real time. Every darn time I took his car out, I got the lecture about "rabbit starts" and "let it coast" - damn!

Not only did this thing keep stats on what you were doing in real time, it kept stats on a cumulative basis.

I was ruining his stats!

STATS!!!!

I've come to think that this could be the single easiest and most powerful gadget that could cause the United States to conserve. With real time "stats", you can modify your behavior to economise and conserve. With cumulative stats, you have bragging rights. My God - add daily, weekly, monthly and yearly, and you could BET on them...

Every new car sold in the US should have this. I mean, the technology is 20 years old, for gosh sakes! Our patriotic duty should be to conserve as much oil as possible. They could even have good citizens on local news - with their stats to prove it. What more can the guys want - more stats!!!

...time to write some letters.....