Skip to content

Idling at drive-throughs is real pollution issue in Cowichan

Smart people don’t idle their cars any more than necessary and ignorant people won’t pay attention to a bylaw or any other laws.

Another bylaw? Heaven forbid!

Smart people don’t idle their cars any more than necessary and ignorant people won’t pay attention to a bylaw or any other laws. Consider speeding: there is a real law against speeding. Who is paying attention to it? And it is not only a high producer of unnecessary pollution but it kills a whole bunch of people every year as well.

Now to the real pollution problem.

Each drive-through restaurant hosts about an average of five to 10 cars in a continuous line-up for about a half-hour three times a day, sometimes four times a day.

Using conservative estimates again, 450 minutes of one car idling per day, per location. That is real pollution. This is where action by those bylaw makers is needed. It would be interesting to hear what the regional districts are planning to do about that.

And remember that this is a conservative estimate and must be multiplied by 5,000 because this is the number of drive-through restaurants we have in our country. Good luck.

 

Uwe Schmidt

Cobble Hill