this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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Sorry, the tax is a great idea but taxing the tires is a terrible idea.
I think he is close though with his initial train of thought. I remember doing some research on this many years ago and road wear does not scale linearly with weight. All other variables being equal a 1,000lb load going across a stretch of road 10 times does less damage than a 10,000 pounds load going across the same stretch once. So what we should really be doing is looking at semi trucks and the heaviest of consumer vehicles. It would theoretically make consumer goods go up in price a little, but it's not like that cost isn't already being paid/subsidized by consumers in other ways.
Maybe it would even push the use of railroads for goods even more than it is used now.
Why is it a terrible idea?
Taking a guess, but it would lead to people replacing their tires less often, making cars more prone to accidents, and thus probably being counterproductive and more dangerous.
It should be linked to what a driver has to do (e.g. registration) so they can't try to minimize the cost by delaying it, especially with maintenance.
Tire inspection is still part of vehicle registration inspections. You can’t delay more than a year, and states can always require a tire change within a certain % of being totally worn out if having tires within x-% is showing evidence of causing more accidents.
Unless the argument is that any additional cost will prevent people from performing maintenance. Like, “gas prices can’t go up because people will stop buying gas”. Or “if you make registration more complicated, people won’t register their cars”.
Taxes in the US also have a precedence of decreasing as you get into higher values. There is nothing saying taxes can’t be a higher % on low quality tires. Buy a better tire that last longer, lower percentage tax tier. The point of taxation is to deter behavior you don’t want while recouping the cost of operation over time. Cheap tires that only last 1k miles can be taxed at a much higher % than those rated at 50 or 100k miles. We do that shit all the time.
Not all states have regular inspection requirements. Some are only every couple of years. But even if they did all implement something, you still would be encouraging people to wait in until the last possible moment to do it, which might decrease the amount it increases the risk, but it would still do so.
For the same reasons others have said. Don't increase the cost of safety equipment.