FUCKING DO IT

The fee should be about 1000x higher than listed, but shit, do something

  • LeylaLove [she/her, love/loves]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Even ignoring deaths caused by the size of these being unsafe, people should realistically pay tax based on the weight of their vehicle. We actually have a formula to find out how much force a car is putting on the road, which is totally proportional to how much damage it does to the road. Formula to compare damage between vehicles is (weight of vehicle 1/weight of vehicle 2)4. This is an exponential function. Which means, my Prius (pretty much the best car you can get for this) does 50,000x more damage to the road than a bicycle with an exceptionally heavy person on it. A car being an extra thousand pounds isn't just an extra thousand pounds of weight on the road, it's (pretty much, this is NOT exact, I'm too high to really think about my old notes) 10004 more damage to the road.

    With this knowledge, cars are barely even a real issue. The study was taken down unfortunately, but a loaded semi is pretty much the equivalent of 10,000 cars. There is an argument to be made that road maintenance would be completely financially viable if it we had high speed rail to replace semis. Ignoring any leftist slant and just going into the universe that carbrains inhabit, this is something carbrains should support. Semis objectively suck to drive around, you can't pass them on the right side unless you have a death wish, and passing in the passing lane is still questionable with their lines of sight. Also because of the insane exploitation of these truckers by corporations, the people driving these trucks shouldn't be driving. My old drugs of choice was SUPER popular among truckers because you don't get tested for it unless you're on probation and have a smart officer. It wasn't a stimulant per se, more like alcohol with far less numbing and stupidity. But if you took the right dose, it would let you stay up for DAYS at a time without feeling it, and it wasn't a heavy enough downer to make you tired unless you wanted it to make you tired. Plus, after you sleep on a decent dose, it becomes a full stimulant as a sleep med. You can get this drug at a TON of gas stations, I've seen Casey's, Love's, and Maverick all stocking it. At best, the trucker you're passing is extremely sleep deprived and running off 72 hours of drinking coffee. At worse, you're dealing with someone using meth to stay up or (I'm not saying what my old DOC is, once you start learning about it it crosses from a normal drug to a straight cognition hazard) speedyxanaxtm to not feel the effects of staying up. Either way, they're essentially driving 10,000 cars at a time when they realistically shouldn't even be driving 1.

    • Abracadaniel [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      yeah your math is a bit off. Don't think of it in terms of weight but in proportions.

      A 50% weight increase corresponds to: 1.54=5.0625

      So more than 5 times the road damage.

      https://streetsmn.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/vehicle-weight-and-damage-chart.jpg

      • LeylaLove [she/her, love/loves]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Thank you for the correction. Like I said, I'm too high to analyze my notes from high school and my old sources were all dead links. The point still stands though, a semi is doing a ton of damage to the road compared to normal vehicles. Cars aren't sustainable for other reasons, but currently the big issue I see in America is an inability to actually maintain the infrastructure that's there. Even ignoring environmental damage and everything else, semis essentially make maintaining roads impossible

    • BigHaas [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Release the speedyxanax secret... It's Kanna right?