A couple of weeks ago two teenagers and their mother arrived in the Borders on holiday. Friends of a friend, they planned to spend their last two nights in a B&B in our village. Since we are somewhat off the beaten track we assumed – as you do – that they were coming by car. Otherwise, as a neighbour said before their appearance, how would they get here?

Carrying backpacks suitable for Ernest Shackleton’s adventures, they had in fact taken the train from London to Carlisle, then a bus to Langholm and caught a connection to Selkirk. The mother told us she used to drive, but could never get over the trepidation of being in a machine capable of causing fatal accidents. Since ditching the car, life in the city had become a lot simpler and cheaper – no parking headache, no parking tickets. During the evening they spent with us, she and her daughters proved fluent in the language of the Borders buses, knowing their 68 from their X95, and what time they run.

In the airy way of drivers everywhere, who pay lip service to the importance of public transport but can’t imagine life without a car at the door, I offered to take them the next day to the bus station in Galashiels for their return trip. Since I took a wrong turn, the traffic was heavy, and they only narrowly caught their bus, walking those few miles would have been more sensible.

It’s just as well Nicola Sturgeon didn’t know they were in the country. As models of the eco-friendly lifestyle Holyrood wants us all to embrace, they risked being press-ganged into a publicity campaign. “Learn to love the bus” is the new mantra, as plans to reduce the number of cars on the road gather pace. The aim is that, by 2030, the number of car trips will be reduced by a fifth.

There’s no disputing the dangers of car emissions, and the carnage they cause. Vehicle pollution is responsible for around 2000 deaths a year in Scotland; it’s also a contributory factor in dementia, diabetes, and problem pregnancies. The situation is so grave that it’s estimated one in 29 deaths in our largest towns and cities is attributable to prolonged exposure to the particulates that cars, lorries and buses - even some that are supposedly low-emission - produce.

Those of us who drive hybrid or electric cars are in no position to feel smug. Even though they are less polluting than petrol and diesel cars, the friction of tyres generates particulates that contaminate people’s lungs and the environment. Our hybrid comes with an app that monitors your driving, to help make better use of electric mode.

Every trip is now like a driving test, but it does make you think harder about how you brake and accelerate, and whether you need to go at top speed when slower is more sustainable. It would be possible to get fixated, though, and I dread the day when, instead of making an emergency stop, I glide into an oncoming vehicle rather than risk a low score for bad braking.

The issue of reducing traffic emissions is simpler – and more difficult – than all vehicles going electric, whenever that becomes a viable option. It is about driving less – or not at all – and discovering the benefits of using public transport. That a full bus carries the equivalent of 75 cars highlights the near lunacy of individuals scooting around in private metal cocoons, clogging roads, sending up invisible plumes of choking chemicals – affecting children and the elderly worst – and living life as if our actions have no consequences for everyone else around us.

Holyrood has an unenviable problem with the timing of this message, since car use has shot up during the pandemic because of fears of contagion. Fair enough. But it would be interesting to see long-term projections of the number of deaths hastened by traffic fumes compared to the figures for those who catch Covid, and become very unwell, after taking the bus.

Eventually, the dread of Covid will diminish, closely followed by the urgent need to rethink how we get from A to B. So who’s afraid of taking the bus? More than a few of us, it seems. Since Gordon Gekko’s era of “greed is good”, buses have been sneered at as the poor man’s car, the sorry alternative that suggested you were one of the no-hopers who didn’t have a car or – worse! – couldn’t even drive.

In recent years, that outlook has been transformed, and now it’s mainly older generations who hold such an outdated view. Young folk, especially those in cities, no longer see the need for passing their driving test. They are growing adept at shaping their lives around a car-less, environmentally responsible lifestyle. Perhaps they also appreciate the community you meet on buses, where you come into contact with people you’d never otherwise encounter, and passengers chat, gossip and, in the case of our village shuttle, regulars swap home-grown vegetables and books.

Learning to love the bus must start in cities, where it’s madness to have private cars on the streets. Yet such is our brainwashing, it seems most drivers are incapable of getting rid of their vehicle, even if they live on a good bus route.

Convenience is the obvious reason for our dependency, but I think it goes deeper than that. A car becomes part of someone’s identity, be it colour, make or model. I’m not sure I like the fact that you can tell a lot about me from what I drive, but it’s obvious that the way other drivers treat you depends on the size of your car. Round here, where city friends complain of the aggressiveness of road users, a tractor earns most respect.

The reason why trading in our vehicles, or drastically reducing our use of them is so hard to contemplate is that it is a statement of independence, of being free to go where you like, whenever you want. Yet as our London visitors showed, the train and bus can get you exactly where you need to go. And, instead of clutching the wheel the whole journey you can enjoy the scenery, or read a book or The Herald.

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