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Comment by xyzzy_plugh | Hacker News Reader

Sure, but there are plenty of roads that don't see much, if any, traffic of that type.

There are very very few paved roads where the largest vehicles on them are large SUVs. I live on a mountain near a road where commercial vehicles are banned and we still get a few large commercial vehicles per day.

One of the roads up the mountain has switchbacks near the top that are so tight that nothing longer than 18 feet is allowed up, but at least 2x a week a box truck gets stuck.

Heavy cars have many negative impacts but road maintenance isn’t one worth worrying about.

There are vehicles that do more damage to roads than large pickup trucks. It's still the case that large pickup trucks do more damage to the road than small cars. Owners of pickup trucks are being subsidized by pedestrians and small car owners. They do not pay enough for the privilege of driving their vehicles in relation to the damage they cause.

Road damage isn’t like hit points. If a road has regular large vehicle traffic, it doesn’t really matter how many smaller passenger vehicles are driving on it—even if they are pickup trucks. Passenger vehicles aren’t going to change how frequently the road needs to be repaved.

At the extreme end, imagine a railroad bridge. We don’t care about how fat the mice that regularly cross it are.

It's not only that. Roads have to be resurfaced periodically because of weather damage regardless of how many vehicles drive on them. For any road that sees predominantly/only car traffic, this will be the dominant effect and the cars are irrelevant.

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