[faichai]

Everyone always seems to jump from general schemes (road tax, fuel duty) to Orwellian tracking (GPS everywhere). Seems like a simple scheme of mileage tracking and net charge tracking would do. You then have an overall energy use / mile figure that you can use to price each mile so people who buy more efficient cars are rewarded, and then charge by total number of miles, so people who do fewer miles pay less.

[lini]

Too many unknowns with the mileage solution. The most obvious for me is travelling abroad - travelling by car between EU countries is not uncommon. Another issue is that the mileage of the car is not very hard to modify. In Eastern Europe, buying a second-hand 10 year old car, imported from Germany, is almost funny because most seem to be around 90-100 000 miles (140-160 000 km), while looking for the same make and model in a German auto website will show most cars have double the mileage.

[smilekzs]

A solution has been long in place in the US for commercial vehicles. It's called IFTA. It's possible because commercial vehicles have to report their mileages to authorities frequently anyway.

[fomine3]

Can I cheat IFTA?

[dahfizz]

Do you think that people should only withdraw exactly what they deposited from Social Security? Do you think that a patient should pay 100% of their healthcare costs under socialized medicine?

I find it so strange that roads aren't viewed as a public service, and instead should be taxed (regressively) to cover the cost of the road by those using it.

I'm fine paying fully for my own road use, as long as I can stop paying for all the government services I don't use. But as long as the government is taking half of my paycheck, providing me with roads is the bare minimum they could give in return.

[bluecalm]

The difference between roads and other things you mentioned is that current road infrastructure, especially in cities have huge costs for health, lifestyle, mental health. I don't want cars in cities and if I have to have them I want car owners to pay the full cost of making city life way worse hoping alternatives emerge.

[dahfizz]

You can make that argument about anything, though.

You need roads to have a civilization, otherwise you have no way to transport the goods you consume, or get to the hospital quickly, etc. What you're arguing is that you don't like the current implementation.

I don't like the current implementation of medicare / medicaid / social security. It definitely is suboptimal for people's (mental) health, including those in my family. It still comes out of my paycheck. It's also an order of magnitude more than whatever gas taxes and tolls I pay.

That's just the nature of living in a democracy. If everyone paid for exactly the services they used, taxes wouldn't exist.

I just find it curious that people on HN rally against the cost of roads, when they absolutely benefit from the roads being there. Military, SS, or Medicare are services that the average citizen doesn't use at all, and cost much much much more than roads.

[bluecalm]

Social programs I don't benefit from don't hurt me. They just cost me. Roads as currently implemented make my life way worse. That's the distinction people see.

[jacquesm]

That's mostly because the concept of tracking has been pushed over and over again politically, it just never made it. It has been on the agenda in NL since the mid 1980's.

[asdff]

Another easy way is to tax wear items accordingly and have inspections maintaining their condition for safety. E.g. EVs are heavier and wear down tires more than lighter cars. The state could implement a tax on tires and mandatory inspections for tread depth like they do with smog checks for emissions in gas cars. They could use the same testing infrastructure and just stock every location with a penny to measure tread. Heavy users of the roads will see a lot of wear on their tires and will be paying more into this tax accordingly in order to have a legally safe vehicle to drive, just like how owners of ancient cars that are more likely to be polluting need to take special care that the emissions controls are in good maintenance so that they pass smog.

It would also be beneficial to incentivize better vehicle choices at the point of sale. Ebikes should be subsidized to the point of being free or nearly so. Other evehicles should be taxed extremely high per pound of mass. A family of four should therefore naturally gravitate toward a compact hatchback over a massive SUV that weighs twice as much like they do today when there is no incentive for getting a smaller vehicle.

[mwint]

Tire tread is kind of a dangerous measure; you don’t necessarily want everyone switching to a super hard tire. Basically you can trade tread wear for stopping distance.

[asdff]

Tire tread is already something that is measured on the books legally speaking but is never enforced really as such. You do need to legally maintain tread. As far as compounds go once again that's something that regulation can enforce. I don't think today that people are buying hard tires that are apparently too hard for the purpose of getting less wear out of them.

[megablast]

Every single car should be tracked at all times. They are a deadly weapon, kill a million people every year around the world, and seriously injure many more.

[supertrope]

Google Maps almost does this.

[adamcharnock]

A good point. This sounds like the kind of thing that could be incorporated into a mileage reading at the annual vehicle inspection (which I assume the USA has??). Vehicles which are for entirely private-road use don’t get inspected, so that’s ok. Or they are specially classified somehow.

Everyone else just accepts that what the system lacks in accounting for private road use, is made up for in simplicity and cheapness of administration.

[jgust]

> annual vehicle inspection (which I assume the USA has??)

Hah. Washington state doesn't even test for emissions, let alone do a vehicle inspection.

[blibble]

there's a couple of edge cases for odometer based tracking, namely private roads and tracks (e.g. racing)

[happyopossum]

Would you trust a government imposed GPS based tracking system to properly account for those edge cases? I sure as hell wouldn’t.

Also, those aren’t exempted under the current gas tax model anyway, so why bother?

[blibble]

I would indeed prefer the odometer based solution to the GPS

but it's not perfect

(and you are currently exempted from the gax tax model if you have a electric vehicle on private roads / tracks, I doubt too many are affected by this though)

[happyopossum]

> you are currently exempted from the gax tax model if you have a electric vehicle on private roads

Private roads are irrelevant - electric vehicles don't pay gas tax, that's the point of this whole conversation.

[blibble]

> Private roads are irrelevant - electric vehicles don't pay gas tax, that's the point of this whole conversation.

uh, yes?

which wouldn't be the case if we switched to a tax based on an odometer

that's the point of this whole conversation.

[hexo]

I would prefer freedom and privacy to both "solutions".

[planede]

Tracks could be handled by having an official reading when entering and leaving the track, then make the difference deductible from your "miles tax".

Similar stuff for entering and leaving the country.

Not sure how I would approach private roads.

[mywittyname]

It's not really an edge case. Everyone drives on paved private property (parking lots and the like). A flat 2% mileage reduction per year is probably enough to cover this for the vast majority of people. So if someone drives 10,000 miles a year, you'd charge them for 9800 miles with the assumption that they drove about 200 miles on private property that year.

[dazc]

Maybe not a long term alternative but taxing drivers behaviour via extreme penalties rather than the type of fuel or vehicle they use would not only raise revenue but may also encourage people to drive in a safer and more fuel-efficient manner?

For example, overtaking a cyclist regardless of the fact that you are already approaching a stop junction should result in a fine of at least £10,000.

Tailgating in a dangerous and aggressive manner, £50,000.

From everyday observation, this would raise a few billion in no time at all and price some very stupid and aggressive people off the roads entirely.

[MafellUser]

You will NEVER catch the perpetrator. Period. Also the cost of enforcement will quickly outpace any revenue gained, as council's parking enforcements has shown.

Even when caught says on CCTV, there's no guarantee you can find and fine the driver. There are over half a million uninsured cars on the UK streets at any time. Twice that many uninsured drivers. Even getting them to pay for insurance is hard enough, how difficult do you think it'd be to get them to pay £10k fine?

[dazc]

> 'Even getting them to pay for insurance is hard enough, how difficult do you think it'd be to get them to pay £10k fine?'

In a lot of cases the fine for having no insurance is lower than the insurance would have cost.

In other words, the system is seriously f*d up and needs to be changed.

[TimPC]

Driving without insurance should be a jailable offence and needs to be taken far more seriously. You are at risk of not having coverage when you cause significant injury or death to someone. If a breadwinner for a family is no longer able to work, the verdict may be more than you can earn in a lifetime which makes you into some sort of debt slave. Not having insurance when you can inflict severe harm on other people is quite dystopian.

[ClumsyPilot]

> If a breadwinner for a family is no longer able to work, the verdict may be more than you can earn in a lifetime which makes you into some sort of debt slave.

the bigger issue is the breadwinner's family will go from middle class to living in poverty. The types that don't pay insurance are not gonna pay court settlement in a timely manner.

[bluecalm]

Database of all cars. All penalties are assigned to the car and are to be paid on yearly inspection. If not paid, the car isn't allowed on the road.

If the owner of the car let someone else drive it then it's their issue to resolve.

We just need political will which isn't there. It's not a technical problem to solve.

[gruez]

This sounds good until you realize it's extremely regressive and will cause the average offender to go into a debt spiral.

[unethical_ban]

It doesn't sound good at all, it sounds absolutely tyrannical.