What's fascinating to watch is that when you're dealing with cataclysmically bad press, you can still find stupendous hyperbole: That's right, ladies and gentlemen, a UK environmental wonk just called Dieselgate worse than The Black Death. Precision science there... Supercalifragilistic numbers there, though. "Volkswagen has lied about more emissions than the UK even produces." and it's gonna be quite a ride. “Diesel is without doubt the biggest public health catastrophe in UK history. Even the black plague didn’t affect everyone in the population,” said its founder, Simon Birkett.
In the UK, Williams added, emissions from diesel cars cause roughly 5,800 premature deaths each year. “If you were to make the cars emit at the legal limit you could reduce those deaths by at least a factor of two and maybe more. Maybe a factor of five.”