Back in the 1970s, the United States government introduced regulations around emission control technology, emissions of hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide from cars in the United States. As a result of this regulation, the harmful gas emission from cars in the country has decreased by over 60% over since then. This is very good news for the government and the environmentalists out there who are continually pushing for measures to be put in place to curb the ever-rising levels of environmental pollution. Despite all of this progress, the bad news is that there has been very little improvement in the air quality over this period. This is has been caused by a number of factors.

There has been an increase in the use of cars. This is because more people have the financial capability to purchase their own cars. Research shows that there has been an increase by over 150% in the vehicle miles traveled in the United States. There are currently about 200 million cars in the United States alone, while there are about 700 million cars in the whole world. If cars continue to increase in the same rate, there may be over one billion cars by 2025. This is a disaster waiting to happen. This is why there has been an increased focus on the manufacture of hybrid cars. This is because these cars have lower emissions and may help in curbing pollution.

Some of the factors that you should look at to get the true picture of the correlation between cars and the environment include the following:

• The most air polluting activity that a private citizen can participate in is driving a car
• By 2003, the American census showed that 1 of 3 people in the United States drive a car to work.
• Less than 5% of the population in the US use public transportation to move from one place to another.
• An average American spends about one hour of their day in a car and collectively, Americans spend over 8 billion hours a year in traffic.

Considering all of these driving trends and the effect that they have on the environment, you need to be conscious of the driving decisions that you make because this has a direct impact on the environment. The choice that you make on the type of car you buy is a vote on the manufacturer to continue making that car. You should therefore give more votes to manufacturers of hybrid and electric cars because you will be voting for reduced environmental pollution. This means that the future will be safer.