Health would benefit if more children could safely walk or cycle to school.

We have the situation where parents are illegally parking so their child could avoid the congested traffic around schools!

This perverse logic has seen more parents driving because the roads are becoming busier, because more parents are driving children to school.

The result is children whose leisure is on screen rather than on the streets.

A recent national report today noted a paradoxical increase in child pedestrian accidents, as the young lose their skills in roaming independently.

If only children could go to school in the holidays; then they would find the roads deserted.

Another benefit of this greener approach with more cycling, car sharing, public transport and flexible working is to ease traffic congestion and lessen climate change. Here we can act locally to contribute globally.

The recent plea to make the Chaffey's roundabout in Weymouth safe for cyclists and pedestrians is a timely example of the challenges that must be overcome to make the switch from car dependence.

There are cycle lanes round Radipole Lake that end at that roundabout and only resume at the football ground.

At the hazardous roundabout cyclists are on their own with no safe lane or underpass.

We have a haphazard assortment of isolated cycle paths that evaporate at the first sign of danger. We need a comprehensive network of safe pedestrian/cycle/bridleways that interlink across all our towns, linking estates with schools and shopping areas.

These routes must be physically separated from lorries and speeding vans to be safe for children.

Tourism would be boosted by a new family friendly activity of cycling with coordinated links round the two bird reserves with routes to Portland Bill or Abbotsbury via the old railway lines with new cycle paths and a link north to Dorchester and new tracks through Puddletown forest and the Frome valley trails.

The miseries of a car addicted culture include obesity and global catastrophe but also local parking problems.

We should seize the initiative and plan for a carbon free future. This could be for the positive - Health, Environmental and Tourism reasons or the negative - realisation that peak oil is upon us, and the black gold is running out.

Dr Jon Orrell.

Coldharbour, Chickerell, Weymouth.