Letters: Only transparency in fuel consumption will reduce emissions – Telegraph
If car manufacturers were forced to fit a prominent, permanent display showing current fuel consumption, the majority of drivers would quickly realise how much excessive acceleration and speed increases consumption and pollution.
Brian Collins
Bodicote, Oxfordshire
In its preoccupation with carbon dioxide, which supposedly eventually causes climate change, Britain has lost the plot on pollution, which causes thousands of deaths a year in this country and is widely reckoned to account for the rise in childhood diseases such as asthma and eczema.
The Volkswagen affair reminds us that the pollutants largely come from diesel engines. These carcinogens include benzene, nitrogen oxides and particulates.
Carbon dioxide is harmless to human health – it is a constituent of the air we breathe. Yet my big diesel car is taxed far lower than my wife’s petrol one because tax here is only assessed on carbon dioxide.