Feel? And how do you think your post reads, as fact or sentiment?

If

a) vehicles cause pollution.

b) pollution is bad.

c) bigger vehicles cause more pollution than smaller vehicles.

than naturally it would follow that

d) if a vehicle is oversized for the owners use cases that is bad.

How can we avoid d? Taxes seem to work as deterrent, just look how angry everyone gets when you add a new one.

Literally this very form of tax is one of the main reasons why in countries where the avg. person is wealthier than the avg. american (norway is a good example) drive significantly smaller (and less polluting) cars.

Who decides if the vehicle is oversized for the owner's use case? Why not leave that decision to the owner?

There are lots of small cars you can buy. People don't buy them. They want bigger cars.

I would rather make that decision myself, rather than some government bureaucrat deciding he is going to overrule my own preference.

Even in Norway the owner decides. If you decide you need a massive gasoline vehicle in Norway, you can buy one. It'll just cost you a lot more than a small EV.

If your car makes a bigger environmental footprint. Why should you not pay for it?

It is not "government telling you what to do", it is you paying for your sh*t.

Car travel innately has a lot of regulation and concerns around them, and that ship has long sailed. Would you consider the arguments:

Who decides the owner can't drive the vehicle? Why not leave that decision to the driver?

or

Who decides vehicles must have lights? Shouldn't we leave that decision to the owner?

As equally valid?

As someone who could potentially get killed by people driving cars, I would rather not let every random moron decide whether or not their vehicle is safe enough to drive on public roads.

But won't those morons just be replaced by morons on bikes, scooters and bicycles? Is that actually better for end user?

My chances of being seriously injured by being hit by a moron in an SUV are astronomically higher than my chances of being seriously injured by being hit by a moron on a bike.

Statistically unlikely given that SUV carries more people, which translates into higher moron encounter chance since more morons are now forced onto other mode of transport. You just increased your odds.

As for seriously, have you ever seen a bike accident?

I don’t know lots about physics, but I’d much rather be hit by a 40lbs bike going 12mph than a 5000lbs truck going 45mph

it depends on what you mean. I seen the hospital data (can't share it) and per capita bikes send more pedestrians to the hospital with series injury than cars - however cars have a higher kill rate.

One such woman walking down Locust Walk (University of PA) suffered severe brain damage and no longer can move all of her limbs. I can't tell you how many times I was nearly clipped by bikes speeding past me (at car speeds) and missed me by a few inches. Luckily the campus police started to prevent bicyclists from using Locust Walk.

but its a stupid argument anyways. we aren't comparing cars to bikes in this conversation. Many people can't use bikes. I'm sure in your bigoted mind (everyone should do as I see fit) that you didn't consider disabled persons, elderly, or even people with say - broken legs, but needless to say bikes are not for everyone. Thats not even taking into account bikes cant satisfy the vast majority of traveling needs of Americans. We aren't Europe. Our cities are bigger and things are further apart. Nor is bikes the one size fits all solution in the EU.

Many people can't drive cars either. Making cities less car-centric generally increases accessibility, not reduces it.

I’d rather be seriously injured than killed, yes. I think most people would pick the same.

If you observe the rush hour traffic for an hour, how many of those people have broken legs, severe disabilities or a debilitating case of elderly? The majority of people are not disabled, and the fact some people might need cars is no excuse for everyone driving a massive SUV

> Statistically unlikely given that SUV carries more people,

And yet I'll bet the average number of morning commuters in each vehicle is ~1.

is it suvs commuting to work or all types, because you mught be cherry picking your stats if you present avg occupancy for all cars in us as an argument here

Assuming we exclude mass transport, what do you think the values would be or do you have any contrary data? I know that most people I'm aware of all drive their car by themselves to their work, there was very little carpooling.

The issue is no reliable data can easily be found ( closest for me was this -https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicle... ) suggesting that neither of us actually knows. Sounds to me like a bad reason to base an argument( or policy on ).

- I know that most people I'm aware of all drive their car by themselves to their work, there was very little carpooling.

how many of those are suvs? and then we go bk to use case. there is a reason soccer moms exist. u focus on work commute and likely on metro areas only but fail to account for other activity types

Here some data - it's 1.5 people per car in one study[1], 1.45 in another[2]. So a little higher than my assertion, but not much at all.

[1] https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/mobility/perso... [2] https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/occupancy...

Average occupancy for an SUV[1] in the past few decades peaked at 1.9. I would much rather be hit by 1.9 bicycles than by an SUV.

[1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1040-july...

why do they insist on using average where median would be much more useful way to measure this ( lower extremes impact )?

I'd take even quintupling my odds of getting hit by a bike if it meant I eliminated the chance of getting hit by an SUV. I'd take getting hit by several people on bicycles in my life than getting hit by an SUV going 50mph once.

And yes, I've seen accidents with bikes hitting pedestrians. Most of the time the people ended up fine with minor bruises and sometimes small cuts.

I've seen pedestrians hit by SUVs. Its been rare to see people walk away from that.

what about the bike owner? does their safety matter? it is really not all about you.

I've had many friends and I get into some pretty gnarly bicycle accidents as single bike accident, a bicycle to bicycle accident, or a bicycle to pedestrian accident. Normally just bruised, scraped, and maybe minor cuts. One or two broke bones. The only people I know that have died while riding a bicycle died because they were struck by a car.

I've lost several friends and family members to car accidents.

Once again, if I'm going to be in an accident I'd probably take an accident between two bicycles at 12mph than two SUVs at 40mph.

> 12mph than two SUVs at 40mph. 12 mph is the speed of a beginner bicycler. most bikers go faster then that. most pedestrians are hit by cars going under 40mph and SUV's only make up about 8% of the total market.

These facts don't disprove the idea that one would 'rather' get hit by a bike vs a vehicle, but the fact that you keep saying that nonsense doesn't help your argument.

> I've lost several friends and family members to car accidents.

I'm not surprised, 76% of Americans require a car to get to work. that's a lot of car trips.

If you don't like cars, don't drive one. I don't. But stop pushing your views onto others.

I'm not going to get hit a car that I'm driving. I'm going to get by a car someone else is driving. I don't only breathe the air that is polluted by cars I drive. I don't only get flooded with the sound produced by cars that I drive. You are imposing your views on me by driving a car.

I didn't realize stating that I'd rather be hit by a bicyclist over a car is pushing my views on people. I guess there must be people here who disagree and would prefer being hit by a car.

I drive cars a lot. The way things are around me, I pretty much need to. I don't personally really dislike cars, I actually really like cars and enjoy driving them and riding my motorcycles. I just can't understand people arguing like bicycle accidents are practically as bad as car accidents or that having people trade their cars for bikes will make people overall less safe.

Your number of SUVs only being 8% of the market is way wrong. Try 80% in the US. It's been around 50% or so for years. The vast majority of cars around me are trucks and SUVs. The one that killed a cyclist near my kid's daycare recently was going over 50mph on a 40mph road. I'd like to see some actual statistics about "most pedestrians are hit by cars going under 40mph" statistic. It would surprise me either way.

EDIT: Some data about speeds here, and yeah under 40mph to pedestrians is definitely the majority.

https://one.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/pub/hs809012.ht...

https://jalopnik.com/trucks-and-suvs-are-now-over-80-percent...

If fewer people drove cars, our roads will be safer and we would have less traffic fatalities. Do you disagree?

The tax would be an incentive to give it a good think about what you actually need to be driving.

Need and want are not the same thing. We for example need to breathe clean air. You seem to want to drive a big vehicle. If you need to drive a big vehicle then ok, just pay to offset for the added pollution.

By this same token you could argue for no licensing being necessary for operating vehicles either. Why not leave that decision to the owner as well? They know best whether they can operate the vehicle or not!

As commenters have pointed out, the big problem here is that your car can kill other people. If you want to make decisions without being bound by regulation, choose a different avenue that doesn't harm other people.

Yes. I don't care how many pedestrians need to die. Just don't take away my freedom to drive to the grocery store in a vehicle larger than a WWII tank.

Part of the reason why the United States had both a Senate and a House is to make sure that more rural states had adequate representation of their interests, which differ substantially from urban areas. Rural areas don't have pedestrians because the distances are too big.

Cities and heavily urban states could fix their pedestrian safety problems easily by creating massive local registration taxes on large vehicles, without a federal tax penalizing rural areas. The distance I travel to get groceries would be a net waste (financial, environmental, etc) if I had to make multiple trips rather than packing two weeks of food in one trip.

More broadly, I really wish activists / reformers (of any stripe) would recognize the limits of their own knowledge and experience and realize that the world has more diversity than dreamed of in their philosophy.

Are you feeding an army? I can't even imagine buying enough food at one time to even fill a small sedan

In their example they're buying groceries on a roughly two-week schedule. A family of four or so can go through a lot of food in two weeks. In college I'd get groceries about weekly and my roommate and I would fill the trunk of an Accord with groceries.

Fill is an interesting verb. I suppose you could try to tetris it up each trip to the store, but unpacking would just as inconvenient as packing. That said, if you buy a weeksworth of food for 3 kids, sedan may easily overflow.

It's difficult to square urban vs rural interests without creating a tyranny of a majority/minority on either side. Dense urban areas already subsidize rural and even suburban infrastructure and use less resources. Proposing that urban areas tax themselves even more to limit pollution isn't very equitable either.

The fact of the matter is that current CO2 emissions are unsustainable, and we have no choice but to address the issue. That might mean that some may need to go to the grocery store more than bimonthly.

Want to avoid tyranny and environmental disasters? Limit the scope of laws and regulations. If a surgeon is removing cancer, does the patient want their chest cavity ripped open or a laparoscopy? In the absence of compelling additional evidence, I would go with the laparoscopy, which risks far fewer unforeseen complications. At the level of policy, I don't think history looks very kindly upon the 18th amendment to the US constitution (prohibition of alcohol) despite the very real societal problems it was intended to address.

Part of my point was that, for me, going to the store more frequently, even in a smaller vehicle, would be a net environmental negative. Is there evidence (e.g., detailed simulations) that a blunt policy would have a better outcome (using your own definition!) than a narrowly craft one?

I am pretty confident that narrow policies also have the long-term positive effect of reducing tribalism, because the average person ends up dealing with far fewer negative externalities of poorly crafted policy by "the other side".

> It's difficult to square urban vs rural interests without creating a tyranny of a majority/minority on either side.

Or how about letting each side decide what they want to do for themselves, but not to the other?

Cities can pay for themselves. Rural areas can pay for themselves.

See how Switzerland does it.

> Cities and heavily urban states could fix their pedestrian safety problems easily by creating massive local registration taxes on large vehicles, without a federal tax penalizing rural areas.

Why? The majority of the US population (~80%) lives in urban areas [1].

Turning your suggestion on its head, rural areas and states could fix their supposedly over-penalized residents by providing them with money or other incentives to compensate.

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[1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-ru...