There are plenty of things everyone can do to improve gas mileage when driving. And, there are also plenty of reasons for driving smarter.

You save money, you reduce air pollution (we all like clean air!), you help reduce America's dependence upon foreign oil (nearly 60% of the petroleum used in the US is imported), you reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The website fueleconomy.gov includes a lot of information to help drivers make better choices about how they drive, and also helps drivers compare vehicles for fuel economy when they are looking to purchase a new (or used) vehicle. The link will take you to a calculator that will help you find out how much money you will save by driving a car with better gass mileage.

 Even if you are not planning on buying a fuel efficient car - or, even if you already have a car with good gas mileage, here are some things to consider for improving your car's gas mileage or reducing the amount of gas you use. These tips will also improved your personal bottom line!

Drive the speed limit. Driving just 5 miles per hour over the speed limit uses an average of 6% more fuel per mile driven. (Source: US Department of Energy, 2003 report) I read an interesting story to illustrate this point: A Toyota Corolla (that gets 40 miles to the gallon when going 55 mph) was driving 55 miles per hour down the highway. It was passed by a Toyota Prius gas/electric hybrid (that gets 52 miles to the gallon at 55 mph) that was driving 75 mph. At that moment, the Prius was actually getting a lower miles per gallon than the Corolla (39 mpg compared to 40 mpg).

Make sure your car’s tires are properly inflated. On average, American’s tires are underinflated 20%, which cuts our gas mileage and increases our fuel use when driving. Just making sure our tires are properly inflated can reduce our CO2 output by 3%. If we multiply the savings across all of the cars on US roads, we could save 270,000 barrels of oil a day, or over 98 million barrels a year. Each barrel burned releases 840 pounds of carbon, so that would mean an annual reduction of 82,320,000,000 (that’s billion) pounds (or 41,160,000 tons) of carbon annually. (Sources: epa.gov, road&track, and fueleconomy.gov)

Telecommute once a week. Americans traveled 614.5 billion miles to and from work in 2001. If all commuters worked from home just one day a week, we could save 5.85 billion gallons of oil and cut over 65 million metric tons (roughly 143 billion pounds) of carbon dioxide each year.