Cars kill 75 people every day!
The Grim Reaper
Winter 2000
It's official. Cars don't kill 3,500 per year. They kill a minimum of 15,500 each year, but by the Department of Health's own admission the figure may be as great as 27,500 annually. That equates to between 300 and 530 per week or up to 75 each day. Which puts the occasional rail crash into perspective.
The figures are confirmed in startlingly frank correspondence between the Department of Health and the Grim Reaper. The total comprises the 3,500 or so who are killed in road accidents, plus between 12,000 and 24,000 whose deaths are "brought forward" as a result of exposure to traffic pollutants.
On the face of it, this would seem to be bad news all round, but Bob Maynard, Senior Medical Officer at the DoH, attempts to put a positive spin on it. In reply to the Reaper's enquiry to John Prescott about the effect of exhaust particles on health he admits that death is bad news and says, "Most experts agree that current levels of particles damage health." No surprises there then. However, he continues, "We do not know precisely who is affected, but it seems likely that a large proportion of those are in poor health." His colleage Bola Nothan in the Air Pollution unit, who replies on behalf of the Health Minister, Alan Milburn, is rather more blunt. Whilst admitting the deaths of thousands she is at pains to stress that "the risk to healthy individuals is very small at the levels of pollution experienced in the UK and the effects are seen most clearly in the elderly and very ill." How reassuring. And whilst they admit that up to 24,000 die from pollutants, they can't bring themselves to admit that these people are actually killed by the car fumes, preferring to put a positive gloss on this disaster and state instead that their deaths are mereley "brought forward". As we will all meet the Grim Reaper at tome time, this sets an interesting precedent. Will the Government now argue that the higher death rates in the poorer parts of the country are nothing to worry too much about, because those affected are only having their deaths brought forward?
It is contemptible to imply that the healthy and younger majority have nothing to worry about from car pollution, and that it is only the vulnerable who will be affected, and that they would anyway have died sooner rather than later. But the government thinks it lets them off the hook. By reassuring the public that it is only those whose time is almost up who are being killed by pollution, it allows the Government to continue to evade the disastrous consequences of the unrestrained use of private cars. Since New Labour has been in office there has been continued traffic growth, with traffic volumes projected to increase by the Government's own admission by at least a further 17% in the next 10 years. This will affect us all. The Lancet recently reported research that found that city dwellers were dying 18 months earlier than they would otherwise because of high levels of particulate pollution from traffic. Britain faces a national health disaster. The public should no longer have the right to drive where and when they wish. Cars are a social evil and their private use should be banned.
The Even Grimmer Reaper
