Road wear/damage is correlated with vehicle weight to the 4th power. Taxing large SUVs at 2-4 times that of a small car (like the gas tax) doesn't make up for the damage they do.
Currently, small vehicle subsidize wear and tear caused by larger vehicles.
The rising size of vehicles in the US doesn't just have an impact on pedestrian deaths, it's creating a ticking time bomb of rising road repair costs.
To fix this, vehicle taxation should be calculated based on relative road wear by vehicle.
Every semi-truck company is being subsidized by the government by ordinary road users.
We really, really need to move freight away from highways and more towards rails and waterways.
Big rigs cause >95% of road damage in the US, but pay of 35% of Federal and state highway taxes, and are only 11% of vehicles on the highways.
https://truecostblog.com/2009/06/02/the-hidden-trucking-industry-subsidy/#link1
It's bad enough that big rigs don't pay their fair share of road taxes.
But it gets worse: roads in the US are subsidized by taxes not paid by road users.
Tolls, gas taxes, registration fees, they cover between 31.5% and 73.4% of state and local road spending.
Beyond that, roads are subsidized by other sources:
I.E. Road users don't pay for themselves.
Everyone who doesn't own a car subsidizes those who do.
It's a massive subsidy. The US spends $200 billion a year on road maintenance.
All of this has been known for decades.
A 1979 GAO study found that a single 40-ton vehicle damages roads equivalent to 9,600 vehicles, each weighing 4,000 pounds.
The report's name: Excessive Truck Weight: An Extensive Burden We Can No Longer Support
But the US government ignored it, and we're all paying higher road taxes now as a result.
If the US had a greater and faster freight rail system, we'd have lower taxes and cheaper goods. Trucking is expensive!
Andrew Damitio