Saving money on gas is about driving technique

Can we stop talking about the price of gas for a minute? No? We can't? OK, then, let's talk about saving money by using less of it.

A quick search for gas-saving tips led me to The Daily Green, which has a helpful slide show about gas-saving techniques. I had assumed that the best thing you can do to save gas is to keep your car in tip-top shape. Filters, belts, tires, all that good stuff. And that's true, but what's interesting is that how you drive is important as well.

I had no idea, for example, that smooth acceleration and deceleration can improve your mileage on the highway by 33 percent and that driving with your foot on the brake decreases mileage by up to 35 percent. Another fact: Adding 100 pounds to your load decreases your mileage by up to two percent.

And don't forget that the Internet can help you -- sort of -- to find the cheapest gas prices in your town. Both GasPriceWatch and GasBuddy.com get prices and drop them onto a map so you can easily see where to go.

In my tests, however, the two sites rarely agreed on information, and some listed prices were flagged as not current. Keep in mind that driving around looking for cheap gas actually burns gas, so you'll need to run the numbers before you commit to driving three towns over to save three cents a gallon.

Don Willmott's blog posts are provided by LifeWire, a part of The New York Times Company.