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Comment by the_mitsuhiko | Hacker News Reader

> Cars taking up physically less space could be taxed less (or, my preference, large SUVs taxed more).

What would the benefit of this be? You do not get anything by saving space because the car still takes up the same space on a parking lot. It's not taking up half the space so you can fit two cars there.

> This isn't a pie-in-the-sky unproven idea either. Kei cars are hugely popular in Japan, demonstrating that the market exists.

But that's because the economics in Japan are completely different. None of the reasons why people buy kei cars would make any sense in Europe. People buy cars here because they travel distances and they don't want to die in the process. Kei cars (same with moped cars or what you want to call them) are death traps on highways. If you are in cities in Europe you don't drive a car anyways.

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Here's one thing: a vehicle's wear-and-tear on the road is an exponential function of its mass. A vehicle that's twice as big does around 4 times as much damage to the road, leading to cracks, potholes and asphalt crumbling. That, in turn, reduces the lifespan of the roadway and requires an expensive resurfacing sooner than if more people were driving smaller cars.

Kei cars will never drive on roads where the cost of the road maintanance is high: highways. If you would start doing that the cost of dealing with all the dead and seriously insured people would be reason alone to ban them. That's what we did with most. Japan is not Europe.

If someone crashes into you with a heavier car, then that's the responsibility of the owner of the heavy car - just like if you knock over a cyclist (or it should be). The ideal would be everyone driving slower in smaller cars, since reducing kinetic energy saves lives. To achieve that you reduce taxes on the smaller cars and increase taxes on the heavier cars and cars that drive at higher speeds. And change the law so if you kill someone with your big, heavy car, you get a more serious punishment.

It's the end of days for human-driven cars anyway. With self driving cars, it seems as if the cars will be bought and owned mainly by large companies (and hired out to end users), so the companies will be able to experiment much more aggressively with different designs and force manufacturers to make them.

Insurances and the state need to pay for this which is why kei style cars are outlawed on most roads in europe. Don't forget that the speed likit anywhere in japan is 60km/h so the problem does not exist there. The speed limit in europe on highways is 130.

If there was a market for kei cars they would exist.

German here, what is this "speed limit" you talk about?:)

But yeah, kei style cars are redundant in Europe because bikes, scooters , minis, nowadays car sharing, public transport and more space exist.

Wouldn't that mean that on any road which carries large trucks, the damage done by cars is completely irrelevant no matter what their size?

HGVs already pay annual vehicle tax based on their mass, whether it has "road-friendly suspension" and the number of axles. See page 3 of this document:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

(Edit: I should say ... in the UK. No idea about other EU countries)

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