Miljøtema, 25 – Roads to Healthier Traffic – Traffic affects health and the environment

Roads to Healthier Traffic

Traffic affects health and the environment

Modern societies cannot function without transport. Goods and products need to be carried to and from manufacturers and out to consumers. We also need to be transported when we go to work, to school, or to leisure activities, and when we go to visit friends or family.

The way we choose to transport ourselves has an impact on health as well as on the environment. Some of the obvious problems are traffic accidents, pollution and noise – and children are especially vulnerable.

Our choice of means of transport, however, also affects our quality of life in other ways. When, for instance, we take our car and not our bicycle, we deliberately disregard the health- related benefits gained from the exercise of cycling. If we choose the car every time we need to be transported, the risk of overweight and circulatory diseases increases.

Luckily, developments are moving in the right direction. In Denmark, for the last three decades we have been working to reduce the negative influence of traffic on health and the environment. During this period the number of traffic accidents has been reduced by 60 per cent, and many of the harmful contaminants in car exhaust gases have been reduced or totally removed.

car and bikers crossing Knippels Bro

Photo: Scanpix

Still, a number of challenges lie ahead. For each of us as individuals, it is a question of making a healthier choice. For society as a whole, it is a matter of integrating health and the environment in our everyday life and in the planning of urban areas and of transport.

This folder deals with transport patterns in Denmark – what do they mean to health and the environment? The folder presents the newest knowledge on this issue, and gives proposals for ways to provide the framework for more healthy transport habits.

traffic-jam

Photo: Scanpix