Dear Sir,

I am wondering which of you wrote that "the suggestion that cars should be banned from Hyde Park Corner marks a worrying point in the development of London, [because] . . .  traffic is what the streets of London were designed for." (Comment and Opinion: The streets of London, 28 October 2000).

Whoever it was, I can only assume that he (it could only be a man) has never experienced with open eyes an area of a city in which the use of motor vehicles has been banned or subordinated to use by pedestrians and cyclists, and the huge improvement in safety and quality of life that results.

In Germany, where I live, it is often said jokingly that a man's favourite child is his car. Like many a word spoken in jest, there is more than just an element of truth in it, which, judging from many of the articles and commentaries I have read in the Telegraph, does not only apply to Germans.

It is also said that "love blinds". It is love of the motorcar that has made so many people blind to all the harm it does.

While the country is put into a state of shock by 4 rail deaths (tragic as they are), the average of 10 deaths per day on our roads is accepted without a murmur. In Germany it is about twice that number, and world-wide must run into 10's if not into 100's of thousands every year. Imagine if a similar number of rail or plane-crash deaths were to occur!!

Towns and countryside alike have been spoiled, damaged and defiled by an absurd and irrational subservience to the use of motor vehicles. You have to be blind not to see it.

Still, I am hopeful that even the most infatuated car lover will one day see the light and realise what an ugly, evil witch he is married to. 

It is not too late to file for divorce. If you could only see the truly beautiful (in mind and body) woman I can see waiting for you once you have, you would be rushing to do so!

Excessive numbers of motor vehicles do not only spoil our towns and countryside at a local level; in the coming decades, as the rest of the world attempts to follow our stupid example, their numbers will increase up to 6-fold,  thereby threatening, even more than they do today, the climate and the life-supporting ecosystems of our planet.

Sometimes I think that it must be the Devil himself - bent on our destruction - who has bedazzled and beguiled us with the motorcar.