Colorado Law Would Charge Owners for Driving Giant Trucks and SUVs | Hacker News Reader

Colorado Law Would Charge Owners for Driving Giant Trucks and SUVs

jalopnik.com

38 pointsourmandave36 comments

I think the correlation between vehicle weight and injury to pedestrians requires some nuance.

The comments in the article imply that being hit by a heavy vehicle involves more force than being hit by a light vehicle but, other things being equal, the difference is likely to be negligible. Sure the heavy vehicle has more momentum, but neither will slow down significantly from hitting you, so the acceleration applied to a pedestrian that is hit will be more or less the same. Note this isn't true when one vehicle hits another - mass will matter then.

So what does make a difference? The shape of the front of the vehicle. With a regular car, you'll almost certainly be swept off your feet and go over the roof. Your legs will take the full force, but your torso never experiences a huge acceleration, so your chances of internal injuries are less. With a truck, there's a pretty good chance the front is vertical where it hits your torso, meaning the acceleration is much higher, and so the chance of internal injuries is much higher.

After you're hit by the flat front of the truck, where do you go then? There's a pretty good chance you go under it.

Now, heavier vehicles are also more likely to be taller, but the impact on pedestrian safety is a second order effect. If you really want to encourage safer roads for pedestrians and cyclists, maybe tax the height of the front of the bonnet (hood)?

This makes sense. An additional consideration along the same lines are that drivers of high-hooded cars have reduced sightlines and are more likely to hit someone dimply due to blindspots, and that likelihood should be be multiplied by the likelihood of injury. I would support taxing reduced driver sight and/or hood height.

Blogspam, original article is here:

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/10/18/colorados-vehicle-wei...

Here's the relative risk of pedestrian death per vehicle mile, broken down by vehicle type.

(all ages)

  cars: 1  

  buses: 7.97    

  motorcycles: 1.93  

  light trucks: 1.45  

  heavy trucks: 0.96

(age 0-14)

  cars: 1  

  buses: 11.85  

  motorcycles: 3.77

(age 85 and older)

  cars: 1  

  buses: 16.7

source: https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/11/4/232

So the term “hit by a bus” reflects reality

That data is 20 years old. Maybe stats are the same or similar, but the makeup of vehicles on the road has certainly changed since 2002.

The average truck/SUV driver has also changed.

Despite being old data, what they call "light trucks" are the gigantic pickups and SUVs of today. "Heavy trucks" are almost all commercial vehicles.

Anyone care to wager that “We’re addressing this from a data-based perspective,” [words of the bill's sponsor], will not impose these proportionally higher fees upon buses?

If you look into pedestrian fatalities per mile travelled per pessanger, buses are most probably still far safer than any of the vehicles listed.

It seems to me that an even more relevant metric (if there were a reasonable way to calculate it) would be deaths "per passenger mile" rather than "per vehicle mile".

You are skewing the data. The report itself says that. Buses only account for 2% of pedestrian casualties while cars and light trucks account for 90%.

That statistic supports the obvious: hundreds of thousands of buses throughout the world constantly drive tortuous routes through extremely densely populated areas, and far fewer drive in places with more miles and few people.

It seems like it would be useful to show relative risk per passenger mile in addition to vehicle mile. I don’t think that’s in the study, and I can’t find average bus utilization.

For example, if cars and light trucks carry 1.5 passengers on average (made up number, but I’m sure it’s less than 2) and buses carry 20 passengers, then buses would be safer for pedestrians. Assuming you can “trade” light passnger vehicles for buses on a 1:1 passenger mile basis, which isn’t perfect, but it’s relevant.

Edit: this report [0] says buses average 9 passengers, cars average 1.58, and pickups average 1.46.

[0] https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/docs/Pub...

Note that for an appropriate relative comparison between individual and mass transit, the appropriate measure is per passenger mile. (For a truly accurate comparison, you should also normalize driving regimes; cities, where buses generally operate, have a much higher rate of incidents per mile.)

For an absolute comparison, buses are responsible for 2% of pedestrian deaths, vs approx. 90% for cars (per the same FARS data).

> A bill currently moving through the Colorado legislature would, for the first time, impose a “vulnerable road user protection fee” on heavy passenger cars, trucks and SUVs registered in the state, a reflection of research that shows such vehicles are significantly more likely to kill pedestrians and cyclists in a crash.

(That quote is from the article the linked one is a hasty rewrite of)

This fees appears to be related to the weight of the vehicle, rather than any objective measurement of its danger to pedestrians. I think this is saying that a heavier electric vehicle with a battery bank would pay more than a lighter, combustion-powered vehicle. For example, an F-150 lightning weighing 6000 lbs, would pay more than a gasoline F-150, weighing 4000 lbs. Is the former significantly more dangerous to pedestrians?

A new Tesla Model X weighs more than a 1984 Chevrolet Suburban—which has better braking? Which is safer to pedestrians? That is, when driven by a human...

The article opens with:

> It’s already well-established that heavier vehicles do more damage to roads than lighter ones, so it only makes sense for them to pay extra for the privilege of driving, say, a GMC Hummer EV.

Which as far as I can tell misrepresents the situation. A hummer does about 20x the damage as a regular car. An 18-wheeler does 400x the damage of a regular car.

Source: https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...

Of course that's just road damage, and doesn't account for the increase in likelihood of pedestrian deaths. But as far as I can tell, 18-wheelers cause the vast majority of road damage on any paved roads, and if we're charging vehicles fairly, then normal cars pay "almost nothing", a hummer EV pays "20x almost nothing which is still very little", and the very large trucks are the only ones paying a substantial amount.

So then the options are:

1) Make deliveries or other services such as garbage pickup much much more expensive because we're honestly charging vehicles by road damage.

2) Acknowledge that smaller consumer vehicles are actually subsidizing road damage caused by garbage pickup etc, but pretend that's not the case and use claims of "heavy EVs are destroying our roads" to make heavier consumer vehicles be the only group paying that subsidy.

3) Acknowledge that smaller consumer vehicles are actually subsidizing road damage caused by garbage pickup etc, and raise money based on that so that we have a functioning road network which benefits everyone with a vehicle.

Personally I prefer (3) but anecdotally I've seen a lot of people out there pushing for (2). I'm fine with taxing higher weight vehicles to discourage their use and save cyclist/pedestrian lives (like mine!), but let's not lie about it.

18 wheelers already pay additional tax based on weight and mileage.

Not if they're under 55k lbs. A 54,000 truck will cause thousands of times more damage than a Hummer EV. Does the tax you refer to reflect four orders of magnitude of damage differential?

Source: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/hvut/mod1/whatish...

Here's the amount paid for being over 55k lbs:

> $100 plus $22 per 1,000 pounds over 55,000 lbs

If that's the going rate for weight-based road damage, then scaled down to a residential vehicle, no one without a CDL would ever pay more than pennies.

Since gas taxes and vehicle registration fees are needed to fund road construction, I have to conclude that residential vehicles are subsidizing road damage caused by trucks.

Which, again, is fine. But let's be honest about it.

This is correct. Almost all road repair costs are caused by commercial heavy trucks. They should not just pay more, they should be paying substantially all road work costs.

If we charge directly based on road damage, this is true. But I'm okay with residential road users subsidizing the use of commercial trucks; they're very useful to have around and charging appropriately would increase the cost of services not-insignificantly.

Mileage taxes are interesting; then the people who use the roads the most, and have the most interest in keeping them in good shape, pay the most to do so.

I'm also okay with charging heavy vehicles more based on them being a larger threat to life. But saying that tax is "because heavy residential vehicles do more road damage" is disingenuous.

It looks like that chart at streets.mn is based on the well known rule that damage goes as the 4th power of weight.

What I've not seen though is what range of weights that applies to.

Take for example a chicken, an Eastern grey squirrel, and a mouse. The chicken weighs about 7 times what the squirrel weighs, and the squirrel weighs about 50 times what the mouse weighs.

But I'm having a hard time believing that the squirrel crossing a modern highway does over 6 million times as much damage as the mouse crossing that highway, and the chicken crossing the road does over 15 billion times as much damage as a mouse.

I don't find that so difficult to believe. Sure, big numbers are involved, but similarly are such large numbers involved in "how much damage can a road take before it begins to mechanically fail"

As far as I can tell, a mouse does about 10^-19 times as much damage as a car. So a chicken does about 10^-9 times as much damage as a car.

Considering weight alone and ignoring the difference between wheels and claws, a billion chickens doing the same damage as the weight of one car seems reasonable.

In your example, the chicken, squirrel, and mouse all do such little damage to asphalt that it's all essentially zero. You can calculate the relative values as you did, but it's not really meaningful because it's still such a small number.

'proposed law' is more accurately called a 'bill' .

bill noun /bɪl/

a written suggestion for a new law that is presented to a country’s parliament so that its members can discuss it

The libertarian in me is opposed to this on principle, yet these large vehicles impose a lot of externalities:

road wear and damage due to increased weight

accidents between pedestrians due to high hood height and less visibility, other motorists of smaller cars

congestion

less parking space

I’d be inclined to be ok with this, if bicyclists didn’t ride like douchebags expecting cars to avoid them.

I had one last week zoom out of an alley just in front of me. Had my reflexes been slower he’d have been a flap jack

I don’t track the logic… shit bag cyclist (whom I would also hate) did something bad so “none deserve protection?”

Full Caveat: I’m a current mom-van driver and former 8-mile by bicycle commuter… so I’ve got experience and skin in both games here.

> road wear and damage due to increased weight

Given gas taxes typically fund roads, it would be good to what the MPG vs. Weight ratios look like. Is my Honda Pilot 2x, 3x worse than my old Honda Civic given fuel economy?

While I deeply dislike these stupidly large trucks that are hardly ever used for carrying stuff or towing, the fact is that even the Hummer EV creates negligible road wear. It's all down to 18-wheelers.

But they do create problems for people on foot and on bikes.

Libertarians do not necessarily oppose usage-based fees to pay for externalities. In fact, many actively propose them as an alternative to regulatory mandates. I you oppose that "on principle" I suggest you reconsider whether that particular strain of libertarianism is really moral or viable in the real world.

My F150 takes up the same parking space as my Kia Rio...

The current CAFE calculations include the FOOTPRINT of the vehicle, giving bigger vehicles lower mpg rates to pass regulations. It makes a strong incentive to keep trucks big, as more efficient engines are hard to make.

Truly the calculation is quite odd, the formula includes the Natural Log to the power of the footprint of the vehicle.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/p...

Related one from earlier in the year:

Steal This Idea: The Larger the Car, the More You Pay to Park

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36039364

Sounds good

Possible to charge putz Prius drivers for going 35 in a 60 zone as well? I have no SUV so put the pitchforks away. But there has to be a balance between not moving much min a wimp mobile and blowing a gallon a minute on a massive semi-tank.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com