[capitainenemo]

Interesting idea. Apparently road damage goes up with the 4th power of the weight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law)

Really trucks are probably not paying their fair share in that regard.

I wonder how it would be implemented in practice given how variable vehicle weights are depending on how they are being used. Weigh stations like they use for trucks?

It might also be a solution for gas taxes being insufficient to maintain roads as vehicles transition to electric. And in concert with the much higher weight of electric vehicles due to batteries still sucking at power density (maybe it would increase interest in things like aluminium-air)

[chongli]

Yes and so what makes the most sense is to make the tax increase with the 4th power of vehicle weight multiplied by the miles they travel. This way there are no perverse incentives. Everyone pays their fair share according to how much damage they cause.

[dragontamer]

I love pushing "Tire Taxes".

We all know that tires will emit rubber particles down to the point where the tire tred is 2/32th of an inch (from ~8/32ths of a fresh tire).

So just... tax the tires based on the ~6/32ths of an inch outer-diameter of the tire that turns into microplastic dust. Calculate the microplastic dust weight of the outer diameter + weight of tires and bam. You have a 1-to-1 correlation of tax to exactly the amount of particles emitted.

No weight^4th power required. The tire wear directly correlates to the pollution we care about. So tax / measure the tires directly, don't do anything else that's more indirect.

[uoaei]

So you want to tax tires separately to whole cars? You don't think your scheme will induce perverse incentives as regards tread patterns, grip in different weather scenarios, etc.?

If I were a tire manufacturer I'd love this because I would:

* make tires that have not very much tread to wear through

* make the outer tread extremely hard so it wears (testably) much more slowly

* blame consumers for driving the tires wrong rather than make safe tires because we can hide behind T&Cs and our army of lawyers when accident rates inevitably increase

* put our fingers in all the tire installation and body shop pies to prpfit off of the new economic conditions that were created as a result of this tax

[smileysteve]

This feels like a permutation of run flat tires.

- Have half the life of regular tires

- Makes the outer tread extremely hard (and noisy)

- Consumers get the blame because they want safety (without the effort of a spare tire change)

- Increases the price

[dragontamer]

My State isn't very big.

If everyone started making tire taxes across the country, maybe that'd be a problem. But no one gives a care about just one small state making a tax like this.

Michelin isn't going to redesign their tires just to save $50 in tire taxes.

> * make tires that have not very much tread to wear through

That's not how physics works. You need deep tread to safely expel water and/or deep treads to make snow-impressions (if its a snow tire).

[positr0n]

> That's not how physics works. You need deep tread to safely expel water and/or deep treads to make snow-impressions

Key word here is safely. A large portion of people would care more about saving $100 in tax than about the physics that makes their car less safe.

[NewJazz]

Doesn't account for road wear or pedestrian risk, though.

[dragontamer]

I have to imagine that if Car X wore out 5kg of rubber, that it would have had half the impact of another Car Y that wore out 10kg of rubber.

Right? Tire wear has to be directly correlated to road wear. They're in physical contact with each other after all, so it'd be as direct a measurement as any other possible methodology.

[positr0n]

But rubber does not damage concrete, it's the weight of the vehicle that damages the concrete.

As an extreme example, if I floor a 2000lb Miata when the light turns green that will deposit a ton of rubber on the road. But that does nothing compared to just driving through the intersection in a 6000lb suburban.

[dragontamer]

I'm not saying "rubber damages concrete" any more than current gas taxes say "gasoline damages concrete".

I'm saying the degregation of rubber is (likely) in direct correlation to the amount of road damage. (Much like gasoline is in direct correlation to miles-traveled, and thus is also an indirect measurement of road damage)

There's no need for causation in this discussion. Correlation is enough to be worthy of a good tax design.

[chongli]

Yeah. It's the vehicle weight combined with temperature fluctuations and water, ice, and salt. The worst case scenario is when the road develops tiny cracks that fill up with water and then the temperature drops, causing the water to freeze and expand inside those cracks. The cracks grow larger and then when the water thaws and evaporates it leaves behind those large cracks/voids which heavy vehicles collapse due to their weight, turning cracks into potholes.

[eldaisfish]

Tying a tax to distance travelled requires accurate reporting of distance travelled. How is that not a perverse incentive?

[chongli]

We shouldn't care if you want to buy a 10,000 lb electric truck if you leave it parked in your driveway all year round. If we're not taxing based on distance then the perverse incentive is to drive big trucks until they fall to pieces.

[dzhiurgis]

Easy in places where it requires annual safety checks

[airstrike]

which is really most anywhere these days, is it not? having lived in different states in different countries, this was always the case for me, but then again that's still a small sample size

[smileysteve]

US Federal Gasoline taxes haven't been raised since 1993; meanwhile US interstate systems and bridges are receiving C- rankings. This was the case before the Nissan Leaf or Tesla Model S, much less 5% adoption of new car sales being electric.

There is a ~$186B dollar annual shortfall in federal (road maintenance - excise tax revenues)

[digitalsushi]

a civie engineer told me an overloaded 18 wheeler is about the same as 8,000 passenger vehicles making the same trip on the tar.