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Another thing not mentioned by this poor article (everything forbes does these days is hot garbage), is that vehicles which are heavier do damage quartically proportional to their weight - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

So the ever increasing weight of cars, trucks, SUVs, and especially semi-trucks is also responsible for our roads being shit, full of potholes, and expensive to fix.

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Exactly because of the fourth power low, almost all of the road damage comes from the heaviest vehicles: class 7 and 8 trucks as well as buses etc. Even the heaviest passenger vehicles are negligible by comparison. And the weight of semi-trucks hasn't been "ever increasing": normal maximum weight has been fixed at 80,000 pounds for decades.

In some areas the roads are shit due to weather conditions, mainly frost heaves. This has little to do with vehicle damage.

Surely they do damage proportional to the fourth power of the contact pressure on the tire contact patch, not the fourth power of the overall vehicle weight, right? So adding axles or wider tires etc mitigates this.

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