‘Poor and ethnic minority groups are more likely to be casualties on our dangerous roads’

• WE already know our poorest people and ethnic minority groups suffer disproportionately from traffic congestion and air pollution.

Young children and elderly are more likely to suffer from stunted lungs, or be at increased risk of dementia, or from the many other ill-effects of breathing toxic air and being unable to enjoy a local environment now inundated with motor traffic and the noise and pollution that brings.

Poor and ethnic minority groups are more likely to be casualties on our dangerous roads.

We also know that the risk of injury when struck by a motor car is far higher when that car is an SUV. The bonnets of these grotesquely proportioned vehicles often reach to above the head of a small child.

Death or serious injury is almost certain for a child run over by the driver of such a vehicle, and this must surely be obvious to the owners.

These disproportionately large motor cars are overwhelmingly owned and driven by the wealthier residents of our borough; are often purchased purely as a status symbol rather than for any practical reason; and are hugely destructive to our environment owing to their emissions and huge embedded carbon.

Shockingly, despite this, more than 40 per cent of London drivers are planning to choose such a vehicle for their next car, in the midst of a climate emergency.

We now have a situation where wealthier members of our community are directly affecting the health and life chances of our most vulnerable groups by their transport choices.

The roll-out of people-friendly streets in Islington, which surveys and recent local elections show are overwhelmingly popular, is a good first step to tackling this inequity and should be reinforced and accelerated.

In addition we need urgent action to redress the toll of ill-health, death, and injury being suffered by our most vulnerable residents, by disincentivising toxic transport choices.

Let’s limit the size of on-street parking bays and increase parking charges for excessively large private cars to a level required to begin removing them from our streets, where they do not belong.

K FALLON, N1