41
Stop the free ride: all motorists should pay their way, whatever vehicle they drive
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
41 points (100.0% liked)
Australia
4439 readers
165 users here now
A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.
Before you post:
If you're posting anything related to:
- The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
- Politics, post it to Australian Politics
- World News/Events, post it to World News
- A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian
If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News
Rules
This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:
- When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment
Banner Photo
Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australian News
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Australian Politics
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
- Aussie Memes
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
Moderation
Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.
Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It would be logical to base road tax also on vehicle weight and the use of studded tires (in addition to CO2 like it is now). However, the weight classes should be devised so that the change only affects the needlessly massive cars. This would be a win-win.
The fuel excise obviously taxed larger vehicles more over the same distance. It totally makes sense to have weight classes.
Oh, and Australia needs a "kei" class, dammit. Nobody's second car has any business being bigger than that.
2x the weight causes 16x the damage (2⁴)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
Yep. This is why I think my 900kg hatchback should cost less to register than a 2500kg roadblimp ute.
I don't think a quartic tax will scale too well because the impact of a vehicle isn't just its wear on the road.
However larger cars burn more fuel and release more particulates such as brake dust and microplastics from tyre wear. Backstreets that once could park on both sides without impeding flow are now reduced to a single lane. Turning lanes will now only hold 4 cars instead of 6, and less cars get through per green. They bring more kinetic energy into a collision, and are not as manouverable. They're less safe to have around by every measure.
If the TAC processed their road stats properly, they'd realise that a kei car won't kill anyone. People in kei cars will still get killed, but that's a misattributed stat that should go towards the vehicle that brought the most weight into the collision.
A fair tax would need to be based on size, weight and emissions. They all matter independently.