Car registration shouldn't be based on the value of the car, it should be based on how heavy the car is. Because heavier cars cause more wear on the road, they should pay more for road repair.
We should also ease a lot of regulation from states regarding minimum road width, minimum parking spot sizes, minimum height of parking garages, minimum number of parking spots for residential and commercial development. Much of this problem stems from bad regulation. (Developers generally don't want to have all this unproductive space in their buildings, but are forced to by local and state governments.)
>Car registration shouldn't be based on the value of the car, it should be based on how heavy the car is. Because heavier cars cause more wear on the road, they should pay more for road repair.
This came up in another thread and while it's sort-of true, it's not really. Passenger vehicles of ANY size do almost no damage to a road in comparison to semi-trucks and delivery trucks. A 3/4-ton pickup vs your toyota camry is MAYBE a 2x increase in damage to the road. The average semi vs. that same 3/4-ton pickup is a 2500x increase in damage to the road on the low end (some studies claim as high as 10,000x).
Unless you're planning on eliminating the trucking industry, shrinking cars isn't reducing the wear on our roads in any meaningful way.
Road damage goes up at the 4th power of the axle weight. It would be simpler to just make commercial trucks pay the entirety of road taxes. Easy to collect, and it would spread out the cost to everyone who benefits from commercial trucking (i.e. you really do want roads even if you don't own a car).
In some states it is. The total price for registering a car in Colorado takes the weight of the vehicle into account (along with the price and the age).
I remember having a minor panic when registering my car at the DMV and hearing the person in front of me paying well over $1000 for the year. Turns out they were registering a brand-new, very large (and heavy) pickup truck.
I think you want both to be included, but yeah something like SURCHARGE = ((WEIGHT-2500)/1000 + (VALUE-30000)/10000) * CONSTANT. Maybe even make it exponential to discourage upper-middle class conspicuous consumption (think G-classes) since it'll cost them $20k to register a $200k, 5klb vehicle. In the US we actually give (federal) fuckin tax breaks (sec 179) on beastly luxo-trucks to SMBs, that needs to be offset by massive reg increases too.
Passenger vehicles, no matter how large and numerous, are a tiny part of road wear compared to heavy trucks. If you want to price road use by what it costs to maintain them, tax the heavy trucks.
If you want to disincentivize SUV bloat, make narrower Lanes and more traffic calming features.
>Car registration shouldn't be based on the value of the car, it should be based on how heavy the car is. Because heavier cars cause more wear on the road, they should pay more for road repair.
It is in most states, the problem is the cost difference is negligible.
In Ireland road tax (paid annually) are based on engine capacity for (pre 2008 cars) and CO2 emissions for everything after that. (Engine size is a ok proxy for vehicle size)
Despite being a pretty big difference percentage-wise (the heaviest vehicles pay more than 5x the lightest vehicles!), not sure it’s enough of a difference in absolute dollars to really influence purchasing decisions though.
In the UK at least, Road Tax has no relation at all to the cost of repairing roads and is just treated as (yet another) tax.
And as a general point, any tax that is intended to encourage a behaviour should be revenue-neutral i.e. if you raise taxes for large cars, lower than for small cars so that the total tax take to government is the same. Otherwise it just becomes one more way for the government to ratchet up the amount of money they take from their citizens.
> Car registration shouldn't be based on the value of the car, it should be based on how heavy the car is. Because heavier cars cause more wear on the road, they should pay more for road repair.
Probably the only thing New York State 'gets right' from a regulatory perspective: register a Lotus Elise? It's cheaper than an F-250
Minimum road width tends to be set for use by emergency vehicles. Can't really reduce those unless you want to mandate smaller emergency vehicles. Kei-class fire trucks exist, but don't seem popular.
Unfortunately most EVs are way heavier and cause more wear on roads, so we'd be paying an even higher green tax to reduce emissions and fossil fuel usage.
Sounds great! I’m glad my family and our disabled daughter will have to pay more because our wheelchair accessible vehicle is so heavy. I really appreciate your opinion here.
After all, my wife is being very selfish to want to get a terrible gigantic minivan so my four year old can visit with friends and so my wife can transport her without literally popping a hernia (has happened once already!) to move our daughter in and out of the wheelchair on a regular basis.
Maybe I’ll encourage her to get a basket to transport our kid on our backs to get around in a convenient world where we don’t have parking spaces, or perhaps we can have a top unloading vehicle to get her out since the minimum width has been reduced when a handicap spot isn’t available (which considering how many elderly people there are is quite often when we go shopping).
I’m glad developers are forced to make the USA handicap accessible, and would encourage you to consider the knock on effects of the less advantaged when heavy handed legislation is passed to ban “wasteful” vehicles. Minivans and SUVs being mass produced and thus relatively affordable (although still quite expensive) are a ticket for people like my daughter to be able to even leave their houses on a regular basis.
Which argues that because larger cars are more likely to injure/kill someone in the event of a crash, buying a larger car makes you morally culpable for all such harms.
We are likely reaching a point where it is becoming absurd, to have a huge, 4,000lbs vehicle carrying one person most of the time. Feels like an arm escalation, I need a bigger and heavier vehicle so I feel safer.
Not sure what is the best way to bring some sense to this trend. Regulation could put some boundaries I guess. Clearly there is little incentives for car manufacturers to go small & light.
If that trend keeps going, I could see some cities banning cars in some streets (e.g. only bikes or pedestrians) as having foot traffic close to car traffic would become too dangerous.
Here's a depressing thought: I'm from the Netherlands. We're dense and have small roads and parking spots. So monster trucks like these are impractical, expensive to own (road tax based on weight) and expensive to drive due to the poor mileage and high gas prices.
None of these things seems to matter. I'm in my 40s and can't remember seeing a single car like this in my entire life until about 5 years ago. Now I very regularly see them, they're on the rise.
Some people just want to have a huge fucking truck for no apparent rational or adult reason. And it seems that as they make an appearance, it inspires others.
It fits in a generic pattern I'm seeing around me. People with disposable wealth will spent it on ridiculous life "upgrades" that make no rational sense. I'm seeing giant houses being built whilst there's 1-2 people living in it, and most of the day nobody at all. I'm talking about homes with so much space that you don't know what to do with it. Just because you can.
In these times of energy transition and ultra high energy prices, I see neighbors investing in an outdoor sauna.
It's not that I want to police what people can or cannot spent their money on, I'm just saying it's way out of bounds. Beyond the reasonable. Excessive resource usage with no immediate purpose by any stretch of the imagination.
But I'll also come to terms with the idea that perhaps I'm not that much better. My guilty pleasure is annual very remote travel, which as we know is a massive contributor to CO2 output.
If taxation or discouragement does not have the desired effect and banning is difficult if not unwanted, my conclusion is that behavioral change is not to be expected much from.
Well this, plus also cities that are designed for cars first.
I would love to see more cities design for people/pedestrians first, with denser multi-zone areas. I wish more people could walk to a neighborhood grocery, bar, library, etc.
It seems to me there is a chicken and egg problem with (non-car) infrastructure and the demand for that infrastructure. Nobody wants to get on a train full of homeless people or a bus that's always late or a sidewalk that has no shade. There is little incentive for city leaders and planners to invest in things that nobody uses.
So many issues in society can be quickly, intuitively, and uncontroversially identified as a “tragedy of the commons” situation. But it’s a hard sell to give up a personal advantage for a collective betterment.
I think in this case it's more likely that the US government wanted to have light trucks be fairly accessible to individuals that needed them, and somehow it became a cultural icon to have a pick-up truck that doesn't ever pick anything up. Now we're here and it's a hot-button cultural issue proxied as "the left is trying to change my lifestyle, not over my dead body."
I don't blame the government for not seeing a need to regulate this decades ago. Really, who in their right mind would want such a difficult to park, more expensive, less economic vehicle if they didn't need it, right?
Tax vehicles by weight, regardless of powertrain. Maybe charge extra for ICE. Offer tax rebates for professionals who can justify using a large vehicle for at least 120 days in the year.
I think you miss the key ingredient, they are tragedy of the commons where a company profits from amplifying the game-theory of the tragedy.
That is a HUGE difference. In one everyone is playing equally and if recognized can be de-escalated. In the other, there is a major monied player with power attempting to enshrine the tragedy into society.
I honestly feel like my small car is really the advantage. It's so much more nimble that I can easily evade road hazards and stop exceptionally quickly.
It would fare worse in a collision, but maybe I'm also less likely to get caught in one because my car isn't so enormous.
Not being able to see for 12 feet in front of your vehicle should be illegal. The only reason trucks are allowed to have that is because they are pegged as farm equipment. Treat them as farm equipment. Special license to drive if visibility is impacted, special taxation for large vehicle without a business use case, you name it.
Wonder how much of this is just due to how massive the us is and how far we drive. I have kids so drive a minivan. It's got 3 rows of seats and storage behind. I genuinely use all the rows fairly often or if not in use I fold them down for larger space in the back. Space I often use.
Not saying I couldn't make due with a smaller car but it would definitely make things more complicated.
There are many factors. The minivan itself is dying, and it's almost a "perfect" car for many use cases - can hold 8, can get car-like mileage, can hold as much as an SUV, is easier to get into.
But they're dying because people ain't buying, because the costs are so high and those with the money to buy new vehicles don't like them.
There is NOTHING preventing small SUVs that hold 5 people and cargo, get really good mileage, and are cheap(ish) - but they don't exist used because they don't exist new.
(It's sad, because I'm buying a new minivan, and I could not make the PHEV Pacifica make sense no matter how I finagled the financial numbers, the Sienna is simply unavailable at reasonable trim levels, and nobody makes an EV minivan.)
>Wonder how much of this is just due to how massive the us is
It has nothing to do with this. The US was settled, and most cities were developed before the introduction of the automobile. It's just that after WWII we bulldozed most of the country for highways and decided that cars were the only way to move around.
Funnily enough, actual seating capacity maxes out in the minivan class and all the bloated SUVs out there walk that metric back.
SUVs are purely about status and, for many people I've asked, a feeling of greater security at high speed on secondary roads from being higher off the ground. It's pretty problematic that people seek out a vehicle specifically so they can falsely feel more secure driving in a less-safe manner.
People spec their cars for the biggest usage case they can imagine, not their average trip.
Cities could combat this by setting up a rent a big f off truck for 24hrs program I suspect. For that one time in the year when you have to haul some lumber.
Cars are bigger now because emissions rules are stricter for sedans and other reasonably sized vehicles, it's a yet another cautionary tale about the unintended consequences of government regulations.
Moved to the UK from the US in 2017. Visited my hometown with my new family in 2022 for the first time due to the pandemic. I was blown away at how massive the trucks had become in that span for no useful reason. Europe is on the other end of the spectrum, granted, but it didn't even seem out of the ordinary to see F150s that are essentially F350s from a few model-years back with a single occupant wrapped around the double drive-through lanes of the local Chick-Fil-A and backing up traffic all the way into the main thoroughfare. It's so obvious how ruinous this is for even the basic civil engineering.
As you might expect from such a polarizing issue and thread, doing some research shows that the JD Power and Associates stat (80% of sold cars are trucks and SUVs) is extremely misleading, and probably meant to just be a headline-grabber. It includes glorified hatchbacks (that might be raised by 1-2 inches) like the Kona, CX-3, C-HR, HR-V, Crosstrek, Mercedes GLA, BMW X1, and Infiniti QX30.
I've been living in Europe for many years. Never needed a car, and moved around cities on a bicycle, public transportation, and sometimes a cab. On a train/plane for longer distances. Safe, healthy, pleasant, loved it.
Moved to the US last fall. One can't live here without a car anywhere outside NYC (and maybe Boston/Chicago?).
The reason is not just the car-centric cities design. It's the individualism culture, the severe income inequality, and the crime levels. I'm not advocating for or against the US culture to be clear, just pointing out the slightly less obvious causes of the car use.
Ironically this is almost entirely due to US enviromental regulations punishing smaller more effeciant vehicles.
The standards force larger gas guzzlers becuase the MPG limits are based on ft2 size of the chassis therefore you have to make them large to meet standards.
You can't find small trucks anymore due to CAFE standards as automakers upsize trucks in order to lower MPG requirements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy
There is alot of small light duty that the US is missing compared to the rest of the world due to how the standards work.
For example a small pick up truck like an S10 would need 50+mpg but add 20 ft2 to increase it to the size of the standard american trucks you see it mpg requirement becomes 32mpg.
Hence why trucks like the S10 has completely vanished.
Mind you the automakers lobby for this becuase it prevent affordable truck from being sold forcing only the high profit large gas guzzler trucks as the only option.
[+] [-] u801e|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/11/paris-charge-s...
[+] [-] nostromo|2 years ago|reply
We should also ease a lot of regulation from states regarding minimum road width, minimum parking spot sizes, minimum height of parking garages, minimum number of parking spots for residential and commercial development. Much of this problem stems from bad regulation. (Developers generally don't want to have all this unproductive space in their buildings, but are forced to by local and state governments.)
[+] [-] tw04|2 years ago|reply
This came up in another thread and while it's sort-of true, it's not really. Passenger vehicles of ANY size do almost no damage to a road in comparison to semi-trucks and delivery trucks. A 3/4-ton pickup vs your toyota camry is MAYBE a 2x increase in damage to the road. The average semi vs. that same 3/4-ton pickup is a 2500x increase in damage to the road on the low end (some studies claim as high as 10,000x).
Unless you're planning on eliminating the trucking industry, shrinking cars isn't reducing the wear on our roads in any meaningful way.
https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...
[+] [-] rootusrootus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikereedell|2 years ago|reply
I remember having a minor panic when registering my car at the DMV and hearing the person in front of me paying well over $1000 for the year. Turns out they were registering a brand-new, very large (and heavy) pickup truck.
[+] [-] hnav|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|2 years ago|reply
If you want to disincentivize SUV bloat, make narrower Lanes and more traffic calming features.
[+] [-] delfinom|2 years ago|reply
It is in most states, the problem is the cost difference is negligible.
Example fee https://dmv.ny.gov/registration/registration-fees-use-taxes-...
I have never heard of car registration by value
[+] [-] johnflan|2 years ago|reply
https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/41c9cc-motor-tax-rates/#mo...
[+] [-] _delirium|2 years ago|reply
Despite being a pretty big difference percentage-wise (the heaviest vehicles pay more than 5x the lightest vehicles!), not sure it’s enough of a difference in absolute dollars to really influence purchasing decisions though.
[+] [-] gadders|2 years ago|reply
And as a general point, any tax that is intended to encourage a behaviour should be revenue-neutral i.e. if you raise taxes for large cars, lower than for small cars so that the total tax take to government is the same. Otherwise it just becomes one more way for the government to ratchet up the amount of money they take from their citizens.
[+] [-] warrenm|2 years ago|reply
Probably the only thing New York State 'gets right' from a regulatory perspective: register a Lotus Elise? It's cheaper than an F-250
[+] [-] mulmen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] david38|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toast0|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] throwaway9870|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkarthik|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wincy|2 years ago|reply
After all, my wife is being very selfish to want to get a terrible gigantic minivan so my four year old can visit with friends and so my wife can transport her without literally popping a hernia (has happened once already!) to move our daughter in and out of the wheelchair on a regular basis.
Maybe I’ll encourage her to get a basket to transport our kid on our backs to get around in a convenient world where we don’t have parking spaces, or perhaps we can have a top unloading vehicle to get her out since the minimum width has been reduced when a handicap spot isn’t available (which considering how many elderly people there are is quite often when we go shopping).
I’m glad developers are forced to make the USA handicap accessible, and would encourage you to consider the knock on effects of the less advantaged when heavy handed legislation is passed to ban “wasteful” vehicles. Minivans and SUVs being mass produced and thus relatively affordable (although still quite expensive) are a ticket for people like my daughter to be able to even leave their houses on a regular basis.
[+] [-] setgree|2 years ago|reply
Which argues that because larger cars are more likely to injure/kill someone in the event of a crash, buying a larger car makes you morally culpable for all such harms.
Discussed more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35082315
[+] [-] llsf|2 years ago|reply
Not sure what is the best way to bring some sense to this trend. Regulation could put some boundaries I guess. Clearly there is little incentives for car manufacturers to go small & light.
If that trend keeps going, I could see some cities banning cars in some streets (e.g. only bikes or pedestrians) as having foot traffic close to car traffic would become too dangerous.
[+] [-] dahwolf|2 years ago|reply
None of these things seems to matter. I'm in my 40s and can't remember seeing a single car like this in my entire life until about 5 years ago. Now I very regularly see them, they're on the rise.
Some people just want to have a huge fucking truck for no apparent rational or adult reason. And it seems that as they make an appearance, it inspires others.
It fits in a generic pattern I'm seeing around me. People with disposable wealth will spent it on ridiculous life "upgrades" that make no rational sense. I'm seeing giant houses being built whilst there's 1-2 people living in it, and most of the day nobody at all. I'm talking about homes with so much space that you don't know what to do with it. Just because you can.
In these times of energy transition and ultra high energy prices, I see neighbors investing in an outdoor sauna.
It's not that I want to police what people can or cannot spent their money on, I'm just saying it's way out of bounds. Beyond the reasonable. Excessive resource usage with no immediate purpose by any stretch of the imagination.
But I'll also come to terms with the idea that perhaps I'm not that much better. My guilty pleasure is annual very remote travel, which as we know is a massive contributor to CO2 output.
If taxation or discouragement does not have the desired effect and banning is difficult if not unwanted, my conclusion is that behavioral change is not to be expected much from.
[+] [-] bovermyer|2 years ago|reply
I would love to see more cities design for people/pedestrians first, with denser multi-zone areas. I wish more people could walk to a neighborhood grocery, bar, library, etc.
[+] [-] VFIT7CTO77TOC|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sharkjacobs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthewaveryusa|2 years ago|reply
I don't blame the government for not seeing a need to regulate this decades ago. Really, who in their right mind would want such a difficult to park, more expensive, less economic vehicle if they didn't need it, right?
[+] [-] rglullis|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1270018080|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsunamifury|2 years ago|reply
That is a HUGE difference. In one everyone is playing equally and if recognized can be de-escalated. In the other, there is a major monied player with power attempting to enshrine the tragedy into society.
[+] [-] JeremyNT|2 years ago|reply
It would fare worse in a collision, but maybe I'm also less likely to get caught in one because my car isn't so enormous.
[+] [-] dzink|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nvy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wonderwonder|2 years ago|reply
Not saying I couldn't make due with a smaller car but it would definitely make things more complicated.
[+] [-] bombcar|2 years ago|reply
But they're dying because people ain't buying, because the costs are so high and those with the money to buy new vehicles don't like them.
There is NOTHING preventing small SUVs that hold 5 people and cargo, get really good mileage, and are cheap(ish) - but they don't exist used because they don't exist new.
(It's sad, because I'm buying a new minivan, and I could not make the PHEV Pacifica make sense no matter how I finagled the financial numbers, the Sienna is simply unavailable at reasonable trim levels, and nobody makes an EV minivan.)
[+] [-] thesuitonym|2 years ago|reply
It has nothing to do with this. The US was settled, and most cities were developed before the introduction of the automobile. It's just that after WWII we bulldozed most of the country for highways and decided that cars were the only way to move around.
[+] [-] rglullis|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unyttigfjelltol|2 years ago|reply
SUVs are purely about status and, for many people I've asked, a feeling of greater security at high speed on secondary roads from being higher off the ground. It's pretty problematic that people seek out a vehicle specifically so they can falsely feel more secure driving in a less-safe manner.
[+] [-] lkbm|2 years ago|reply
Emissions standards changed in a way that benefits larger vehicles, and the size of cars exploded.
[+] [-] Havoc|2 years ago|reply
Cities could combat this by setting up a rent a big f off truck for 24hrs program I suspect. For that one time in the year when you have to haul some lumber.
The male ego part is a little harder to solve.
[+] [-] duringmath|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] piker|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kulikalov|2 years ago|reply
Moved to the US last fall. One can't live here without a car anywhere outside NYC (and maybe Boston/Chicago?).
The reason is not just the car-centric cities design. It's the individualism culture, the severe income inequality, and the crime levels. I'm not advocating for or against the US culture to be clear, just pointing out the slightly less obvious causes of the car use.
[+] [-] cs702|2 years ago|reply
https://mastodon.social/@davidzipper/110843841107933007
[+] [-] joemi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mlok|2 years ago|reply
https://electrek.co/2021/05/04/citroen-ami-small-electric-ca...
[+] [-] rglullis|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twiddling|2 years ago|reply
There is a video floating around of a pickup truck who needs to use his front camera to see a Miata in front of him
[+] [-] Wildliferanger|2 years ago|reply
You can't find small trucks anymore due to CAFE standards as automakers upsize trucks in order to lower MPG requirements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy There is alot of small light duty that the US is missing compared to the rest of the world due to how the standards work.
For example a small pick up truck like an S10 would need 50+mpg but add 20 ft2 to increase it to the size of the standard american trucks you see it mpg requirement becomes 32mpg. Hence why trucks like the S10 has completely vanished. Mind you the automakers lobby for this becuase it prevent affordable truck from being sold forcing only the high profit large gas guzzler trucks as the only option.
[+] [-] cscurmudgeon|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://sfstandard.com/2023/01/11/sf-police-watchdogs-set-to....
[2] https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/person-shot-while-drivin...