And make sure that it affects fuel delivery trucks in the same way that it affects other heavy vehicles.
Anything else would be plainly unfair.
edit: doing a quick fit, it seems to just be quadratic with weight though, while damage goes more like the fourth power as noted in sibling comment.
As for miles driven, AFAIK there's nothing direct non-linear there, just some duty and taxes on the fuel.
[1]: https://www.skatteetaten.no/person/avgifter/bil/importere/hv...
Makes sense given it's an article about regular cars.
Two wheel motorcycles today as they stand should be outlawed.
Injuries per minute or per hour seems like a more apt unit to compare
Here in Germany regulations are unnecessarily complex and your best option is to get 10-20 year old Velomobiles that can legally be driven as S-Pedelecs (up to 45 km/h) because they were at some point certified for that speed.
But getting a new velomobile, that you can easily drive faster than 45 km/h by muscle power alone, certified to be powered electrically is apparently near impossible (i.e. not financially feasible).
Not even sure where I'd park it, maybe my building's small motorcycle parking lot has some space.
Definitely... The market is too small and everything is built by hand. You can get reasonable used ones for 4000-6000€, but you probably know that.
Otoh you save gasoline which pays for itself after a while (3 years in my case, not counting insurance or maintenance).
> it hardly has more space to bring stuff than a normal bike
It's a bit more and it's safe from the elements. Some 4-wheel models have an actual trunk.
> the rain
Doesn't bother me either, riding bicycles in the rain is surprisingly ok.
> I am not claiming to be rational here
Maybe try one out. I was convinced of the concept when I could easily keep up with my SO who was doing 45 km/h in a e-VM during a test ride.
That said: I don't own a VM either because it never made sense... Either my workplace was too close or too far for a VM to make sense. But I think there is a sweetspot of around 20-40km one way, where a VM is a great alternative to normal bikes and cars.
Unless more regulation like the one discussed in the article are passed to stop the suv trends, I would never even consider riding something like this.
That's the first thing that comes up every time VMs are mentioned. It's definitely not false, but I feelel that some points should be mentioned:
1. Over all VMs are a lot safer than bicycles: 1.1. If a car touches your bicycles handbar you've lost. In a VM the handlebar is inside. 1.2. You ride feet first which increases the length of your "crumble zone" significantly. Watch this and tell me you would have survived in a normal bicycle: https://youtu.be/5aujzL__SZE
2. Huge trucks are not as common in Europe. Everybody here is worried about SUVs getting too big here, but our SUVs are tiny compared to (some) American trucks.
3. Due to the E-Bike boom, cycling infrastructure is becoming a lot better with huge stretches of smooth, paved bicycle lanes along major roads. We are getting there.
4. Some sports cars are only slightly heigher compared to Velomobiles (e.g. Mango: 0.9m vs. Porsche 911 1.2m) and are often painted super bright colors. If a driver overlooks a VM he will probably also overlook a sports car.
(To be fair, I think that there is some "this object does not participate in traffic" recognition happening in the brain that just marks VMs as unimportant. I did a test drive some time ago were we were shouted at because we "drove towards [the other guy] at high velocity" ... while we were literally waiting to pass a parked car. I assume that we just "appeared" for him and his brain decided that therefore we must have been moving at high velocity.)
2. I know but still too big ^^
4. I think width play an important part too, on motorcycle I had cars merge on me as if I was not there multiple times :(; easier to disappear in the blindspot.
(Funny anecdote, I would have expected the reverse with people ignoring VM because they underestimate the speed :).
Other accidents like the one in the video above are surprisingly non-fatal ... iirc the guy in the video was doing ~60km/h when he collided feet-first with the tree ... got up and recorded a youtube video about his accident :-)
There have been and continue to be efforts to get something like this to market. There are a lot of hurdles.
I'm curious though; is road damage based on total vehicle weight, or just the weight on each tire? If the latter, I think the formula should reflect that in order to incentivize vehicles to distribute weight across more tires in order to minimize road damage where that makes sense.
I'm also curious about how much wear is caused by vehicles vs other factors, like the weather. I'd guess that probably depends a lot on the local climate in each state.
I should also point out that maintenance costs aren't the only cost associated with road usage; even light cars take up space on the road, creating traffic and thus reducing the utility for other drivers. Any charges should thus include the cost of additional lanes needed to accommodate those vehicles regardless of their weight.
In an ideal world I'd probably base the cost on miles driven, plus an additional charge based on an estimate of additional maintenance costs incurred depending on mileage, vehicle weight, number of tires, and the local climate. But then you also have to take into account the bureaucratic cost of enforcement, and how complicated you can make things before those costs exceed the benefits of accurate distribution of costs to consumers. Definitely a complex issue.
That may unfairly impact people who already cannot afford to live close to where the jobs are.
Once those are separated, providing a tax reduction system for lower incomes would become possible.
I live in a snowy place, and the number of people I see running absolutely bald summer tires in the winter is horrifying.
That said, one doesn't have to have a car to get to work --- for almost 5 years, rather than put miles on my truck I rode a bicycle to work, and in the past I've walked to work at need --- hoping to get back to riding to my new job, just waiting for a connecting road through a development to be finished and the ride will become markedly shorter, facilitating this.