Lexus: The hybrid debate blog

If hybrid technology were able to reduce the amount of pollution and noise on our roads, the benefits to public health and wellbeing would be considerable. At present, roads are not pleasant places to be, and they’re especially horrible for pedestrians, cyclists, drivers with their windows open and local residents. People have always known instinctively that traffic isn’t good for their health, but recent research has shown that even our worst suspicions were short of the mark.

For example, the World Health Organisation says that transport-related air pollution (the single biggest source of air pollution in urban areas) causes a wide range of health problems including cancer, adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes and the lowering of male fertility. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution says that children living close to busy roads have an approximately 50% increased risk of experiencing respiratory illnesses, including asthma, and that air pollution reduces life expectancy by an average of eight months. A report commissioned recently by Calor Gas, the producer of liquified petroleum gas, concluded that someone walking down Marylebone Road in Central London for 48 minutes would inhale the same amount of pollution as if they had smoked a cigarette.

And the closer you are to traffic, the worse its impact on your health. Roy Colville, senior lecturer in air-quality management at Imperial College London, advises that pollution levels fall tenfold just a few metres away from exhaust pipes.

In additional to the direct impact of cars on our health, the act of driving is also having an indirect effect, by encouraging laziness. Respiratory illnesses and other health problems related to fumes are compounded hugely by obesity and other diseases of inactivity, as people resort to their cars for even the shortest trip. Equally, people are discouraged from walking or cycling because of pollution. And the UK government has done very little to break this vicious spiral, after decades of making cars the highest priority in its transport policies. Policy-makers urgently need to step in, to end road-user segregation (see: "Reinventing the road for health and wellbeing".