People Who Complain Most About Cars Drive Them

Dear Editor,
   Reading a recent letter (about cyclists among cars) ["Postmarks," Oct. 31], I am struck again by the fact that the people who complain most about car exhaust, car noise, and traffic jams are the people who produce them. Motorists tell me they don't walk or cycle because they don't want to breathe car exhaust. (They don't mind producing exhaust for me to breathe.) Or they drive a car because it's safer. (Safer for whom?) Car folks tell me they're moving to the country to get away from the traffic noise. (They're going to drive a car to the country. Once settled there, they will drive back to the city a lot. Other motorists will have the same idea. Soon there will be traffic noise at the nice little place in the country. And strip malls will line the road from the city to the country.)
   If we don't like the effects of excessive car dependence (and I don't think anyone likes smog, traffic jams, bad-smelling exhaust, traffic noise, road rage, deaths, injuries, terror, and ugly landscapes), we can't escape them by driving cars. If you dislike exhaust, traffic noise, and congestion, then please, in the name of reason, find a way to stop producing them yourself.