Sticking It Where It Hurts Most

A lot of effort goes into the design and manufacture of the average motor vehicle. Frankly, the mind boggles when you consider the sheer number of people involved, and all the creative and intellectual effort that goes into the design and manufacture of a single model, let alone the thousands of different makes and models produced worldwide each year.

All those thousands of minds employed simply to make cars better - or at least more saleable. All those politicians and committees and lobbyists and activists endlessly debating and enacting laws to govern their production and use. All that, and no-one has apparently ever stopped to wonder why, with all this concentrated attention on it, has no-one thought what a stupid position the exhaust pipe is in?

I mean, this is the stinky end of the process. This is where all the vile by-products of internal combustion are spewed out and left to float into the environment willy-nilly. All those noxious gases drift up, and the outlet is placed conveniently at ankle level so that we can get the full benefit of them in both nostrils.

Nearby pedestrians get it bad enough, but at least the pipe is sometimes placed on the non-footpath side - although that's kind of like sitting one table away from the smoking area of a restaurant. But what about the vehicles following along behind? Cars are cunningly designed to let the fumes from the preceding vehicle in, but then they don’t let them out again. It collects inside the car at concentrations up to ten times the ambient level outside. The fact that they're doing exactly the same thing to the car behind them doesn't make things any better, either.

Now, I can appreciate that a proportion of cars exhaust is particulate matter, and that placing the exhaust pipe above average lung height would result in these particles being spread even further afield, but can someone please tell me why it is so goddamn difficult to filter these particles out before they exit the vehicle? These are not harmless materials; they are responsible in no small part for the high incidence of respiratory problems in most Western societies, and yet we quite calmly allow them to be liberally spread over the landscape. If I squeezed out a turd in the street I’d be arrested, but I’m allowed, nay encouraged, to do effectively the same thing with my car. Where’s the sense in that?

Perhaps it's impractical to require motor vehicles to store, rather than release all the gaseous waste products, although that would be ideal, but surely the amount of storage space required to retain a week's worth of particulate waste would be no bigger than the average vacuum cleaner bag. If it were to be stored this way at least it could be disposed of in a way that minimises the amount that we have to breathe in.

(As a small aside - I wonder sometimes how much people would continue driving if they were required to take this stored garbage and sprinkle it on their cornflakes every morning as a penance, but that's just a small fantasy I entertain from time to time.)

So that leaves us with the gaseous wastes. This is pretty bad stuff too; it hangs in the air, turning it a lovely shade of brown, which is horrid enough, but at least it's slightly more diluted at this stage. Placing the exhaust pipe at ground level means that the people, who are also at ground level, get it in concentrated form direct from the source. Why not stick the exhaust out of the top of the vehicle so at least all those rising gases bypass our direct air supply?

(Another fantasy is that the exhaust fumes are required to be discharged within the car rather than without – just to highlight exactly what these things are doing to our air)

Chimneys are required to extend a minimum height past the highest point of the house, and they merely emit wood smoke, which whilst unpleasant, is still far less harmful than the emissions from the average motor vehicle. Indeed, wood smoke is part of the natural exchange of gases that has existed on the Earth for an exceedingly long time - the Earth can cope with any amount of it. Car exhaust is not, and yet we are happy to spew it in people’s faces - talk about double standards.

Sure, such a high exhaust pipe might be less aesthetically pleasing, but I don't recall anyone criticising the beauty or otherwise of the bus that ran over them, or the gun that shot them, their only concern at the time was the direction in which it was pointing. Why should an exhaust pipe be any different? Besides, I'm certain that all those aforementioned designers and their inventive minds could come up with something suitably pleasing to the eye. The question is, will they take up this challenge, or will they continue following the conventions of an industry that, on the one hand prides itself on being innovative, but on the other hand continues to churn out pretty much the same old tired designs that they did last year - and the year before that - and the year before that...