Honestly we should be taxing vehicles worldwide by weight. Damage to the road is x^4 to this value and it also would have the benefit of driving vehicles to be lighter and more fuel efficient and kill less pedestrians.
Yep. Pushes the industry to research lighter composites too, let’s see more carbon fiber chassis like the BMW i3! (A really underrated great little vehicle, my sibling has one and it rocks!)
The road repairs have to be done either way, taxes just change who pays for them, whether it's gas taxes, overweight vehicle taxes, or general tax revenues.
Besides, trucks carrying goods are already taxed based on weight, they're measured at the truck weighing stations on the highway.
Shipping is already taxed by weight throughout the US. It is enforced by a nationwide network of state run weight stations that are actively enforced by police.
In the Netherlands vehicles are taxed at sale, before VAT so VAT is also payed over this tax, based on emissions. Then there is a quarterly tax based on the weight of the car. Currently zero emission cars get a 100% discount on the latter and hybrid get 50% discount. Diesels cost about triple.
Cars in NL are way more expensive then in the neighbouring countries.
Not across the states. Across the border. What stops people in US to buy and drive car from Mexico?
Huh, you can't even buy in US a decent new European car if someone decided not to sell the model through the dealership. Wait 25 years and only then you can import and register it.
I do agree with this with the caveat that EVs are heavier than ICE. So it could be weight + emission = tax. That way while EVs are heavier they have no emissions and thus the price equalizes at some point.
Doubt it. The next chapter for EVs will be truly affordable vehicles, which naturally tend to be smaller. And with a more compact size (and most likely less batteries) will come lower weight. Besides, ICE cars have gotten heavy, too. So the extra 400kg headroom that EVs have should give them a decent fighting chance.
Under a fair weight tax scheme, a passenger of a fully loaded bus would pay more than a solo driver of a Hummer EV (one of the heaviest SUVs on the market).
The Hummer EV's curb weight is 9063 lbs (add 150 lbs for an average driver) and it has two axles for a loaded axle weight of 4607 lbs.
A three axle articulated bus with 123 passengers has a loaded axle weight of 21,563 lbs using the data from the table above.
This means that the bus has ~4.7 times the load per axle as the SUV, so per the fourth power law, it does 488 times as much damage to the road as the SUV. Since it carries 123 people, that means that each bus passenger is doing ~4 times as much damage to the road as the SUV driver.
It is easy to exclude vehicles used for mass transit. Let's say every vehicle which required a driver license D is exempt of such tax.
I generally agree, personal vehicles should be taxed based on weight and power. Small taxes for small cars(fiat 500) and extra high taxes for ridiculously heavy and/or powerful vehicles like 911 or cybertuck.
I don’t understand why we can’t have this, and exemptions for public transit, or human transportation companies providing municipal services?
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. If a solution isn’t as elegant as possible, but significantly reduces the amount of SUVs on the roads, it’s a good thing - period.
Does all that take into consideration the number of tires per axel, and size of the contact patch for each axel?
I would assume that road damage is proportional to surface pressure at the contact patch, so greater contact patch means less damage. As a result you can have a heavier vehicle do less damage than a lighter vehicle with the same number of axels, if the number and size of tires on the larger vehicle is greater than the smaller vehicle.
Most busses I see around run large truck tires, and normally have 4 tires on the rear axel vs the normal 2 you’ll find on a Hummer. So a bus spreads it weight over 6 tires rather than 4, and if we generously assume the Hummer tires and bus tires have the same contact patch, that means a bus can be 50% heavier than the Hummer, but not cause any additional damage.
I know loading regulations are normally done based on axel number, rather than tire number. But I assume that’s mostly down to ease of regulation, rather than axel count being the most accurate way to calculate road damage. Indeed the document you link too even breaks down loading limits based on number of axels, but also single tire limits, which maybe different depending on pressure of the tire.
Edit: I also note that U.S. buses seem to be much heavier than necessary. As a point of comparison a two axel double decker, New Routemaster in London[1], which carries up to 87 people, has a curb weight of only 28,000lbs, which would give it a fully laden weight of only 29,000lbs. That’s substantially less than equivalent buses in that document.
This is not apples-to-apples, because buses don't drive on all of the roads, whereas cars drive on (presumably) any road. The total mileage of roads used for bus routes is a small fraction of all road mileage, even where bus systems are extensive. So more roads must be maintained for cars. Road damage is also affected by vehicle speed, acceleration, braking and so forth; buses drive regular routes at regulated speeds and do not brake very hard.
I think that rather than use this source as a way to highlight issues with a strict interpretation of the 4th-power law, you should have commented how your source says you should not use a strict interpretation of the 4th-power law.
For example, it highlights how the damage also depends on the road construction, with highways and major arterials built to a higher standard.
As a general rule, a fully-loaded 123 passenger bus is running on an arterial, not a residential street like someone driving their Hummer EV home does, so you can't compare the road damage simply by axle weight.
Your source even highlights how "it is possible for fewer, heavier buses to damage pavement less than more, lighter buses."
That's all part of larger cost/benefit analysis, like how building for a longer service life for the bus means using heavier parts, which increases the weight, or how running fewer, larger buses reduces emissions per passenger-mile.
The owner of the Hummer EV does a different cost/benefit analysis, with some of the costs born by the government and thus shared across the taxpayers. Without extra fees for heavier vehicle owners, they end up paying the same as light vehicle owners despite the higher negative impacts of their heavy vehicles.
Isn't that solved by the system that limits what vehicles can come into the city each day? The last time I looked into it you can't just drive any vehicle into the city each day in Paris.
Not necessarily. There are a lot of stupid ‘compact’ SUVs out there which are big on the outside and small on the inside, and inefficient for no reason. Things like the Nissan Juke. Those things should be taxed to oblivion, so people stop buying them.
Interesting, but maybe not the whole story. A relative has one of these and tells me its efficiency is godawful, which I put down at least in part to its bulky uprightness (I have a longer estate/station wagon which does nearly twice the mpg).
Do you size your car for median or max occupancy needs? If you drop the kids at school for 1/3 of your commute and you are alone the other 2/3 going to work, your mediam occupancy is 1.
Only 11% of families in the US have five people or more. Odds you will need a huge car that fits 8 are very slim, but we have not made people buying these large cars pay for the externalities they bring. I can buy a Yukon XL when I have a family of 4 instead of a minivan because I'm making everyone else pay for my subsidized fuel and road usage.
If I were paying the actual price, including externalities, I would not have bought this car nor feel at risk because every other vehicle on the road is made on top of a truck platform.
A minivan has a higher hood than an SUV? I've never actually measured but it sure feels like a Chevy Suburban (classic SUV) is quite a bit higher than a Toyota Sienna (our family's family vehicle).
Just checking Google for clearance heights - looks like Siennas are about 6 inches shorter than a Suburban.
This is something I really strongly agree with. There is no justifiable reason why we should be buying vehicles that are so much bigger than in previous years. Pedestrian fatalities are up big time in the U.S., and it’s largely thought that the reason is bigger cars with more lethal designs. Bigger cars also require more parking space and a larger amount of fuel/electricity. Smaller vehicles are a win all around. In the rare occasion where people need a large vehicle, we should aim to find ways to encourage them to rent one temporarily, rather than haul a huge vehicle around for the 99% of trips that don’t require one.
Would you agree with making "heavier" people paying more for flights?
It is interesting that discrimination is OK when based on "things" but not when applied to humans. After all "heavier" humans also use more resources just as "heavier" cars do.
> difference between genetic and chosen unfortunately the difference isn't obvious from just the optics
Okay, so let's get back to the actual topic. Help me understand how buying an SUV is fundamentally—beyond optics—similar to being genetically predisposed to obesity.
If you have a large family and use this SUV as a transporter for your children or if use this SUV as a status symbol, an outsider cannot differentiate between these two use-cases.
The genetics, in this case, is money: is the owner wanting to protect their family, has taken on debt to purchase this SUV just because they wish to have a "safer" car for their family. Or is the owner on their fourth SUV and it's just-another-car purchase. One owner is struggling, the other was born with a silver spoon.
Not everyone is born to be able purchase an SUV, being born with or without money can influence peoples life, just as their genetics.
Both are random attributes that are assigned upon birth.
Aren't some US carriers charging plus-size people 2 seats if they don't fit now? I think it's banned in Canada. But waist and weight limit seems reasonable without some sort of medical exemption.
It seems reasonable to me that to occupy two seats costs the fare of two seats.
If I want to eat two pizzas, I have to pay for two pizzas, regardless of medical condition… If I want two gallons of gas instead of one… If I want two months of Netflix instead of one…
It’s unclear why people expect that some should consume two seats and pay for only one…
Some do. About 15 years ago I was doing a regular weekly commute and due to my size at the time, Southwest would ask me to purchase two seats. If the flight was not full they would refund one ticket. Since Southwest uses first come first serve seating, you would get preboard status and a little card to place in the second seat.
I was ok with that accommodation, it seemed reasonable and with a little research into the flights and how often they were truly full it was rare that i didn’t get a refund.
Humans are discriminated all the time: by passport, by place of birth, by sex, by wealth, etc.
Maybe some airlines will come eventually with new fare where total weight with all clothes and luggage would be billed with different tiers, let's say 5: <20, 20-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150+ kg.
Probably the only thing stopping them are privacy concerns. On the other hand, for frequent flyers it could be a great thrill to be told that they had lost weight since their last flight.
Maybe. Many countries in the EU already place heavy taxes on engine displacement, so a curb weight tax or vehicle size tax wouldn't be something entirely new.
I was getting coffee this morning and walked by a parked truck of some new model of Chevrolet. I was aghast at the front end. It was (guessing) four or five vertical feet of chrome. And then the hood above that. Basically a pedestrian death sentence as far as I can tell. These things don’t need to be on the roads with regular traffic.
I think there should be a requirement for a CDL instead of a regular license if you can't see over your hood and know if you're going to run over a child.
But that said, it's not even really a commercial requirement. We have safety guidelines for humans inside cars, but no safety guidelines to protect people who are struck by cars. Both commercial and emotional companion vehicles like those with 5 foot grill heights should be forced to be designed for safety in collisions. Otherwise the vehicle doesn't belong among normal traffic.
I think there should be an internet timeout for people who derisively post links "correcting" others, only to share a link that contradict their own false points. There's no excuse for that sort of behavior.
Parents with 3-4+ kids can’t get a “decent sized” car.
(And, I’d point out that given how % childlessness has skyrocketed, we do need some larger families to balance them out.)
Our truck seats five adults, but only two kids plus two adults. Our old truck seated 5 adults, but no more than two adults and one car seat.
Instead of just requiring latch anchors, they should mandate that using all the latch anchors doesn’t reduce the max number of passengers.
Also, I wonder if they could eliminate booster seat requirements by mandating seatbelts that can be adjusted for short people.
As it is, we can’t take public transit, since the last few miles of most trips involves an illegal ride for the kiddos in an uber (so we have the kids walk those miles instead, which gets old fast).
How many families have more than 2 kids? For family with one kid a small car is enough. My friend drives a 5d Mini Cooper and it fits his family of 2+1.
According to the fitment page, the 4-across model fits in a Corolla. I think it's unfair to call a Corolla "huge" in the context of the U.S. market, and it's certainly a lot smaller than a minivan.
A Toyota Sienna is larger, sure, but it carries as many passengers (8) as the typical obnoxiously-proportioned SUV and gets 35 mpg doing it. Also, if you've ever driven one, it's a really nice ride.
My family has a Toyota sienna. Nice minivan. Our previous '08 Sienna died for good a few miles over 300,000. Plus it only got oil changes (not the cheapest oil though) every 10,000 miles or so.
Yup. We had to replace our extended cab pickup with a crew cab so we could fit two car seats (which is just criminally bad misdesign; the old cab certainly had enough volume to accommodate everyone).
To add insult to injury, the crew cab weighs more, reducing usable towing and bed capacity, so now, about a quarter of the time I need a truck, I end up borrowing or renting a smaller, but higher capacity one.
We live on a farm, so we end up using the bed multiple times a week.
The main competitor would be a car with a nice cab and car seat, and then a second beater truck with a single row of seating.
Alternatively, if someone made such a thing, but of course they don't, I'd like a little brick of an EV sedan that could tow as much as a large pickup (> 12,000 lbs), with no bed but a nice cab. The Rivian truck gets close to the towing requirement at 11,000 lbs, but for some reason their SUV only hits 7700. The BMW X5 hybrid is also close to what I'd be looking for, but still only hits 7700 lbs.
> We
estimate that these laws prevented only 57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980, with 90% of this decline being since 2000.
Instead of hiding behind your downvotes, you could come and argue logically, on the planetary impact of 300 or 400 less SUVs on downtown London or Paris...
> you could come and argue logically, on the planetary impact of 300 or 400 less SUVs on downtown London or Paris
New Yorker here. They’re loud and take up more space and navigate our tight corners awkwardly when driven by nonprofessional drivers.
I broadly believe in abolishing street side parking, and making in-city parking more expensive. I drive a car in the suburbs, and feel that when I take a rideshare downtown it should be expensive.
- SUVs constitute only a fraction of the total vehicles on the road. Even if pollution taxes successfully deter some SUV drivers, the overall impact on city-wide emissions is marginal
- Imposing higher taxes on SUVs in downtown areas will shift the problem rather than solve it. Drivers will choose to drive around these areas, increasing emissions by driving longer distances.
- Less SUVs means more space for smaller cars. At the end 3 cars will make the same pollution as an older SUV. The modern ones are frequently hybrid.
Another focus on symbolic actions rather than tackling the larger issues of urban pollution...
> Another focus on symbolic actions rather than tackling the larger issues of urban pollution...
Paris is doing far more than this to tackle urban pollution. Even at the end of this article:
"Under Hidalgo, Paris has for years raised pressure on drivers by increasing parking costs and gradually banning diesel vehicles, while expanding the bicycle lane network in the congested capital. The city has reduced the number of on-street parking spaces in order to make drivers use underground parking."
That doesn't even mention the new low-emissions zones. ("The restricted traffic zone in Paris covers the entire city center and is operational from Monday to Friday, between 8 am and 8 pm. During these hours, access to the heart of the city is limited to vehicles with specific permissions. This means that, during peak urban activity, the ZCR helps alleviate traffic congestion and reduce pollution levels, ultimately contributing to a healthier and more pedestrian-friendly urban environment in one of Europe's most iconic cities." - https://parkimeter.com/en/blog/paris-limited-traffic-zone-fr... )
At what point is it no longer symbolic?
> Drivers will choose to drive around these areas, increasing emissions by driving longer distances.
If they can drive around these areas then why would they care about the increased parking costs in those areas? Either they are going to park there or they are not.
And, many of those drivers have other transportation options; it isn't like "once a driver always a driver."
I think you're equating the likely cause of the crash with the severity of it. If I'm going to be hit by a car whose driver is distracted by their phone, I'd prefer to be hit by a smaller rather than a larger vehicle.
> If I'm going to be hit by a car whose driver is distracted by their phone, I'd prefer to be hit by a smaller rather than a larger vehicle
Sure. Big cars are a safety problem. I'm just challenging the claim that "it’s largely thought that the reason...pedestrian fatalities are up big time in the U.S....is bigger cars."
I really do not understand this perspective. You are just as dead past a certain speed no matter what the vehicle size is and the difference in speed between a large vehicle’s ability to kill you and a smaller vehicle’s ability to kill you is not that great.
If you as a pedestrian is in a place where a vehicle can strike you traveling at a speed fast enough to kill you, the size of the vehicle isn’t the problem to fix, the problem that needs fixed is finding a way to decrease the opportunity for the two of you to come together.
So no, I don’t understand the mindset of why someone would focus on and propose radical solutions that apply to a very narrow window of opportunity as opposed to proposing not so radical solutions that apply to a wide area of opportunity.
Do Europeans not have smartphones? Because pedestrian fatalities are down something like 20% there over the same period that those in U.S. have skyrocketed.
It's a curious puzzle, since "in places like Canada and Australia, a much lower share of pedestrian fatalities occurs at night, and those fatalities — rarer in number — have generally been declining, not rising."
Yet in America "total pedestrian deaths from ["smaller vehicles (like sedans, coupes and station wagons)"] are up more than 70 percent, suggesting the bulk of the problem cannot be attributed to increased car size alone."
Well, that's interesting. I can also imagine that Europeans and Australians are less likely to use their phones while driving, for more than one reason.
Canada and Australia are also pretty car oriented.
I did notice that in parts of the US nighttime lighting of even some major urban and suburban roads can be nonexistent. I wonder if it’s more common in Canada and the US.
I think it's a great slogan. I was thinking of getting a bumper sticker like that but forgot about it. Everyone driving small cars must understand: cemeteries are full of people with the right of way, yield to gross tonnage.
> Pedestrian fatalities are up big timein the U.S.
The problem with this statistic is it might have teeth viewed in isolation, but loses its impact if you broaden the statistics to account for who and how many are dying in vehicle related fatalities. If larger modern vehicles provide greater safety to the passengers within, and if passengers are more likely to die by vehicle accidents than pedestrians, a small move of the needle in vehicle passenger safety due to larger vehicles might cause significant improvement number of total vehicle related fatalities despite pedestrian deaths increasing.
This is a hypothetical scenario. Larger cars impose more risk to both pedestrians and smaller cars.
Even if it was an overall reduction, as the IIHS puts it, "The models that rank among the best and worst performers on both lists point to the unfortunate fact that vehicle cost remains a factor in road safety".[1]
Optimizing public safety in this way may--even if it were true--leads to deeply inequitable safety. Large cars are safer for richer people while disproportionately affecting poorer people and children.
I doubt that this is a rich vs poor situation or some sort of societal inequity. Where I live there is virtually no apparent difference between the size of the vehicles driven by folks at the various income levels. It’s not even a new vs old. I see plenty of newer SUVs and trucks in lower income areas.
Overall vehicle related fatalities are decreasing even if pedestrian fatalities are increasing. Perhaps the solution to the pedestrian fatality increase isn’t due to the vehicle, it’s due to the opportunity for the two to come together.
You're coupling anecdotes ("where I live"), hypotheticals ("perhaps the solution"), and confounding variables (improved overall vehicle safety isn't just due to vehicle size).
The evidence is clear. Increased pedestrian deaths are largely due to vehicle size.
Perhaps the underlying thought is there must be a way to make cars safer for passengers and pedestrians. One demonstrable way to achieve this is better infrastructure [1][2] rather than just building bigger cars.
What a strange response. You are critical of my comment yet you post links discussing ways to improve infrastructure speaking directly to my point about the best way to avoid fatalities is to mitigate the opportunities for vehicles and pedestrians to come together?
The evidence is clear, overall vehicle fatalities are decreasing. If you want to avoid pedestrian fatalities caused by vehicles literally the best way to accomplish this is to minimize the opportunities for pedestrians and vehicles to come together at speeds in which fatalities are likely to occur.
First EU SUVs are smaller than US ones (night and day). 2nd, the problem is not really the size of the car but engine does it un on. A Rivian, while being a huge SUV is still more eco friendly than my smaller Discovery 5 diesel…
> The prices will apply to vehicles weighing more than 1.6 tonnes with a combustion engine or hybrid vehicles, and more than 2 tonnes for electric vehicles.
"The prices will apply to vehicles weighing more than 1.6 tonnes with a combustion engine or hybrid vehicles, and more than 2 tonnes for electric vehicles."
But electric cars lack all tailpipe emissions. 2 tons is just slightly heavier than a Tesla Model Y, a compact SUV barely large enough for a family of 4 (you don't want to be the person sitting between the child seats in the back, trust me). This is about social signaling, not air pollution.
Why is it a huge problem? A 2 ton Model Y produces much less pollution than an ICE compact car. My feeling is that you don't like certain cars and don't care about pollution at all.
> A 2 ton Model Y produces much less pollution than an ICE compact car.
Because a 1.5t Zoe pollutes even less :P We can argue about the cut-off line, but it'll be arbitrary - the only thing for certain is that the mayor seems to agree with the sentiment.
Your detective powers have revealed my inner secret. I don't like big cars...
Because they care bad for the environment. Because they take up a lot of space. Because they are unsafe, especially for others.
Tire and road particles are quite serious. You are correct that an ICE car is worse, and yes in a perfect world we'd ban them entirely. But there are many reasons for why that is difficult. Paying a small tax for extravagant vehicles for the greater good of a community is not a problem.
If anything 2 tons is way too much. We need more incentives to make light vehicles. Not just deterrents for way too big cars.
What does the size of the car have to do with pollution? My point was that EVs (even 2 ton EVs) cause much less pollution than even very compact ICE cars. If the parking fees are about the size of cars, then they should be taxed by volume or footprint area.
Because heavy electric cars still pollute more than light electric cars through tire and brake particles. Taxing by size would be neat, but I understand that that would make the calculation even more complicated.
Care to elaborate why you ignore the fact that electric cars (even heavy ones) produce much less overall particulate pollution than combustion engine cars and why you focus instead on a narrow category where they are worse? My point still stands.
This is not about ICE vs EV, this is about big vs small. Opulent vs necessary. Like the mayor is quoted saying in the article: It's about "very expensive cars, driven by people who today have not yet made the changes to their behaviour that have to be made". Heavy cars pollute more with their tires and brakes. That is why even heavy electric cars are affected.
Sorry I don't get it. Heavy EVs pollute less than compact ICE vehicles. This is about the weight (and maybe price?) of cars, not about pollution. Maybe it's about cultural hatred of SUVs?
I wouldn't consider moving to Paris without all the plans they have:
- Central Paris will have ZERO diesel cars after 2024.
- 1, 2, 3, 4 and north parts of 5, 6, 7 arr. will have limited non-diesel traffic.
- Neuilly is also adopting the same limitation, because everyone there already have Teslas. (Electric is not the solution, the bike is the solution)
Respiratory diseases are not only caused by viruses they are also increased by diluting gasoline and diesel with other oils (historically mostly palm-derived, but now any cooking oil is used) to increase supply.
I'm betting fracking also puts a lot of bad things into these fuels that then end up in the air you breathe.
I was in Paris this year and my nails were getting black just from the smog. My wife has long covid and even though she was moving around with wheelchair, we had to leave the city the 2nd day because she couldn’t breathe anymore and started to cough blood.
Of course she is very sensitive now, she can’t be even close to a person smoking or a bbq. But it’s also a good indicator of how bad is for your lungs to live in Paris ir any polluted city.
I think the solution is to take sail boats and trains instead of planes and buses because those sometimes leave you behind the burning of toxic fuel and also as a sideline Sharp UA-HG40E (just be careful what water you use in it (filter or source without minerals) and disable the ozone thing). When biking for those that can bike, stay off crowded car roads when you can, I nowadays hold my breath when a truck passes by. Last but not at all least: move to a smaller housing (20 square meters max per person) and quit your stupid job. Obviously: No debt, low fixed costs and learn how to program a low energy computer ~5W. Multiplayer is the matrix, learn it!
- ${this} is the solution for any outliers (e.g. Toyota Sienna).
I’m not sold. Tax per mile-pound, not flat and not because you didn’t feed the meter. Small vehicles are less ergonomic for tall people to put children in car seats. Electric vehicles are still fine and yes, let’s protect those not in the vehicle. But, critical thinking leads to many diverse solutions to the stated problems you all are trying to solve.
We’re heading head-first into making this plant unsustainable for human occupation. As it looks, we’re not going to stay below the critical 1.5 degrees global warming threshold, not by a wide margin. We don’t have the technology to revert the damage we’ve done, and currently, we’re causing even more.
In the face of all this, your reason to drive an SUV, a vehicle that is needlessly heavy and has lots of emissions, is that it’s… more convenient for tall people?
1.6 metric tonnes to get the SUV or AWD extra charge…
My Mini Clubman S All4 barely makes it under at 1.56 tonnes. Once I fill the tank with gas, It’s only 7lbs under.
My wife’s 2023 V4 Camry XSE AWD is 1.62 metric tons and would by penalized by this weight class distinction simply because of the AWD feature. Note the V6 Camry TRD is 1.62 metric tonnes as well (5lbs lighter than the XSE) but with its V6 sport tuning will have much worse emissions - while not being penalized because it isn’t AWD.
(Note non-AWD cars aren’t penalized by this law…)
Unless there are other distinctions in this law, this seems like a weird way to define the penalized class.
Meanwhile, a BMW 840 Grand Coupe rear wheel drive is unaffected and weighs 1.93 metric tons.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 240 ms ] threadBesides, trucks carrying goods are already taxed based on weight, they're measured at the truck weighing stations on the highway.
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/hvut/mod1/whatish....
Cars in NL are way more expensive then in the neighbouring countries.
Huh, you can't even buy in US a decent new European car if someone decided not to sell the model through the dealership. Wait 25 years and only then you can import and register it.
The tax does decay for second hand cars, so there's a big market for foreign newtimers.
They'd still be taxed, unless they lived in the foreign EU country for 12 months and bought the car and owned it for 6 months.
I suppose the EU is a customs union, but "some restrictions apply".
Under a fair weight tax scheme, a passenger of a fully loaded bus would pay more than a solo driver of a Hummer EV (one of the heaviest SUVs on the market).
Some data on bus weights [1]:
The Hummer EV's curb weight is 9063 lbs (add 150 lbs for an average driver) and it has two axles for a loaded axle weight of 4607 lbs.A three axle articulated bus with 123 passengers has a loaded axle weight of 21,563 lbs using the data from the table above.
This means that the bus has ~4.7 times the load per axle as the SUV, so per the fourth power law, it does 488 times as much damage to the road as the SUV. Since it carries 123 people, that means that each bus passenger is doing ~4 times as much damage to the road as the SUV driver.
[1] https://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/tcrp/docs/TCRPJ-11Task... (Table 7/Page 25)
I generally agree, personal vehicles should be taxed based on weight and power. Small taxes for small cars(fiat 500) and extra high taxes for ridiculously heavy and/or powerful vehicles like 911 or cybertuck.
To be fair, rule should have different multipliers. Small rate for small car and buses, huge rate for trucks. Easy.
No, but it's more elegant and less gameable that way. Otherwise, we wind up with the Section 179 problem [1].
[1] https://over6000pounds.com/electric-vehicles-that-unlock-the...
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. If a solution isn’t as elegant as possible, but significantly reduces the amount of SUVs on the roads, it’s a good thing - period.
I would assume that road damage is proportional to surface pressure at the contact patch, so greater contact patch means less damage. As a result you can have a heavier vehicle do less damage than a lighter vehicle with the same number of axels, if the number and size of tires on the larger vehicle is greater than the smaller vehicle.
Most busses I see around run large truck tires, and normally have 4 tires on the rear axel vs the normal 2 you’ll find on a Hummer. So a bus spreads it weight over 6 tires rather than 4, and if we generously assume the Hummer tires and bus tires have the same contact patch, that means a bus can be 50% heavier than the Hummer, but not cause any additional damage.
I know loading regulations are normally done based on axel number, rather than tire number. But I assume that’s mostly down to ease of regulation, rather than axel count being the most accurate way to calculate road damage. Indeed the document you link too even breaks down loading limits based on number of axels, but also single tire limits, which maybe different depending on pressure of the tire.
Edit: I also note that U.S. buses seem to be much heavier than necessary. As a point of comparison a two axel double decker, New Routemaster in London[1], which carries up to 87 people, has a curb weight of only 28,000lbs, which would give it a fully laden weight of only 29,000lbs. That’s substantially less than equivalent buses in that document.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Routemaster
For example, it highlights how the damage also depends on the road construction, with highways and major arterials built to a higher standard.
As a general rule, a fully-loaded 123 passenger bus is running on an arterial, not a residential street like someone driving their Hummer EV home does, so you can't compare the road damage simply by axle weight.
Your source even highlights how "it is possible for fewer, heavier buses to damage pavement less than more, lighter buses."
That's all part of larger cost/benefit analysis, like how building for a longer service life for the bus means using heavier parts, which increases the weight, or how running fewer, larger buses reduces emissions per passenger-mile.
The owner of the Hummer EV does a different cost/benefit analysis, with some of the costs born by the government and thus shared across the taxpayers. Without extra fees for heavier vehicle owners, they end up paying the same as light vehicle owners despite the higher negative impacts of their heavy vehicles.
Btw buses bring 50 ppl.
There’s a difference of what they can do and what they actually do most of the time in practice.
If I were paying the actual price, including externalities, I would not have bought this car nor feel at risk because every other vehicle on the road is made on top of a truck platform.
In France, that average is 1.3. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2022/05/03/the-env...
If SUVs were actually regularly fully utilized, then things like HOV lanes would not work.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/09/21/what-are-the-econom...
Just checking Google for clearance heights - looks like Siennas are about 6 inches shorter than a Suburban.
SUVs carry, for the most part, their own weight. And the fragile ego of the owner, of course.
It is interesting that discrimination is OK when based on "things" but not when applied to humans. After all "heavier" humans also use more resources just as "heavier" cars do.
Or do heavier people not use more resources then skinnier humans? What's wrong with drawing a parallel to cars?
You’re arguing as if charging heavy people more to fly isn’t a thing. It is. And I don’t think that’s abhorrent nor even unfair.
And yes, it's very murky as you say. There is a difference between genetic and chosen unfortunately the difference isn't obvious from just the optics.
Okay, so let's get back to the actual topic. Help me understand how buying an SUV is fundamentally—beyond optics—similar to being genetically predisposed to obesity.
The genetics, in this case, is money: is the owner wanting to protect their family, has taken on debt to purchase this SUV just because they wish to have a "safer" car for their family. Or is the owner on their fourth SUV and it's just-another-car purchase. One owner is struggling, the other was born with a silver spoon.
Not everyone is born to be able purchase an SUV, being born with or without money can influence peoples life, just as their genetics.
Both are random attributes that are assigned upon birth.
If I want to eat two pizzas, I have to pay for two pizzas, regardless of medical condition… If I want two gallons of gas instead of one… If I want two months of Netflix instead of one…
It’s unclear why people expect that some should consume two seats and pay for only one…
I was ok with that accommodation, it seemed reasonable and with a little research into the flights and how often they were truly full it was rare that i didn’t get a refund.
Maybe some airlines will come eventually with new fare where total weight with all clothes and luggage would be billed with different tiers, let's say 5: <20, 20-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150+ kg.
I wish we could ban SUVs.
I hate the fact that cars have bloated out so much, but there’s a reason people end up with SUVs (they’re smaller than minivans, at least)
But that said, it's not even really a commercial requirement. We have safety guidelines for humans inside cars, but no safety guidelines to protect people who are struck by cars. Both commercial and emotional companion vehicles like those with 5 foot grill heights should be forced to be designed for safety in collisions. Otherwise the vehicle doesn't belong among normal traffic.
Regulations (at least in the US) around car seats have made it more difficult to have three children without buying a larger car.
I dislike huge cars (I actually love tiny cars like the Nissan Figaro) but I may have to get one.
Instead of just requiring latch anchors, they should mandate that using all the latch anchors doesn’t reduce the max number of passengers.
Also, I wonder if they could eliminate booster seat requirements by mandating seatbelts that can be adjusted for short people.
As it is, we can’t take public transit, since the last few miles of most trips involves an illegal ride for the kiddos in an uber (so we have the kids walk those miles instead, which gets old fast).
Uber is a problem with really little kids, but you can get portable and even inflatable car seats and boosters that aren’t too bad to carry around.
To add insult to injury, the crew cab weighs more, reducing usable towing and bed capacity, so now, about a quarter of the time I need a truck, I end up borrowing or renting a smaller, but higher capacity one.
The main competitor would be a car with a nice cab and car seat, and then a second beater truck with a single row of seating.
Alternatively, if someone made such a thing, but of course they don't, I'd like a little brick of an EV sedan that could tow as much as a large pickup (> 12,000 lbs), with no bed but a nice cab. The Rivian truck gets close to the towing requirement at 11,000 lbs, but for some reason their SUV only hits 7700. The BMW X5 hybrid is also close to what I'd be looking for, but still only hits 7700 lbs.
https://assets.super.so/6b4b5d92-904a-4e7b-95bd-914dd1d1528f...
Wow!
New Yorker here. They’re loud and take up more space and navigate our tight corners awkwardly when driven by nonprofessional drivers.
I broadly believe in abolishing street side parking, and making in-city parking more expensive. I drive a car in the suburbs, and feel that when I take a rideshare downtown it should be expensive.
> hiding behind your downvotes
Don't do this [1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- SUVs constitute only a fraction of the total vehicles on the road. Even if pollution taxes successfully deter some SUV drivers, the overall impact on city-wide emissions is marginal
- Imposing higher taxes on SUVs in downtown areas will shift the problem rather than solve it. Drivers will choose to drive around these areas, increasing emissions by driving longer distances.
- Less SUVs means more space for smaller cars. At the end 3 cars will make the same pollution as an older SUV. The modern ones are frequently hybrid.
Another focus on symbolic actions rather than tackling the larger issues of urban pollution...
They also constitute a disproportionate fraction of the damage [1].
> Imposing higher taxes on SUVs in downtown areas will shift the problem rather than solve it
It also deters their purchase.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37297647/
Paris is doing far more than this to tackle urban pollution. Even at the end of this article:
"Under Hidalgo, Paris has for years raised pressure on drivers by increasing parking costs and gradually banning diesel vehicles, while expanding the bicycle lane network in the congested capital. The city has reduced the number of on-street parking spaces in order to make drivers use underground parking."
That doesn't even mention the new low-emissions zones. ("The restricted traffic zone in Paris covers the entire city center and is operational from Monday to Friday, between 8 am and 8 pm. During these hours, access to the heart of the city is limited to vehicles with specific permissions. This means that, during peak urban activity, the ZCR helps alleviate traffic congestion and reduce pollution levels, ultimately contributing to a healthier and more pedestrian-friendly urban environment in one of Europe's most iconic cities." - https://parkimeter.com/en/blog/paris-limited-traffic-zone-fr... )
At what point is it no longer symbolic?
> Drivers will choose to drive around these areas, increasing emissions by driving longer distances.
If they can drive around these areas then why would they care about the increased parking costs in those areas? Either they are going to park there or they are not.
And, many of those drivers have other transportation options; it isn't like "once a driver always a driver."
Almost all of the difference since 2009 in likely attributable to smartphones [1]. (Almost all of the increase in deaths occur around sunset.)
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/11/upshot/nightt...
Sure. Big cars are a safety problem. I'm just challenging the claim that "it’s largely thought that the reason...pedestrian fatalities are up big time in the U.S....is bigger cars."
So no, I don’t understand the mindset of why someone would focus on and propose radical solutions that apply to a very narrow window of opportunity as opposed to proposing not so radical solutions that apply to a wide area of opportunity.
Yet in America "total pedestrian deaths from ["smaller vehicles (like sedans, coupes and station wagons)"] are up more than 70 percent, suggesting the bulk of the problem cannot be attributed to increased car size alone."
I did notice that in parts of the US nighttime lighting of even some major urban and suburban roads can be nonexistent. I wonder if it’s more common in Canada and the US.
As this HN user put it[0](eloquently, I thought):
> Yield to gross tonnage.
I think it's a great slogan. I was thinking of getting a bumper sticker like that but forgot about it. Everyone driving small cars must understand: cemeteries are full of people with the right of way, yield to gross tonnage.
Specifically, my gross tonnage.
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38268232
The problem with this statistic is it might have teeth viewed in isolation, but loses its impact if you broaden the statistics to account for who and how many are dying in vehicle related fatalities. If larger modern vehicles provide greater safety to the passengers within, and if passengers are more likely to die by vehicle accidents than pedestrians, a small move of the needle in vehicle passenger safety due to larger vehicles might cause significant improvement number of total vehicle related fatalities despite pedestrian deaths increasing.
Even if it was an overall reduction, as the IIHS puts it, "The models that rank among the best and worst performers on both lists point to the unfortunate fact that vehicle cost remains a factor in road safety".[1]
Optimizing public safety in this way may--even if it were true--leads to deeply inequitable safety. Large cars are safer for richer people while disproportionately affecting poorer people and children.
[1] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/latest-driver-death-rates-h...
Overall vehicle related fatalities are decreasing even if pedestrian fatalities are increasing. Perhaps the solution to the pedestrian fatality increase isn’t due to the vehicle, it’s due to the opportunity for the two to come together.
The evidence is clear. Increased pedestrian deaths are largely due to vehicle size.
Perhaps the underlying thought is there must be a way to make cars safer for passengers and pedestrians. One demonstrable way to achieve this is better infrastructure [1][2] rather than just building bigger cars.
[1] https://www.vox.com/23784549/pedestrian-deaths-traffic-safet... [2] https://www.strongtowns.org/
What a strange response. You are critical of my comment yet you post links discussing ways to improve infrastructure speaking directly to my point about the best way to avoid fatalities is to mitigate the opportunities for vehicles and pedestrians to come together?
The evidence is clear, overall vehicle fatalities are decreasing. If you want to avoid pedestrian fatalities caused by vehicles literally the best way to accomplish this is to minimize the opportunities for pedestrians and vehicles to come together at speeds in which fatalities are likely to occur.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2023-Q2-traffic-fatalit...
So much for the air pollution part.
Tesla Model Y is a huge vehicle.
Because a 1.5t Zoe pollutes even less :P We can argue about the cut-off line, but it'll be arbitrary - the only thing for certain is that the mayor seems to agree with the sentiment.
Because they care bad for the environment. Because they take up a lot of space. Because they are unsafe, especially for others.
Tire and road particles are quite serious. You are correct that an ICE car is worse, and yes in a perfect world we'd ban them entirely. But there are many reasons for why that is difficult. Paying a small tax for extravagant vehicles for the greater good of a community is not a problem.
If anything 2 tons is way too much. We need more incentives to make light vehicles. Not just deterrents for way too big cars.
Like GP mentioned, tires also pollute via abrasion.
> 2 tons is just slightly heavier than a Tesla Model Y, a compact SUV barely large enough for a family of 4
A Model Y by Parisian scale is a incredibly huge car. French (and honestly most European) families get by with VW Golf sized car.
> and more than 2 tonnes for electric vehicles.
- Central Paris will have ZERO diesel cars after 2024.
- 1, 2, 3, 4 and north parts of 5, 6, 7 arr. will have limited non-diesel traffic.
- Neuilly is also adopting the same limitation, because everyone there already have Teslas. (Electric is not the solution, the bike is the solution)
Respiratory diseases are not only caused by viruses they are also increased by diluting gasoline and diesel with other oils (historically mostly palm-derived, but now any cooking oil is used) to increase supply.
I'm betting fracking also puts a lot of bad things into these fuels that then end up in the air you breathe.
Of course she is very sensitive now, she can’t be even close to a person smoking or a bbq. But it’s also a good indicator of how bad is for your lungs to live in Paris ir any polluted city.
FYI, a Zoe weights 1.5t
- SUVs are bad,
- small vehicles are good,
- ${this} is the solution for any outliers (e.g. Toyota Sienna).
I’m not sold. Tax per mile-pound, not flat and not because you didn’t feed the meter. Small vehicles are less ergonomic for tall people to put children in car seats. Electric vehicles are still fine and yes, let’s protect those not in the vehicle. But, critical thinking leads to many diverse solutions to the stated problems you all are trying to solve.
In the face of all this, your reason to drive an SUV, a vehicle that is needlessly heavy and has lots of emissions, is that it’s… more convenient for tall people?
My Mini Clubman S All4 barely makes it under at 1.56 tonnes. Once I fill the tank with gas, It’s only 7lbs under.
My wife’s 2023 V4 Camry XSE AWD is 1.62 metric tons and would by penalized by this weight class distinction simply because of the AWD feature. Note the V6 Camry TRD is 1.62 metric tonnes as well (5lbs lighter than the XSE) but with its V6 sport tuning will have much worse emissions - while not being penalized because it isn’t AWD.
(Note non-AWD cars aren’t penalized by this law…)
Unless there are other distinctions in this law, this seems like a weird way to define the penalized class.
Meanwhile, a BMW 840 Grand Coupe rear wheel drive is unaffected and weighs 1.93 metric tons.