What’s up with Grab drivers?

I’ve been here for over a year now and this is true for most of them.

The way they drive especially on highway is that rather than keeping accelerator pedal in one place to keep the speed stead – they press it down, reach certain speed, then let it go, speed drops and repeat.

This causes car to no be steady and rocking back and forth. It’s triggering me and I’m getting nauseous all the time while I never had this problem.

Is this driving school thing here? Some myth about saving gas? Am I tripping and it’s not happening?

Netizens’ comments

It’s to save fuel.It’s called the pulse and glide technique and hyper-milers are known to use it. It makes sense in flat countries with open highways and a lot of space between vehicles. It’s totally stupid to do in Singapore where you’re most likely going to have to brake a lot and you lose all the efficiency gains you made.If you’re annoyed with it, you can just tell the driver that it’s making you nauseous and that you’re going to puke if they continue driving like that, they should drive normally after that since no one wants anyone puking in their vehicles.

You seem to be on point, thx for the explanation and advice. I believe that’s what they are trying to execute but based on what I just read vs what I observe I think they are not doing it correctly. The way most of them do it here is too frequent acceleration and deceleration as opposed to a smooth glide described in the method.

I’m a driver (not a phv driver) and my guess is they’re trying to reach the destination faster so they can get more jobs. I notice phv cars never give way, never give a long berth and speed up really fast. Also, if you owned your own car, you wouldn’t drive it that way cos you’d kill it; rental units definitely mean there’s no sense of ownership. Lastly, they aren’t too concerned about fuel cos many petrol brands have a phv card giving up to 20% disc on the cheapest fuels iirc…. Hence, don’t buy ex-phv cars.

That’s a taxi driver habit remnant. It steemed from a belief the meter on the taxi moved based on acceleration so if they did it this way it would run up the meter more. Guess they didn’t adept to it. Also, I feel it’s laziness or lack of energy to sustain as most of time these drivers are old and/or overworked.