TYPICALLY, when drivers are confronted with the mounting evidence of the downsides of motor vehicle use, they appear to fall in one of two categories.

First, there are the unashamed addicts who love their cars and play down or ignore the damage they participate in causing.

Secondly, there are the guilty drivers, who are forced to drive out of necessity, yet claim they would drive less if the alternative' were improved, thus shifting the blame from themselves to government policy.

David Lee's claim that we have been forced to become a 'car-based' society (Citizen, January 30) could be said to fall into the second category.

However, such a blanket assumption ignores the fact that a sizeable proportion of society still manages to lead lives without a car, yet their lives and activities are, if anything, made more difficult and more unpleasant by the expansion in vehicle use. The result of this, as Mr Lee points out, is society's increasing reliance on 'personal transport' (ie motor vehicles).

For people to be forced to doing something as environmentally and personally damaging as driving cannot be regarded as a desirable state of affairs, yet it seems that almost everybody accepts this with regard to vehicle use.

Are we about to fight a war in order that we can keep this trend up?

Reuben Atkinson,

Wheatfield Court,

Lancaster.