We won’t need to change maximum car size, we need to change average car size. Because right now politicians are arguing for a reduction in bike and foot paths and for more space to be dedicated to parking because the average car keeps getting bigger.
I didn’t care whether people who drive 100,000 € luxury SUVs keep doing so. But I do care whether sedans and hatchbacks get replaced by 20,000 € SUVs.
Mind you, I’m talking about a partial rebate on the vehicle tax. People who don’t own cars don’t pay vehicle tax, of course.
In my opinion that should by handled by vehicle taxes. If your car exceeds the dimensions cities are designed for right now, your tax increases. If it’s noticeably smaller/lighter (think kei car), you get a tax rebate.
People would be a lot more interested in compact vehicles if driving one made a real difference in their wallet.
And that’s okay. I can understand not wanting to see your son get put in harm’s way.
Of course it would be in really bad taste for your son to subsequently ask for a military parade in his honor. Just like it is when Trump does it.
Well, yeah, if the car makers can add exceptions to the law and turn it upside down then the law becomes useless.
I explicitly wouldn’t allow that exception. If larger cars are less efficient then disincentivizing their use by means of higher taxes is clearly beneficial to society. If you want to drive that three-ton gas guzzler then you can surely afford that 30% higher vehicle tax. If you can’t, might I interest you in this comparatively efficient and tax-reduced Subaru Sambar?
Mind you, I would apply different rules to things like semi trucks that (at least in my part of the world) you can’t drive without a special license. But if you can drive it with a regular European class B license then the tax should scale progressively with size and mass because making larger and less efficient cars unattractive is specifically the point.
Get the city to install chicanes with trees planted in them. You can’t just roll over those and a landship like that is going to have to slow down a lot to maneuver through them.
But yeah, I’d love tax brackets depending on car size. Huge trucks pay more, kei cars pay less. That would make a lot of sense for city liveability and road maintenance.
AI usually got better when people realized it wasn’t going to do all it was hyped up for but was useful for a certain set of tasks.
Then it turned from world-changing hotness to super boring tech your washing machine uses to fine-tune its washing program.
Violent and nonviolent resistance often go hand in hand. They amplify each other’s effectiveness, ideally leading to the nonviolent side teaching its goals.
I feel that right now we do see the American people moving in a similar direction – on the one have we have large protests that try to be as peaceful as possible, on the other hand we have people running ICE agents out of town.
This will probably intensify before the government is willing to negotiate, in lockstep with the government increasing its use of force. I hope that the violence will not escalate to an outright civil war before the government relents.
Good luck to everyone over there.