Brake the Habit – How Driving Directly Impacts the Environment

By Greg Richardson

At this point we know that driving a car is bad for the environment. But what about driving is so harmful, and how bad is it really?

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Driving a private car is probably a typical citizen’s most ‘polluting’ daily activity.” It has been calculated, for instance, that 70 percent of the carbon monoxice, 45 percent of the nitrogen oxides, and 34 percent of the hydrocarbon pollution in the United States can be traced directly to automobile emissions.

And these are only the direct emissions coming out of the tailpipe. Driving a car also generates a number of other types of pollution. Water pollution, for instance, results from the runoff of motor oil, brake fluids, and other automobile effluents that cars release onto roadways and parking lots. While many industrial, commercial, and residential activities contribute to polluted waterways, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that cars and trucks release hundreds of thousands of tons of oil and grease that end up in our nation’s streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans each year.

Cars also kill more wildlife each year than any other human activity. There are between 725,000 and 1.5 million wildlife-vehicle collisions in the U.S. every year, according to the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. In the state of Michigan alone, car-deer crashes occur about once every eight minutes.

Another, less conventional form of pollution caused by driving cars is noise pollution. The Federal Highway Administration states that a typical pickup truck traveling at 50 miles per hour is four times as loud as an air conditioner and eight times as loud as a refrigerator. Although the noise of a passing car has become a part of everyday life, the noise is a nuisance and reduces property values along highways, railways, and busy streets.

There are several ways to decrease the environmental impacts of driving an automobile, however. Through carpooling, hypermiling, reduced idiling, and proper maintenance (e.g.: smog checks), for example, the polluting effects of a car can be significantly reduced.