RE: Pay as you go driving?

RE: Pay as you go driving? (Full Version)

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OneMoreWaste -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/20/2009 7:11:37 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Vendaval I read the article and that sounds like a poorly conceived idea that would be very difficult to implement and enforce. It is much easier to set up cameras on highways to monitor the traffic flow than to chase down every automobile owner and require them to install a tracking device. And what branch of law enforcement would want to be hassled by more paperwork and wasted time and more importantly how would the states pay for such enforcement? Poorly conceived ideas are the bread and butter of modern governments. However, it's quite simple to implement. Next time your registration expires, it doesn't get renewed until you get your tracker installed. Once a year has gone by, roadside cameras will record plates of any cars passing that are not transmitting as they should be. As far as law enforcement not wanting the hassle, it's certainly no more chickenshit than jacking some poor commuter for doing 60 in a 55 [:'(]

corysub -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/20/2009 7:53:15 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: FullCircle quote: ORIGINAL: Sanity Unless you're, say, a Republican governor of Alaska running for VP? Medical records can tell all kinds of people all sorts of things. Say you're filling out the forms to purchase a gun. Ever had a Xanax? Ever abused drugs of any kind? Ever entered treatment for alcoholism? Let's check and see... In every gun control discussion I've been involved in someone has told me extensive checks are made for things such as mental illness, are you saying that isn't the case currently? Bad example to convince me since I don't want anyone with guns roaming the streets let alone alcoholic or drug abusing gun owners because such people generally find someone else to blame for their misery other than themselves i.e. it's the wife or the ex boss. quote: Or how about this - Ever asked your doctor an awkward question? I don’t see my doctor much and when I do I’m sharing him with hundreds of other patients, therefore I want a system in place that ensures the information he needs to know about me is to hand. He does not know me personally in this day and age that would be a rarity unless you lived in a low populated area. quote: That is very sad and you should try to do something about that. I can't remember a time, other than in the service, when the doctor that attended me for annual physicals, sickness from time to time..or family sickness..etc...did not know everyone in the family and had thick folders with our information at first, and these days, just plugs in her computer and every cough I ever had is on the screen. Medications are faxed from her computer to my druggist..and the hospital she is on the staff is also plugged into the network. This law will discourage that. It's like a GPS chip in your car so government can track you "for tax purposes". If its there, its going to be abused. Small government is good government, but there are those who will never be happy until there is a camera on every street corner. Like I said recently small government would assume everybody had the same shortlist of things they want the government to regulate, be it guns, corporations, welfare, transport etc. Therefore as everyone has a different list of things they want their government to get involved in, small governments tends to be limited to the islands of the pacific where government funding is problematic in any case. That is quite an assumption, dontcha think. I don't want governement to do anything for me but make sure the country is secure, the mail gets delivered, it's kinda safe to walk the streets, and my peanut butter isn't gonna kill me. I understand the reality of the day, but really question the constitutionality of the wide net government has put over our lives. Bad enough we have to contend with idiots we vote into office term after term...like a Sen. Dodd who singlehandedly killed the market today with his comments about nationalizing the banks being a possibility not to be ruled out! The bigger danger to our liberty is not so apparent...It's in the bowels of the buracracy...those endless hallways in Washington full of people trying to keep busy by running our lives...what kind of bulb to put in our home, what kind of toilet flush we are allowed, what kind of food we are no longer allowed to eat because it is fatty and bad for us...what kind of gasoline our cars have to have and hoping they don't add enough ethanol so that our engines die....to what kind of cars we should be driving..whether we like them or not! .... and on and on and on...to now they want me to pay the mortgage for a guy down the block who put in a new kitchen and pool in a house he can't afford...while I'm struggling to keep current on my bills. What the hell is wrong with this picture? Pay as you go driving....they will probably back away from that one...but you know that there are people tonight trying to figure out a way to "tax our carbon footprint"! Bet Al Gore must have a huge carbon footprint even after his weight loss. As far as small governments on the Pacfic Islands...dunno know about that...and don't have time to research the percentage of people on the government payroll on some of those islands but it would be ineteresting to see.. .

outlier -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/20/2009 7:57:05 PM)
Multiple methods of keeping track of a car's milage and reporting it already exsist. RFID tags built into tires and then picked up by roadside sensors. Your car's milage being kept by an electronic odometer tied to your computer and read and reported during your safety/smog check. In Calif. the tech enters the milage anyway and the info goes from the smog machine to the state. If you have a late model BMW then all they have to do is take your key and run it through a scanner like the one at the dealer. It will tell them how far the car has been driven. Those are just the ones I can think at this moment.

FullCircle -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/21/2009 3:15:19 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: corysub That is quite an assumption, dontcha think. I don't want governement to do anything for me but make sure the country is secure, the mail gets delivered, it's kinda safe to walk the streets, and my peanut butter isn't gonna kill me. You are one person, are you the same as every other person, because you've just listed one thing I don't care at all about. We each have a list of things sometimes they are common things most of the time not, this is the point I'm making. quote: The bigger danger to our liberty is not so apparent...It's in the bowels of the buracracy...those endless hallways in Washington full of people trying to keep busy by running our lives...what kind of bulb to put in our home, what kind of toilet flush we are allowed, what kind of food we are no longer allowed to eat because it is fatty and bad for us...what kind of gasoline our cars have to have and hoping they don't add enough ethanol so that our engines die....to what kind of cars we should be driving..whether we like them or not! .... and on and on and on...to now they want me to pay the mortgage for a guy down the block who put in a new kitchen and pool in a house he can't afford...while I'm struggling to keep current on my bills. What the hell is wrong with this picture? Well I care about all of those things apart from the 'what you can eat' question but since the NHS is affected by the 'what you can eat' question I kind of see the need for people to sign a form saying 'I can eat what I like on the understanding I'm opting out of being a burden on the health system and will have to pay a fee if it takes a surgeon ages to cut through all the fat just to get to my internal organs.' If you don't like the system you can either try to change it or leave altogether but a majority elected them so they have a mandate.

SilverMark -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/21/2009 3:51:43 AM)
Already disavowed....not going to happen

corysub -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/21/2009 6:57:29 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: SilverMark Already disavowed....not going to happen Well, that's good news! Now if Obama would disavow HR1 this criminal spending legislation designed by Pelosi and voted on by a Congress who were rushed into voting...with only 3 Senators being republican. I think than we actually might have a shot at re-energizing the economy...the market would soar, your 201K might at least get back to a 301K..and we might be able to get through this deep recession. But that ain't gonna happen. What is going on is exactly what Obama promised. "Change"..and now we are getting the definition of "change".

Owner59 -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/21/2009 7:47:53 AM)
So you`re against the bi-partisan recovery plan?

TheHeretic -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/21/2009 8:18:01 AM)
Changing to a mileage-based system for collecting road taxes is something I could have supported. It would return fairness to how the gov't collects the money to perform one of the very legitimate functions it has. No Big Brother tracking systems are required. Here is the problem that is only going to get more unbalanced. Without going to the extremes of one poster who seemed to be implying we should put velvet ropes around the pavement to keep anything from happening to it, roads take wear and tear. There is a direct relationship between weight, and how much impact a vehicle has on the lifespan of a road. When every vehicle was running on the same fuel and technology, our current method of collection worked pretty well. The heavier the vehicle, the higher the consumption of fuel per mile, and the more money tossed into the pothole jar. The guy in the Ford pick-up put a lot more in than the guy in the Corolla. It's not working so well anymore. Here's an example. I recently retired my teen-age Subaru for something a lot newer, that even has room for my knees. It is a full 30% heavier than my old wagon, but, courtesy of a nifty technical innovation, I'm getting damn near identical mileage. Maybe a 4-5% increase in consumption if I'm doing a lot of town driving, and I'm still running on a traditional powerplant. Hybrids are much heavier than their mileage would reflect, and alt-fuels drivers are getting a free ride. The taxes are not being fairly collected. How hard would it be to phase in a system where a little transmitter in the vehicle tells the gas pump/battery charger/cng connection/whatever what weight class the vehicle is in, and how many miles have been driven since the last fueling? What is Orwellian about that?

Music44 -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/21/2009 8:29:31 AM)
What is Orwellian about that is the line i read recently that said, and i paraphrase, oh we wont be collecting information relating to privacy concerns, although we could. Were you drove to and from, what time you were there and for how long. What about the incentives to drive greener? the current fuel tax rewards car owners who drive vehicles that get better milage, that incentive goes out the window. Little soccer mom drives her toyota hybrid that she bought, all over town. Shes a concious driver, concerned with the environment. She gets 30-35 mpg. her husband drives a suburban but his job is 5 miles from home he gets 6-10 mpg. which car would you rather have with a mileage based fuel tax?

TheHeretic -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/21/2009 8:37:41 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Music44 What about the incentives to drive greener? the current fuel tax rewards car owners who drive vehicles that get better milage, that incentive goes out the window. Little soccer mom drives her toyota hybrid that she bought, all over town. Shes a concious driver, concerned with the environment. She gets 30-35 mpg. her husband drives a suburban but his job is 5 miles from home he gets 6-10 mpg. which car would you rather have with a mileage based fuel tax? To my way of thinking, it is using taxation for social engineering, instead of just fixing the damn potholes, that we ought to worry about.

FullCircle -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/21/2009 8:45:23 AM)
You talk about pot holes but how about the increase in respiratory diseases and the cost on the health service this causes? There is more at stake than pot holes these days.

TheHeretic -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/21/2009 9:11:47 AM)
So you think it is more important for the gov't to tax "sin," than for people to pay their fair share of a legitimate cost? Fuel taxes are how we collect the road fees.

Sanity -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/21/2009 9:22:57 AM)
Speaking of sin taxes, I read in the news recently that Idaho and Oregon, as well as New York and a few other states are seriously considering following the Obama adminisration lead regarding Obama's much higher tobacco taxes, and are trying to significantly increase taxes on beer and wine sales - in one case raising taxes over a thousand percent. All for our own good, of course. quote: ORIGINAL: TheHeretic So you think it is more important for the gov't to tax "sin," than for people to pay their fair share of a legitimate cost? Fuel taxes are how we collect the road fees.

ScooterTrash -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/21/2009 10:18:09 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Lucylastic Just an update on this.... The Obama administration will not support a policy of taxing drivers based on their mileage, the Transportation Department said Friday after a published interview in which Secretary Ray LaHood called it an idea "we should look at." http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/20/driving.tax/ Thanks for the update Lucy, if nothing else we may have dodged a bullet for now. Personally I thought the idea a tad insane, they would have been better off applying the money it would have took to administer such a plan and applied it to the roadways they are "supposedly" so concerned about.

FullCircle -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/21/2009 11:05:02 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: TheHeretic So you think it is more important for the gov't to tax "sin," than for people to pay their fair share of a legitimate cost? Fuel taxes are how we collect the road fees. You might think differently if you don't own a car but your child suffers from asthma. It's bad that we allow people to live in such a carefree way, where their actions are permitted to affect other individuals, let alone not making them pay the financial burden of such actions. We think more broadly these days and we tend to ask ourselves what effects could our choice have on our environment and the health of our neighbours.

OneMoreWaste -> RE: Pay as you go driving? (2/21/2009 2:39:35 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: outlier RFID tags built into tires and then picked up by roadside sensors. RFID doesn't have much range. It would literally take billions of sensors to cover U.S. roadways. quote: Your car's milage being kept by an electronic odometer tied to your computer and read and reported during your safety/smog check. What does my computer know about my driving? It just sits on my desk. [:D] I've got two cars with carbs and breaker-point ignition, and one bike with a programmable digital gauge pack that I can set to whatever mileage I like. The others have analog odos I can disconnect at will. No, two-way GPS is the tool that all the various Big Brothers have been dreaming about for decades. Until they can get it implanted in everyone's skin (hopefully not in my lifetime), having it permanently installed in every car in the U.S. is the next best thing. And even if it doesn't come from the feds, it'll come from the states (most of the Western states have brought up bills already), or the insurance industry (already being test-marketed, by Allstate IIRC). Or Obama's word may be good for nothing, and it will come from the Feds. But it'sa comin', all we can do is fight it as best we can.

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