Turn off your car

Dear car owners,

A big problem happening in our world every day is idling. Idling is when someone leaves their car running for more than 10 seconds while it is stationary. Frequent places this occurs is in drive thrus, banks, and in driveways while the cars warm up. The students in Whitefish Middle School Student Council are mostly focusing on idling near school zones. When parents drop off and pick up their children from school, a lot of them sit idling their cars. Most of the time, there are kids playing outside on the playground during those times, and the exhaust from the parked cars is extremely unhealthy to be running around in. What many drivers also don’t realize is that idling drains money from their wallets by the minute. If they sit idling for two minutes, the gas that was wasted could have been used to take the car a mile further.

For everyone reading this letter, we hope you will think about being a little bit more considerate to everyone around you. Thank you!

Katie Benkelman, Whitefish Middle School Student Council