On 16/02/07, Niall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> What a worldview.
>
> If you think cars are "making your life a misery" you are in something of
> a
> minority, and one I can't really relate to.



You see Niall, you don't understand that it is possible to have a view on
this issue without that view being an emotionally extreme one. Whatever
makes you think that I think that cars are making my life a misery? How many
times do I have to say this? I am not anti-car. I am the owner of two cars,
one of them a mass production classic marque which I keep on the road
because of my interest in the history, development and technology of the
motor car.

But - a big but - in the same way that I like beer too, I don't spend half
my life pi$$ed.

The facts is that the motor car is increasingly dominating our life and
environment. I don't know what experience you have outside of the UK, but an
hour of LA, Peking or Delhi in the rush hour is enough for any sane person
to realise that things cannot be allowed to develop as they are doing. The
motor car has changed all our lives for the better, but it has, and
continues, to change them for the worse. And I am surprised that anyone with
their eyes open cannot see this.

Just one example, since you restricted yourself to one in your posting. When
I first came to live in London in the early 70s, the levels of traffic
compared to my home town Leicester were...well, they were incomprable. In
Leicester you could drive from one side to the city to the other in minutes,
there were never traffic jams, you could walk up the High Street in total
safety. Nowadays traffic in Leicester is equally as bad as it was in London
all those years ago. The traffic moves at crawl, it is constantly jammed and
there were so many accidents in the town centre that tracts of it had to
pedestrianised simply to avoid casualties. This has come about for one
reason and one only: there are far more cars than there ever were. And all
the projections for car ownership, historically very reliable statistics,
are that they ownership will continue to increase at the same sort of rates
it has been.

But, you see, as someone who, against the overwhelming weight of scientific
opinion, still doesn't accept that global warming is a direct result of CO2
emissions, much of it from cars, I just know you won't accept this.

But I would go further. I would say that even the 'cleanest' car on the
roads now has to be seen as polluting. It is the cars themselves, not just
their emissions, which is the problem. And I think, painful though it is to
me personally, that the days of go-as-you-please motoring which we remember
from the 20th century will have to be curtailed in the future. Or putting it
another way, I see no alternative that car use will have to be limited, by
price or sanction or whatever.

Yet people are still going to want to get about. Public transport IMO offers
the only long term way out.

Steve


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Reply via email to