People always associate pollution to cars, but as a frequent biker, I don't really smell anything from exhaust pipes for all 'recent' cars.
When a car passes me, I can always know by the smell if the driver were smoking or not (and I systematically try to hold breath and anticipate that), I can also smell some other odors of the inside of the car, but I don't smell the exhaust pipe gases.
I'm wondering if I'm alone in that case, is it normal? I'm quite paranoiac when it comes to breathing cigarette smoke, so I don't know if it affects only me.
I've searched and posted other threads concerning tobacco smoke, and I'm convinced the amount of tobacco smoke on a road is not insignificant compared to gas exhaust, of course it's less, but it represents more than 1% (at least here in France) and it's really concentrated when you're in. Smoking tends to generate a lot more particles than people think 1, 2, and possibly more toxic ones 3, 4, 5
So is my case 'normal'? Am I alone to smell the cigarette smoke trails in the traffic (on a bike I mean, for those of you that sometimes do bike, I don't think I'd smell them if I were in a car too)? Is it worse to smell those concentrated shot of toxic cigarette smoke or the more dilluted thin particle of exhaust gas?
