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Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

> So probably shipping stuff in trucks doesn't cost enough, and SUVs/pickups should cost 5x for road tax what sedans do.

Nope because the numbers you just posted exemplify what every knows: road cars don't even register on the radar compared to semi-trailers.

The tax for "road damage" should be approximately zero for cars, any cars, and way more expensive for semis.

But people who hate on cars don't want to hear the truth: they're all too happy to take their bicycle to go buy the milk the semis brought to their city.

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It's a bit more complicated than that.

There are fixed or per-vehicle costs:

* signage, lighting, snow removal, etc.

* weather-related wear and tear from freeze/thaw, thermal expansion, etc.

* capacity (more lanes needed, driven by passenger vehicles, not trucks)

So yeah, semi's should probably be paying $100k/year in road tax based on wear, but that doesn't meant that your car's road tax should be $1/year.

There's also a great argument that all the suburbs are not paying enough in property taxes. Those paved roads have high costs to maintain over time, and service just the traffic to/from some large houses. Some have gone so far as to call suburbia a scam, on the basis that it has to perpetually grow to pay for maintenance.

> But people who hate on cars don't want to hear the truth: they're all too happy to take their bicycle to go buy the milk the semis brought to their city.

The truth is it's not all about road damage. In fact I couldn't care less about that because I don't really use those roads anyway.

Tax is more about driving behaviour than anything.

> I don't really use those roads anyway.

If you live in the US, you use roads. Every physical product you buy is transported by road at some point.

I definitely don't live in the US.

> But people who hate on cars don't want to hear the truth

A tad heavy on the rhetoric, wouldn't you say?

Check their comment history. With showdead on. Normal talk interspersed with crazy political rants.

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