The direct economic incentives favor short-sighted purchases. I am not intending to blame you for the statement, but just agreeing that it's true if only for now. The problem is obvious to anyone living in Paris just two weeks ago. They had an emergency shutdown of traffic in the city due to pollution from cars.
There needs to be a balanced economic system that reflects the harm that oil causes to our environment and countrymen. Same thing goes with plastic waste, where some countries have added an environmental tax for plastic packaging.
It can be a tax on CO2, on oil, a deductible on electric cars, solar, etc. But it needs to be large enough to reflect the harm. Some taxes exist, but they are not obviously not enough to balance the harm to the environment.
It's the first time I'm hearing about that, the good news is that with electric cars and regenerative breaking you barely use the mechanical break.
Also, I wouldn't qualify it as being "Most". Most of the particles yes, but not most of the green-house gas, which could reach a theoretical 0 if the production of energy is managed correctly.
I guess it all depends on everyone's definition of "pollution"
I found this paper about brake pads and their impact on micro particles: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4315878/
For what it's worth, electric cars use heavy regenerative breaking. If driven properly, the brake pads on an electric car will almost never get used, eliminating the majority of those emissions too.