Re:Heavier cars are safer for their drivers, but far deadlie...
by makeitdouble on Monday September 12, 2022 @05:42AM
(#32807834)
> even if you don't have a car, you benefit from the roads existing
That's the most interesting part to me. Trucks using the road is really important to our society, and if everyone benefits from it I'm not sure it makes much sense either to make commercial entities pay in full for it.
The same way railroads where heavily subsidized and water ways are also usually state/government projects, road maintenance could be (and probably is up to a point?) handled at the same level.
My ideal would be to get rid of SUV preferential policies so there is no need to counterbalance their use on other aspects. In a balanced setting, SUVs are rarely a rational choice (cf. the cars that get chosen everywhere else in the world).
The correct answer in that case is to quit wasting time & effort creating taxes for personal vehicles, and just make commercial truckers pay it all. It spreads the cost of the roads around to everyone who benefits (even if you don't have a car, you benefit from the roads existing). And since the damage to roads scales to the fourth power of the axle weight, the difference between a car and SUV isn't too dramatic, compared to the difference between an SUV and a big rig.