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If as many servicemen and women were killed in Britain’s wars, politicians and newspaper editors of every hue would be outraged. But preventing these deaths means confronting both the car industry and the sacred freedoms of the motorist, so those with power treat them as sad but unavoidable collateral damage.
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For example, it proposes a car scrappage scheme, but only for people who want to swap their old bangers for new bangers. Yet the same report points out that 75% of the particulate emissions that vehicles produce come from their tyres and brakes, and erosion of the road surface. In other words, every motor vehicle, including electric cars, can damage your health. So why not pay people to replace their old cars with no car, by issuing the incentive in the form of public transport tokens?
Bicycles are mentioned only in passing. But given that over half the car journeys in this country are less than five miles, that cycle provision is cheap by comparison to other transport options, and that Britain suffers from an epidemic of unfitness, why not aim to make the bicycle our primary means of transport? Sorry – this is a one-way street. Significantly reducing the cars on the road appears to be unthinkable.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/08/cars-choke-communities-pollution-diesel
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