MANY people drive cars and commercial vehicles but only a few manufacture them. It has been demonstrated that the exhaust gasses from some new diesel cars do not comply with the legal emission standards when tested rigorously.

All motor vehicles are subject to mandatory annual government-controlled road-worthiness tests which includes quantifying exhaust emissions. The police are already charged with removing from our roads vehicles that do not possess the required certification. Ergo if properly licensed vehicles are polluting the atmosphere then the fault lies with the system rather than driver. Why then are we collectively about to be put at risk of being penalised for a problem that we did not create and which should already be being identified by the appropriate MoT vehicle tests (“Polluting drivers face ‘fume’ camera crackdown”, The Herald, May 22)?

Perhaps the Transport Minister should tackle the problem at its root rather than targeting drivers who have already jumped through the mandatory hoops. But then that would pile the problem on to MoT stations and probably increase the number of unlicensed vehicles on our streets and no government is going to challenge the manufacturers who would retaliate by taking their factories elsewhere. As usual government takes the soft option. You and I will pay for somebody else’s mistakes.

David J Crawford,

Flat 3/3, 131 Shuna Street, Glasgow.