The main reason is that cars are getting bigger and pick-up trucks and sports vehicles are often replacing the smaller, lighter passenger cars. The average new vehicle in 1998 consumes more fuel that its counterpart in 1988. In the USA in 1987 cars averaged 25.9 miles to the gallon. Exhaust from all combustion engines combine to produce local adverse effects on the health of car users and all innocent bystanders. Cities have become islands of toxic chemicals from the unrestrained use of vehicles burning fossil fuels.
Cars are noisy, ugly, dangerous and dominate the experience of modern living.
Cars and trucks are dangerous machines. We are now used to the carnage on roads and highways- attempts to reduce death and disability from our motorized containers have not substantially altered the negative impact on society. The adverse health effects of car exhaust are pervasive and difficult to measure. Television Ads for sports and recreation vehicles show solitary and impeccable machines in wilderness locations or recently, one shows a couple making a mad dash to escape the city core in their expensive, luxury upholstered clone of the land-rover. The ads are selling a fantasy of wilderness and escape.