If you keep a vehicle well tuned and maintained, it will help control the emission of pollutants. However, even the best maintained vehicles will continue to emit gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds.

These gases adversely affect our health and are significant enough to affect the environment.

The following are some things drivers can do to reduce these effects:

1. Keep your vehicle well tuned and maintained and tires properly inflated. Check pollution controls regularly.
2. Drive only when you must and consider walking when relatively short distances are involved.
3. Don’t let your engine idle while your car is parked.
4. Before buying or leasing a vehicle, check its fuel efficiency. The less fuel a vehicle burns, the less pollution it creates and the more money you save at the gas pump.

Consider taking the bus as much as possible. Cars produce 50 per cent of the carbon dioxide emitted by vehicles. The carbon dioxide per rider produced by the average family car is almost four times that produced per rider by a half-empty bus.