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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

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.)

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>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.

https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...

This should be obvious to anyone with eyes too. Go look at a neighborhood with no or low through traffic and extremely old roads are in good condition. Meanwhile a nearby through-fare, unless constantly repaired and patched, will be falling apart.

Even the low traffic roads in freeze-thaw regions need constant repair. So it's not all weight related. Weight is a factor that really only matters once you start looking at commercial size vehicles.

Also look at your local bus terminals. That asphalt is damaged beyond belief, even though it sees next to no traffic.

A few dozen buses a day braking and accelerating on the same patch of street over and over will wreck it.

Thanks, asphalt!

Yeah - it happens to concrete, too ...but it takes way longer

There's a ghost town in california called new idria. Obviously, very little traffic on the road leading to it. The pavement surface is probably 50 years old and in reasonable shape except for certain areas that make you wish you brought a 4x4

In my area its immediately obvious which lanes and roads have bus routes. A three-lane each way road will have two nearly pristine lanes and one completely beat to hell. Guess which one the bus takes.

I would expect a neighborhood, even where everyone owns a semi to have significantly less wear than a thorough-faire that sees a lot of traffic. But even that didn't tell you everything. A good quality asphalt will out last a poor one pretty much no matter the conditions. We have a stretch of road near us that is always in bad shape, when another stretch, seeing the exact same traffic is in good condition.

> A 3/4-ton pickup vs your toyota camry is MAYBE a 2x increase in damage to the road.

Your source states that relative road damage between two vehicles is the forth power of the ratio of their weights.

The base curb weight of a Ford F-150 is in the vicinity of 4,600lbs. The base curbs weight of a Toyota Camry is in the vicinity of 3,500lbs. So the damage ratio is (46/35)^4 = ~3. The Toyota Camry used to be a small car, but it isn't anymore. The base curb weight of a Ford Fiesta is in the vicinity of 2,500lbs. So the damage ratio between a Toyota Camry and a Ford Fiesta is (35/25)^4 = ~3.8, and between a Ford F-150 and a Ford Fiesta is (46/25)^4 = ~11.5. So a Toyota Camry, being somewhat of a behemoth, should be paying on the order of 3.8x the amount of road tax as a Ford Fiesta.

Even so, unless we're charging the average semi truck 2500x more road tax, and vehicles of that weigh class which cause the overwhelming majority of wear, the roads will continue to be as abysmal as they currently are.

I confess I assume that we do charge trucks an absurdly larger amount of money? Is why they have weigh stations between states?

That depends on what you consider "absurdly larger" - the fee is between $1,000-$2,000 depending on the state. In some states that's not much more than you'd be paying for a nice luxury car or large SUV.

https://www.truckinfo.net/research/license-costs-by-state

I confess I had a mistaken thought that weigh stations were akin to toll booths. That is, that fees were levied based on the weight.

I can think of several problems with that thought, taking it longer, of course. :(

I'm FAR from an expert, but you aren't totally misguided. That was the original intent once upon a time, now it's more about safety. They do weigh trucks to ensure they aren't going to destroy a bridge or damage roads if they're overweight for their route - but they're primarily checking a driver's log book to ensure they aren't over hours, the truck passes safety inspections, the driver isn't transporting illicit goods, etc.

I won't presume that I know how much we're taxing semis et al., but it's clear by the road wear that it's not enough, and most of the damage is not caused by everyday drivers.

Heavy vehicles also include garbage trucks, delivery trucks, and even busses which benefit everyone. Cars have only been widely adopted for about 100 years, and it's not clear that current trends can't be sustained for another 100.

The public rightfully bears much of the burden for truck wear and tear because the trucks aren’t driving around for fun, they’re bringing goods and the public wants things like stocked supermarkets. If we taxed trucks at actual cost we’d either have no deliveries or an extremely regressive cost schema due to trucking companies passing on the expense.

Also to prevent overweight unsafe loading, doing trafic safty inspections, smuggling prevention, and checking cargo especially to prevent cross border invasive species.

Yeah, I mostly knew these other reasons were a thing. I had not realized they were the only reason. I guess I was thinking of them more like a port of entry between states and assumed taxes were involved.

> Your source states that relative road damage between two vehicles is the forth power of the ratio of their weights.

I wonder if that only works for weights that are not too low and not too high?

For example a typical Eastern grey squirrel weighs around 50 times as much as a typical mouse, and a typical chicken weighs about 7 times as much as a squirrel.

Does a squirrel crossing a modern highway really cause over 6 million times as much damage as a mouse, and does a chicken crossing the road really cause 2400 times as much damage as a squirrel?

Yes, this is true. I’m a transport engineer and can confirm that roads are designed for a truck’s weight and cars hardly register in terms of damage.

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).

But on many city streets a very large percentage of heavy vehicles are... public buses. Not sure it makes sense to shift the cost for road repair to the public transit agency.

Why not, if their buses literally do >99.9% of the road damage?

Buses carry many more people, so the damage-per-user-mile is mitigated.

Also, buses don’t require storage at the destination, aka parking. Cutting parking space allows the city to be more walkable, further mitigating vehicle damage.

And increased density is also good for the tax revenue per square mile, which is also good for the city’s bottom line.

Regular buses (non-articulated, non-double decker) almost never carry more than a few dozen people.

> a few dozen people

still a massive win considering that the F-150 is the top selling vehicle in the US. Not car, not truck, overall vehicle. A few dozen people in big trucks will far outweigh the damage of a bus

Not if the bus does >100x the road damage of an F150 in terms of road repair costs...

Buses are empty (or effectively empty) the vast majority of the time they're driving around

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.

I would think the tax on the value of the car would be better handled by taxing gas much more heavily. It seems to me that all of the very expensive cars have terrible mileage. If we had a good carbon tax, it should do a good job of taxing what we really want to be taxed, which happens to coincide well with luxury vehicles.

Electric cars are heavy, expensive, and use no gas. This tax would be quickly regressive.

The answer to that is to compensate it with other progressive tax credit, or redistribute the benefit of the tax in other means.

As has been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere, electric vehicles aren't appreciably more heavy than other commuter vehicles, especially given that damage to roads is non-linear. And as for them not using gas -- that's why taxing carbon would handle it. If electricity comes from natural gas or coal, then you pay tax on the electricity accordingly.

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.

Example fee https://dmv.ny.gov/registration/registration-fees-use-taxes-...

I have never heard of car registration by value

Georgia has an ad valorem vehicle registration tax directly based on the vehicle's value.

that explains all of the shitboxes around greater Atlanta

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)

https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/41c9cc-motor-tax-rates/#mo...

That's unfair. If one person drives 1000 km annually in a big SUV and another person drives 100000 km annually in a small and efficient hybrid sedan, then obviously the latter emits more CO2. And if hypothetically they walked the same distance they would likely emit even more CO2 (assuming they eat mostly western-style heavily processed food), but would obviously pay no tax at all. I believe a better system is to include the CO2 tax in the fuel/food price.

I don't see why that's unfair. Unfair to whom?

The person that drive 1000km on a big SUV emits more than if he had bought a small an efficient car to drive the same amount. So that should be incentived.

> I believe a better system is to include the CO2 tax in the fuel/food price

I agree with that.

Why do you think it's unfair to discourage what amounts to ≥3 hours of driving daily? At that point you should probably switch to trains or move.

Well, not everybody drives alone. Moving one person in a car emits comparable amount of CO2 as a person going by foot and moving only two people by car emits less CO2 than moving those two people on foot. We should discourage driving alone, or driving extremely short distances, but not discourage driving cars in general. Cars are surprisingly more energy efficient than walking/cycling if utilized fully. Also a big car fitting 8 people is more energy efficient per person than a small car that fits 4 people.

It does work like that in some states. New York state registration fees range from $26 per 2yr to $140 per 2yr depending on weight: https://dmv.ny.gov/registration/registration-fees-use-taxes-...

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.

You don't have to influence decisions though. Just pay for the work in a fair way.

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.

No, but it does take externalities into account, i.e. road tax is based on CO2 emissions.

It’s also worth noting that in the UK it’s explicitly not called “road tax”.

It’s the snappily titled Vehicle Excise Duty, VED.

That was changed in 1937 to stop drivers assuming it gave them more right to use the road than anyone else.

The roads here were not built for cars, cars just use them.

> 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

Public good benefits are too complex to reduce to a consumption tax.

It is in California. I drive a Ram 2500, which is classified as a commercial truck, so I pay many hundreds every year to register it.

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.

While European roads are far smaller than American roads their fire engines are still based on large trucks and only about 3/4 the size of US ones. Look at the examples here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_engine

I did read of one town in the UK that bought a Kei-class truck but it was an unusual situation.

The standard in the UK seems to be a 3.7m (12ft) wide road to access buildings over 11m high. https://www.ukfrs.com/guidance/search/vehicle-access

Maybe it should be based on your driving record? The worst driver you are, the higher the cost to society when you are driving.

Isn't this how insurance works?

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.

Compared to other cars, sure but still negligible compared to semis and other _heavy_ machinery

Yeah, it’s basically not a real concern compared to semis.

I think the optics are bad but the logic is sound. EVs don’t pay gas tax like ICE vehicles do, so it should even out in the end.

I have to agree with OP, taxes should be based on weight. If you EV causes 10x the wear that a ICE car then you pay 10x the taxes. If the goal is fossil fuel usage, we cannot ignore the fact that pouring tar and repairing roads is not horrible as well.

If the goal is to encourage usage, then just subsidize it, but eventually it all comes down to wear and taxes, you cannot ignore a car that weights 10x as much as a normal car.

There are ways to make the road stronger if the government really cares about such things. But they don't it ends up being yearly cost = total upfront cost / average life span which in there mind is cheaper than a bigger upfront cost that lasts longer.

Note that suggesting it's 10x the wear is greatly exaggerating

Weight increase is ~30% https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/jun/21/carry-that-we...

Ya I didn't have the figure off the top of my head, it does appear to only be 1.3x to 3x which is really not much more.

Road Wear is related to weight by the 4th power...a 30% increase in axle weight is like 2.85x the damage to the road.

Heavy EVs cause more tire wear. I've seen articles claiming that particulate pollution from tires on EVs is a problem. I can think of a few other reasons to want lighter EVs. But you need a really heavy vehicle to be the dominant cause of roads wearing out.

Great, EV taxes can pay for EV infrastructure and contribute towards road maintenance!

Nothing unfortunate about it at all. Why shouldn't an EV Hummer or Ford Lightning pay up for the weight on the road?

Maybe they should pay more but not because they cause more road wear. They don't.

EVs are not "way heavier". They are a couple hundred pounds heavier than comparable ice cars on average.

And all that extra weight is in the battery. Over time, batteries will shrink to the point where EVs are lighter on average.

That's wishful thinking: battery technology required to reduce weight of EV enough is not in sight yet. It might even be physically impossible.

EVs are not the solution to our transportation problems.

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.

If you don't want to pay more, Don't cause more damage.

Heavier vehicles use more fuel. Roads are paid for based on fuel taxes primarily.

I’m sorry my daughter’s equipment for her wheelchair is causing you such distress and ruining the roads. Let me just sling her over my shoulder and carry her everywhere from now on instead of using all this polluting road destroying equipment.

Instead of being sorry, compensate everyone else for the damages.

Wouldn't it be even better if people who have a legitimate need, like you, could get the vehicle and associated taxes subsidised or even free, while people who don't need it do pay more for their choice?

(This was the case for a relative of mine in the UK who got a car paid for by her local council because of her husband's disabilities; organised by the same department/funding as pays for caters for him.)

No.

I wrote a long well thought out response but my browser crashed.

The long and short of it is dealing with bureaucrats seems to increase our chances of getting CPS called on us, constantly wearing us down, they tried to get our daughter a tracheostomy and we had to fight against it.

I don’t trust the government to be competent at all. It’s almost like an AI following programming and sometimes incidentally it produces some good outcomes. But it doesn’t care about anything. And it’s filled with people blithely executing in whatever mandate they’ve been given.

We are looking at a privately funded charity to help us, although we could likely afford it in our own.

Government money always comes with strings attached and they act like they own my child.

The strong interpretation of the GP's proposal is that such a system would include carve-outs for assistive vehicles.

Yeah but that’s not how the market works. Like how there’s effectively no such thing as a market for small trucks because of legislation effectively banning them even if not de facto.

This is just more middle brow intellectuals thinking they can make everything alright and solve the worlds problems when they’ll end up making things worse. If people can afford large vehicles then let them have large vehicles.

For people like us it means a market for used vehicles already exists and I don’t have to rely on the whims of some bureaucrat to approve my vehicle apportionment, comrade.

This is a tragedy of the commons. A tragedy in real terms, that everyone is worse off because of.

You have a perfectly legitimate reason for using a large car, and you should advocate for support. Laws can be designed to discourage things bad for society, while not further punishing the disadvantaged. I realize this doesn't always happen the right way, but using that as a blanket reason for not even trying the reduce amount of tanks off the road also doesn't seem reasonable.

Sure, all those trucks, pickups, vans out there are all for disabled people and of course it is totally unthinkable that disabled people could get exceptions. Sorry, your comment actually makes me want to question if you really have a disabled child.

Reduce the number of parking spaces by half for every store and make 10% disabled parking only, 2 disabled parkings minimum and you would be fine. Give a 50% rebate on car tax for cars for disabled people and you should be fine overall.

It makes you question it because it goes against your agenda. Also it’s against the hacker news rules to assume I’m lying.

Also it’s a long con since I’ve been talking about her since she was born, here on Hacker News. But thanks for being rude.

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