Tax tire sales. Heavy cars have more expensive tire s or tires that need to be replaced more often. Scales adequately for road maintenance because heavy vehicles cause more wear on roads.
Comment on A 7,000-Pound Car Smashed Through a Guardrail. That’s Bad News for All of Us.
DevCat@lemmy.world 8 months ago
There was a discussion a couple of years ago around gasoline taxes and how they are supposed to pay for roadway maintenance. The question came up about EVs. There were discussions about how to include EVs in the taxation system so they would pay for their fair share of the road. One of the options was to impose a tax attached to your vehicle registration based upon the weight of the vehicle. The greater the weight, the more wear and tear it produces on the road surface. This might be one solution to the barrier problem, namely moving the extra cost to the reason for the extra cost.
eltrain123@lemmy.world 8 months ago
CameronDev@programming.dev 8 months ago
I think you make want to go the other way. Making tires more expensive wont make people choose smaller cars, they will choose worse tires. And then they will crash into you because they cant stop.
RGB3x3@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s a good rule not to make essential safety items more expensive. Because consumers in general will always choose a cheaper, less safe option.
jdeath@lemm.ee 8 months ago
yeah if anything a subsidy for safer tires and doing proper maintenance on brakes and other safety system would be what you want.
what is subsidized, there is more of than there otherwise would be
and the opposite is true for what is taxed.
fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Sorry, the tax is a great idea but taxing the tires is a terrible idea.
TonyOstrich@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I think he is close though with his initial train of thought. I remember doing some research on this many years ago and road wear does not scale linearly with weight. All other variables being equal a 1,000lb load going across a stretch of road 10 times does less damage than a 10,000 pounds load going across the same stretch once. So what we should really be doing is looking at semi trucks and the heaviest of consumer vehicles. It would theoretically make consumer goods go up in price a little, but it’s not like that cost isn’t already being paid/subsidized by consumers in other ways.
Maybe it would even push the use of railroads for goods even more than it is used now.
boatswain@infosec.pub 8 months ago
Why is it a terrible idea?
EatATaco@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Taking a guess, but it would lead to people replacing their tires less often, making cars more prone to accidents, and thus probably being counterproductive and more dangerous.
fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
For the same reasons others have said. Don’t increase the cost of safety equipment.
n2burns@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
There was a discussion a couple of years ago around gasoline taxes and how they are supposed to pay for roadway maintenance.
I just want to point out, even if they’re supposed to, gas taxes do not pay for roadway maintenance, not by a long shot
blazera@lemmy.world 8 months ago
ah yes, another anti-environment tax. More barriers to fossil-fuel free adoption. As you would expect, Mississippi already has this tax. Don’t be like Mississippi.
lud@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Then add some exceptions to cars that aren’t as bad for the environment like electric cars.
Maybe exclude batteries for the weight calculation.
It isn’t a hard problem to solve.
shalafi@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Some states do exactly that, or did back in the day. 30-years ago in Oklahoma, an old 2-ton dump truck with an antique plate was $20, a new Corvette $600. I think Texas flipped that and charged by weight vs. value.
lemmyingly@lemm.ee 8 months ago
In the country I reside, everyone pays for the roads through income tax. Vehicle owners pay emissions tax. I think this is fair since everyone relies on the roads even if they never travel down a road themselves.
fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
You can still tax large vehicles, because everyone bears the cost of having them around.
watcher@nopeeking.link 8 months ago
Not everbody “consumes” the same. So for consumer products (everything) would be distributed better if the price was in the product price itself. Along with it being included in the price of transfer services etc.
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 8 months ago
And the heavy vehicles get classified as light cargo so are largely exempt from those taxes. They’re promoting and building heavy “cargo” vehicles specifically because they get exemptions for fuel efficiency and taxes (depending on location).
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Every mile an EV drives is already taxed as we already tax electricity consumption. There is no reason to add a tax for something we already tax.
CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 8 months ago
That depends on if the tax is sufficient to cover the societal costs of driving that mile or not. Not every use of electricity degrades public infrastructure to the same extent, so if the maintenance burden an EV adds is more than what the electricity tax brings in, then additional taxes to make up the difference would make sense.
Pika@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
An alternative idea that I mentioned on a thread yesterday about vehicles with high bumpers, adjust the license class system to be more strict regarding vehicles. You already have to have extra training in a different license to run transport vehicles or semi trucks you should have to do the same with large vehicles, I’m not saying ban every pickup truck out there because I fully agree that trucks are a hard requirement especially in snow covered States like mine but there is a difference between having a pickup truck and having a monster truck at least in my opinion heavier or taller than low end transport vehicles
MrMcGasion@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Agreed, there’s also plenty of people who think that just because they have a large vehicle, that they’re immune to the snow. Obviously there’s a quantity of snow that trucks are more necessary for, but I’ll admit to feeling a bit smug when I see ditches full of abandoned trucks and SUVs, as I drive by in my little front wheel drive sedan.
RecallMadness@lemmy.nz 8 months ago
Come April, NZ will be charging EVs road user charges using the same price-per-kilometre mechanism diesel (diesel not have a fuel levy) vehicles use.
frezik@midwest.social 8 months ago
The “problem” with that tax is that if it’s applied fairly, it gets very big very fast. The damage to the road goes up with weight, but not linearly. Not a square factor, either. Not even cube. It’s to the fourth power.
Start applying that to long haul trucks and the whole industry will be bankrupt in a month.
That said, this is also a very good argument for improving cargo trains to the point where most long haul trucking goes away.
cogman@lemmy.world 8 months ago
And frankly, I’m really ok with this.
Trains should be the backbone for shipping. They are WAY more fuel efficient, like 3 to 4x more efficient than shipping by truck. Rail requires far less maintenance. And there’s always the option install a 3rd rail and use electricity instead of fossil fuels to ship.
grue@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Speaking of road tax, you know that bad-faith argument about how cyclists need to pay our “fair share?” Well, I would be happy to pay 1¢ for my 10 kg bicycle if everybody with a car had to pay fairly by weight^4^,
RidgeDweller@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Maybe it’s because I don’t really know anyone passionate on either side of this issue, but I’ve never heard of this argument. I know you said it’s a bad faith argument, but I can’t really imagine what a cyclist’s fair share would be aside from maybe widening a road to add a bike lane lol
Nurgle@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You see it a lot on in the comment sections of local newspapers or the city specific subs on Reddit.
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I heard it on Top Gear.
Goronmon@lemmy.world 8 months ago
No reason the tax had to scale exactly to match the damage though. At least make it painful enough so people consider whether a larger vehicle is worth it.
frezik@midwest.social 8 months ago
What I’m suggesting is to ramp up the tax on roads over several years in order to pay for the initial outlay on new train infrastructure. Then you don’t need 90% of the trucking industry at all.
Which would be great for many other reasons.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Train infrastructure is being removed around the world - and there are good reasons for that.
If it’s not even cost effective to keep existing railway lines it’s certainly not worth building new ones.
obinice@lemmy.world 8 months ago
What if it’s not a larger vehicle, but transitioning from a petrol burning vehicle to an electric vehicle?
We don’t want to give people reasons to hold on to old combustion vehicles any longer than they have to, but the roads of course need to be made safe for passengers and pedestrians and wildlife, I agree.
Vrtrx@lemmy.world 8 months ago
If the hold on to their existing vehicle than thats just another upside. If they buy a new gasoline car instead of an EV this is bad. But EVs dont have to be insanely heavy if we stop the whole cars getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger crap. They will still be heavier than their gasoline counterpart but one solution might be 2 tax brackets: One for gasoline cars and one for evs that has the same taxation levels but allows for, lets say, 500kg more weight in them
magiccupcake@lemmy.world 8 months ago
So much of that freight should be moved by rail.
Tax based on weight to 4th power would work if we nationalized railways like roads.
hardcoreufo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Only if rail can figure out their shit and hire enough workers and give them all time off. Too many train derailments from precision scheduled railroading.
magiccupcake@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Actually maintained rail shouldn’t have this problem, but the private companies like Norfolk Southern spend the minimum amount to keep them operational.
With a budget just a fraction of highway upkeep and expansion they should be able to be kept in good repair.
billiam0202@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yeah, I think turning highways back into methods of travel instead of “rolling warehouses saving Walmart a few bucks not storing anything on site” is a good thing.
zeekaran@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Long haul trucking shouldn’t exist.
StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
As a truck driver, I would like to ask, how would you acquire all the “stuff” you have bought over the years? I am reasonably sure most of it was not produced locally to you. And the raw materials almost certainly aren’t locally sourced. Trucking and logistics generally has its issues, and you only have glimpsed a fraction of them, but it is absolutely necessary for modern society. Unless you’re proposing we kill off 2/3rds of humanity and go back to hunter-gatherer. Not a fan of that idea.
Blankmann@lemmy.world 8 months ago
He’s proposing trains should do the ‘Long Haul’ portion.
daltotron@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Neither should lots of short haul trucking, more specifically drayage trucking, that industry sucks. We probably need to move more towards vans and stuff.
reddig33@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Oh well. I guess they’ll just have to go bankrupt then.
frezik@midwest.social 8 months ago
And now you starve. None of the stores will stay open long without them.
CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 8 months ago
That should mean they don’t go bankrupt though. If their service is vital, people will pay for it even if the prices rise. It would mean an increase in prices for goods admittedly as the stores try to recoup the increased logistics costs, but intuitively I’d imagine the financial impact on the end customer wouldn’t be as much because they’re paying for the road upkeep either way, just via higher taxes in the current state and via increased prices in the new one.
Nommer@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Think of the shareholders!
JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
There’s no need to have the tax be the exact same for every vehicle class. Proper long haul trucks have to be heavy, private cars do not.
The US already has 14 total vehicle classes defined by weight, the lightest being 6000lbs (which is still ridiculously high, my VW Up is 2200lbs)
Traister101@lemmy.today 8 months ago
So? That money is still coming from somewhere. If the freight industry can’t afford to pay then it means we are subsiding them CURRENTLY. They by the very nature of capitalism deserve to go out of business
catloaf@lemm.ee 8 months ago
True but unfettered capitalism is a terrible model.
frezik@midwest.social 8 months ago
If you look down further, I’m just saying you can’t deal with the problem in this specific way.
fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
In Australia (and I assume other similar countries) trucks have tax concessions to avoid the cost of food fluctuating too much with the cost of diesel. This tax doesn’t need to be any different.
anivia@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
To be fair, it’s the fourth power of the axle weight, not vehicle weight. So it’s not as extreme for long haul trucks as you make it sound, but still much higher than for a car
nothead@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Trucks already pay a lot more in tax and regulatory expenses. In my state, annual car registration is $30-ish. Annual registration for a full-sized 18-wheeler is $1350 for the truck and $30-300 for each trailer. They also have to pay annual fees at the federal level which can be $600+/year, and an additional fuel tax on top of the existing state sales tax on diesel which I don’t know the rate of right now. All of that applies to every single power unit and trailer in a fleet.
Trucks should be taxed much higher than cars, but too many people don’t know or just don’t care that this is already the case, and it has been this way since the 1940s.
frezik@midwest.social 8 months ago
They are taxed a lot. Are they taxed to the fourth power of axel weight? Not even close.
nothead@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Based on your math, you’d be charging almost $2 million per year per truck. With that much money, you’d be building an entire nations worth of brand new infrastructure several times over each year.