Oxfordshire County Council makes great play on its website on how much it cares for the environment, yet it pursues policies that actively damage it.

Most urban roads in the county have become obstacle courses, with chicanes, humps, bumps, poorly lit lumps of concrete in the road and unnecessary sets of traffic lights.

It's no wonder 4x4s are so popular in urban areas - they are virtually the only vehicles that can cope with such an assault.

It is something of an inconvenient truth for the council that traffic pollutes least when it is allowed to flow without hindrance.

With these obstructions, the council is doing precisely the opposite.

They create artificial congestion, causing extra pollution and noise, and expensive fuel is burned.

No doubt the council is preparing to introduce a 'congestion' charge as the result of the congestion it has helped to create!

These obstructions also affect the response time of the emergency services.

Given that it is important to get to people as quickly as possible, how many extra lives have been lost due to these measures?

With similar schemes in parts of London, the London Ambulance Service estimated that 100 extra lives a year are lost.

As I work in Oxford, I wrote to Ian Hudspeth, the council's cabinet member for transport, and he didn't deny that these schemes damage the environment.

Presumably he doesn't care and neither does the council.

To make matters worse, he admitted that accidents in Little Milton, one village blighted by these measures, have gone up since the obstructions were put in, but he still won't remove them.

So residents there and in other places all over the county, which have these obstructions, have to live with more pollution and noise 24/7.

If the council really cares about the environment, it would remove all artificial obstructions and allow traffic to flow freely again.

CHRIS BURMAJSTER Marlow Bottom Bucks