The Austrian Ecodriving Initiative

In 2004 the Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management started the Ecodriving initiative in Austria as part of the klima:aktiv mobil (link: www.klimaaktivmobil.at) program for climate protection. The Ecodriving initiative certifies trainers and offers training courses for passenger car and truck drivers and even tractor drivers.

The initiative cooperates with fleet operators, like e.g. the national bus carrier where 2.800 bus drivers were trained in Ecodriving. Measuring the long term effect a reduction of fuel consumption of 6,5% was monitored. Thus the bus carrier saves more than 2 Mio litres of diesel per year now.

More information on the Austrian Ecodriving initiative can be found at www.spritspar.at.

ECOWILL activities

The first ECOWILL training seminar for 12 Austrian master trainers, who were certified for the newly developed short duration training, took place in May 2011. These trainers have since trained another 32 trainers so that at the moment there exists a network of 44 trainers for ECOWILL short duration trainings in Austria.

These trainers have already given roughly 100 short-duration trainings, primarily on-site for companies, to quickly turn fleet drivers into eco-drivers. Furthermore it turned out that short duration trainings are also very suitable to be offered at events like trade fairs and private company events.

The interest in short duration trainings is high and one of our trainers was even invited to Moscow, Russia, to offer ECOWILL short duration trainings at an international conference.

Ecodriving in driving schools

As Ecodriving is compulsory in the second phase of the learner drivers education in Austria, about 90.000 learner drivers are trained in Ecodriving every year. To support driving teachers in their work a teaching film was produced. Learner drivers who completed the Ecodriving training receive a brochure including the golden rules of Ecodriving (http://www.ecodrive.org/en/what_is_ecodriving-/the_golden_rules_of_ecodriving/) and a table for self-monitoring their future fuel consumption.