CAR adverts sell vehicles as glamorous but essential. It’s quite unnecessary, all this associated glitz, given how attached people already are to their vehicles.

There’s something about the level of exposure we have in our modern lives – data-gathering, CCTV, cold-calling – that makes vehicles the last bastion of protected space and personal concealment.

You are not at the mercy of the elements in a car. You can cram more into your life with ease – pick up children, attend extra-curricular activities. A car is temperature-controlled, comfortable and replete with handy gadgets.

Parents believe their child is safer being driven to school rather than walking or cycling, hence angry tête-à-tête at the playground gates over zig-zag parking.

Such attachments to the car lead to unfettered selfishness among drivers and hinder any desire to create alternatives.

This week an amendment to the Transport (Scotland) Bill aiming to introduce a ban on pavement parking and double parking was tabled, among other reforms.

Bumping your car up into any old space and leaving it blocking the way for wheelchair users, pedestrians and pushchairs is indicative of how drivers view the car as king.

It has taken three years of campaigning to introduce the ban, and now it’s within sight, a lily-livered clause means parking prohibitions would not apply where the vehicle is being used for deliveries – an exception clearly open to abuse.

Campaigners claim the new Transport Bill is a let down in other ways: it fails to mention the rail network and does not allow for full re-regulation of buses.

Meanwhile, in Glasgow, there was more disappointment as the city’s administration voted through a low emission zone (LEZ).

It’s a start but will cover only the city centre, excludes the M8 and M74 motorways where they bring much traffic to Glasgow, and will take four years to fully implement.

We cannot continue to worship the four-wheeled metal box. We know we must take action on pollution and congestion. And yet the radical steps needed are stymied by the tyranny of drivers.

There are not only practical hurdles to tackle in introducing an efficient and attractive transit system: psychological barriers have to be tackled too. People prefer to drive even when they know it costs more than for public transport and even when they know the journey will take longer because of congestion.

It's true public transport can be awkward, throwing passengers together with people they would never normally encounter – all human life is there.

Cars can be more convenient, especially in towns and villages.

Where my mum lives, for example, the bus takes an hour and 20 minutes to reach Glasgow whereas by car it is 17 minutes. The bus only comes once every half hour and often doesn’t turn up at all. Until fairly recently the local train line didn’t run on a Sunday.

But resistance to tackling car culture is not only based on objective factors but emotional ones.

Drivers see change as an attack on their fundamental rights – whether parking charges or route restrictions. That is why we need punitive measures to push people out of their vehicles as well as temptations to lure them out.

The essential lure is a fully integrated, 24-hour transit system.

Car ownership has long been aspirational but we can’t carry on these profligate habits.

Yes, we need to move vehicles off the pavements but ultimately we need to move them off the roads too.