I'm guessing the ECO Pedal won't be a standard option in Nissan's latest supercar, the GT-R.

by Brook Wilkinson

Last week, Nissan announced that it would debut a new ECO Pedal to help drivers save fuel in 2009. The ECO Pedal gently pushes back against the driver's foot when it calculates that he or she is driving too aggressively--at least in terms of fuel consumption. Research done by Nissan suggests that the technology could help drivers improve fuel efficiency by five to ten percent.

Some enthusiasts are worked up about the notion of Big Brother watching over their gas gauge, but I, for one, am all in favor of the new pedal. I used to be the woman flying by you in the left lane, my radar detector tuned to pick up every ping, my GPS system constantly overestimating my driving times from point A to point B. That was a year ago, when I lived in New York City, didn't own a car, and drove only during occasional weekends in the country. Now I live in San Francisco, where I try to take buses as much as possible but still find reason to use my Audi at least once a week. Thanks to rising gas prices and my ever-increasing devotion to the environment, though, I'm now the one in the far-right lane, with the cruise control set as slow as traffic will allow. Just yesterday I got honked at--by a guy old enough to be my grandfather, no less--for slowing down 50 feet short of a light that had just turned red.

Some small part of me (the part that holds a diploma from the Skip Barber Racing School, I'm sure) still wants to put the pedal to the metal, but these days I derive my driving satisfaction from each extra mile I get per tank of gas, not the minutes I save on a drive down the Peninsula.

It's time Grandpa learned how much gas he could save by not accelerating up to every red light. And besides, you can turn the system off if you want to burn rubber every once in a while.