CAR ploughs through home. Road blocked after four-vehicle pile-up. Motorcyclist dies in crash on A273. Cyclist injured in hit-and-run. Lorry crash leaves motorcylist dead. Cyclist in her 30s dies after being hit by truck.

These stories have all featured in The Argus over the last month. They’ve attracted just a handful of comments, whereas anything about reducing car dependency and improving cycling safety gets hundreds of comments from people attempting to explain why such measures are wrong.

The daily vehicle carnage comes on top of the war waged on our bodies by vehicle exhaust and the noise and ugliness of roads filled with chugging cars. Tourists, comes to Brighton and enjoy our seaside dual carriageway. The city’s streets could be lined with trees, but we’ve decided we don’t have room because we need the space to park cars. (There are 42,000 on-street parking spaces in the city). And not even that’s enough. People are fighting for their "right" to park on pavements too.

Less than three per cent of the city’s roads have cycle lanes. Yet according to social media, they're everywhere. Over the years, millions of trees have been felled for the city’s roads, thousands of gardens paved over for car parking, yet when the council cuts down some bushes for a cycle lane, all hell breaks loose.

If this were all for a noble cause, it might be worth the price. But it's mostly able-bodied people fighting for their "right" to drive to the park, to drive their kids round the corner to school, to drive five minutes to the beach. They’re fighting for their "right" to shut their eyes to the destruction and death caused by their addiction to driving.

There’s only one possible explanation. The place with the highest concentration of toxic exhaust is inside a car. The fumes are getting to people’s brains.

Beth Godwin

Furze Hill

Hove