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If You Want a Car This Heavy, You Should Pay Through the Nose

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Re: If You Want a Car This Heavy, You Should Pay Through the Nose

#121

Post by fho »

duskwuff wrote: post #63
sandworm101 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That extends to motorcycles which, in comparison to all cars, do virtually zero damage to roads. Getting everyone out of cars and onto reasonable motorcycles, even sportbikes, would likely do more for the environment than the current plan of everyone driving electric tanks.

Motorcycles are shockingly fuel-inefficient. Some "touring" models get as little as 30 mpg, and few full-size motorcycles get above 60 mpg. While that isn't terrible , it's also not substantially better than a small car, and with much worse cargo capacity and crash survivability.

It's crazy that basically no "fast Velomobile" is in the market. Something shaped like a velomobile (goes 100 km/h downhill by gravity alone), but some what bigger, with a motor and more safety features.

Re: If You Want a Car This Heavy, You Should Pay Through the Nose

#122

Post by 10g1k »

darkteflon wrote: post #104
10g1k wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps just free markets, and individuals determining how those markets go. Individuals funding local community assets as they see fit. Perhaps a cartel like situation such as the Hanseatic League.

Okay so survival of the fittest-type thing. Essential services such as hospitals, schools, electricity, etc would have to handle their own fundraising and would live and die by their performance in the market. Competing for mindshare with Wendys and Facebook could be tricky, but yeah, I’m a believer that people are fundamentally good and I reckon we could find a way to make it work. Would we need any coordination at…

Consider something like a town/region hospital. Don't want to fund it? Don't. Want treatment? Cough up the cash. At the moment, here in Australia, the government does the middle man thing, and money is just blown on crap. The town hospital is underfunded, understaffed, and KPIs for just about everything are dropping. Meanwhile, every tax-payer is coughing up dollars every day for not using the service until they need it. They might pay millions of dollars throughout their working lives for something they use for three days. OTOH, if they don't get taxed like that, and only pay directly to the hospital when they use it, maybe that would work out better. It certainly worked in the past. And every citizen would retain more wealth, some of which they could spend (if they chose) on improving their lifestyle with home gym, better food, etc.

Should hospitals need to beg? No. Just require payment for service. Maybe it'll cost you $100,000 to get a broken leg fixed. But if you weren't paying that in taxes for the past 3 years, you've got that and more spare.

Competition: That's how it works. If the school is optimised for profits, wouldn't that mean the parents think it does the best job? Otherwise they can just start their own school (without government interference), or individuallly home school.

I do think one of the few things government should do is set human and environmental safety requirements, such as not putting radium in kids toys. Alternatively, if parents find radium in kids toys, they should find the people responsible and deal with them appropriately.

Re: If You Want a Car This Heavy, You Should Pay Through the Nose

#123

Post by duskwuff »

8note wrote: post #99
sandworm101 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so should bicycles too. The per-mile injury rate, the stat used when comparing a given journey, for bicycles is several times higher than that of motorcycles. And skateboards... they are per-mile death traps. Rollerblades are likely more dangerous per-mile than driving drunk while smoking. If you have to cover a given distance, the safest is not always the slowest. Often the faster means limits risk exposure and…

The skateboarding and roller blade trips are quite short though, no? Injuries per minute or per hour seems like a more apt unit to compare

Indeed. By the "injuries per mile" metric, the Apollo spacecraft were probably one of the safest modes of travel ever devised, yet I don't see anyone championing space capsules as a safer substitute for cars. :)

Re: If You Want a Car This Heavy, You Should Pay Through the Nose

#124

Post by Gigachad »

whalesalad wrote: post #95
Gigachad wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you taken a look at the road fatalities in the US recently. People are quite literally being killed at an increasing rate. And these oversized cars are directly more deadly. You might not care about putting lives over appearances. But others do.

I notice that you submitted a link to encourage deflating the tires of large vehicles. > Our aim is to make it impossible to own a huge polluting 4x4 in the world’s urban areas. To do that, we need people everywhere deflating 4x4 tyres, week-in, week-out. absolutely unhinged activities.

The Tyre Extinguishers are doing gods work. Governments are failing to act against car killings which are driven by oversized SUVs and trucks. So some push back from the public is needed. Hopefully the laws soon catch up and ban these vehicles.

Re: If You Want a Car This Heavy, You Should Pay Through the Nose

#126

Post by ForestCritter »

xethos wrote: post #80
epivosism wrote: post #9

Strange they skipped the step of 1) taxing cars which cause more injuries per mile, 2) taxing resources (including externality cost) so that if you use more, you pay more. Instead they are taxing a pretty bad proxy for those actual policy goals. i.e. this incentivizes companies to reduce weight rather than add safety measures, and to use light materials regardless of if they cause more environmental damage. Hypotheti…

> Wired has really fallen I mean maybe, but TFA is from Slate. Moreover, the article argues in favour of taxing the thing we want less of: weight. Weight means more power required to start, more mass to change direction and stop, more materials required for the larger batteries, and more of a literal impact on pedestrians.

It also often equates to safer vehicles. Crash safety matters.

Re: If You Want a Car This Heavy, You Should Pay Through the Nose

#127

Post by ptman »

fho wrote: post #121
duskwuff wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motorcycles are shockingly fuel-inefficient. Some "touring" models get as little as 30 mpg, and few full-size motorcycles get above 60 mpg. While that isn't terrible , it's also not substantially better than a small car, and with much worse cargo capacity and crash survivability.

It's crazy that basically no "fast Velomobile" is in the market. Something shaped like a velomobile (goes 100 km/h downhill by gravity alone), but some what bigger, with a motor and more safety features.

Where are the tens of alternatives to https://www.podbike.com/ . There should be lots of competition in this area

Re: If You Want a Car This Heavy, You Should Pay Through the Nose

#128

Post by M95D »

duskwuff wrote: post #123
8note wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The skateboarding and roller blade trips are quite short though, no? Injuries per minute or per hour seems like a more apt unit to compare

Indeed. By the "injuries per mile" metric, the Apollo spacecraft were probably one of the safest modes of travel ever devised, yet I don't see anyone championing space capsules as a safer substitute for cars. :)

Did you include Apollo 1? It killed 3 without even getting off the ground.

Re: If You Want a Car This Heavy, You Should Pay Through the Nose

#129

Post by Timshel »

fho wrote: post #121
duskwuff wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motorcycles are shockingly fuel-inefficient. Some "touring" models get as little as 30 mpg, and few full-size motorcycles get above 60 mpg. While that isn't terrible , it's also not substantially better than a small car, and with much worse cargo capacity and crash survivability.

It's crazy that basically no "fast Velomobile" is in the market. Something shaped like a velomobile (goes 100 km/h downhill by gravity alone), but some what bigger, with a motor and more safety features.

With such height I would expect it to be almost invidible to cars (let's not even think of a collision).

Unless more regulation like the one discussed in the article are passed to stop the suv trends, I would never even consider riding something like this.

Re: If You Want a Car This Heavy, You Should Pay Through the Nose

#130

Post by Timshel »

ckdarby wrote: post #45
sandworm101 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That extends to motorcycles which, in comparison to all cars, do virtually zero damage to roads. Getting everyone out of cars and onto reasonable motorcycles, even sportbikes, would likely do more for the environment than the current plan of everyone driving electric tanks.

Except the additional cost via health care either publicly or private via insurance premiums. Two wheel motorcycles today as they stand should be outlawed.

Let's start by outlawing the vehicules that kill others before going after bikes ... Weight regulation is a start at least.
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