Yeah, but this means they'll get rid of gas taxes, right? What? Why are you laughing?

jtownYeah, but this means they'll get rid of gas taxes, right? What? Why are you laughing?
Yea Yea Yea thats the ticket, and next they are getting rid of that nasty income tax too

So do you turn it off when you cross the border?

Nevermind, I'm sure it's GPS enabled, which is even better.

Major Thomb: Wow...this is only the 20th repeat of this story.


ya, definitely seen this before

AntiNorm: At least we hippies can spell, submitter.

s-u-b-m-i-t-t-e-r

In my almost thirty years of life, I'm absolutely sure of only one thing: THE MAN will always find a way to stick it to you. That's THE MAN's job: To take money away from you. Look at anyone who takes money from you without you having a choice in the matter. That guy is THE MAN. The government? THE MAN. Your insurance company? THE MAN. Telephone company? THE MAN also. If you try to "stick it" back to THE MAN you'll find yourself in jail.

THE MAN is everywhere, and every day he's making sure he's more and more a part of your life.

Honestly, I don't think it would pass. The privacy issue alone would be what kills this. I think it's more of a media enduced scare story. Besides, I've been reading about shiat like this since 2004 and it's yet to go past the testing stage. Plus it's going to be expensive to impliment (either the states would have to cover the costs or the federal government) and people will find ways around it by disabiling the GPS devices. This has bad idea written all over it.

bgraingerI mean I have a lawn mower right... and I have to put gas in it. I have to pay the gas tax on that, but that gas has nothing to do with wear and tear on the road.
So you're telling me that you have the gas delivered to your house for your lawn mower, and that you don't in fact drive to the station to fill up the container that the gas goes in? Amazing. How much does that cost you?

When the warranty runs out, you can't find anyone to service your car except the dealer, and you see the first repair bill, only then you will know much you have been screwed.

would you need to install gps black box to drive through oregon?

studebaker hoch: I'm totally over the car thing. If I *really* need one, there are cabs and rentals.

So from now on you'll just be "hoch"

Just have one of these babies. Problem solved.

Politcal Science 102: Local, State and Federal government have no qualms about wasting taxpayer money, but they will be damned before they let themselves be cheated out of money by taxpayers.

/they're gonna get it one way or another
//become a government contractor as soon as you can

haha

The US northwest is becoming a "nanny" state. . .much like the rest of the west coast and east coast.

Sounds like there's easy ways around all of this. It won't work.

So... by the logic expressed in this article... the next step is for the city to outlaw bicycles.

Just think about it a minute.

Gee, this isn't being promoted by the petrol companies or anything.

pretty soon it will, just come down to the mark of the beast!

WizardX, good point. But a more effective solution would be to mandate that all citizens must report to a local hospital to have their legs amputated.

Stop me if you've heard this one...

Pete and RePete walk into a bar......

You wanna use the roads, you pay! Everyone should understand that :) but it wouldn't be too bad if the roads weren't full of potholes!!!!

BobtheFascist: Good. They still use the road so they have to pay their fair share.

---

True. But heavy cars, regardless of MPG, damage the road exponentially more (fourth power law) so they should pay THEIR fair share--i.e., more than they are now.

The hybrid tax break isn't a break on road wear; it's a break for alleviating pollution and dependence on terrorists. Granted, this is only compared to regular gasoline engines, so diesels should get this too, but that's another issue altogether.

As an engineer for a state government, I can honestly say that I deal with this mindset on a daily basis. I have people who will call in, write letters, or even stop their car in the middle of the highway, and take time out of their day to call me every name in the book because I decided to close down ONE side of a four lane highway because there was a large hole in the bridge. The mindset in these posts are the same. As much as we'd like to keep everything fixed, there just isn't enough money available. Roads are organized into priorities and the highest ones are taken care of. We apologize if there is a pot hole on a 40 mile stretch of highway where only tractors and amish buggies drive.

This will never pass because people will percieve it (wrongly or rightly) as an imposition on their ability to go on road trips, to enjoy tooling around in their personal, 6 ton, land cruisers.

There is one way it could become law, and that is if you could get job security with it - and since I can't think of a way they could attach job security with this, it doesn't seem likely. Can you think of a way?

Yankees Team Gynecologist: so diesels should get this too, but that's another issue altogether.


There is a tax break for a company or individual who uses a certain percentage of their fuel as BIODIESEL. Well, at least there is in Ohio.

With this system what would happen if my car got towed? or I run out of gas and have to push the car? Do I get taxed for that? If the car is only taxed while running can I drive to the top of a hill and then turn off the car and get a tax free roll down the other side of it?

Either way if anything like this every really goes into effect I'm gonna just sit idling in my garage all day. Can't tax me if I'm not going anywhere! That will show them.

the tax should be proportional to the mass of the vehicle raised to the power of 1.25 (e.g. 3^1.25) - i.e. it's damaging effect on the road surface (a 40-ton truck will do approx 100 times more damage to a road surface than a 1 ton car. BTW this is a fact)

This would be fair and that means a SUV driver would pay aproximately 4 times the tax as a hybrid driver would.

THAT would be fair.

/boldness
//italic slashies!!

Vosh

Job security for who? Anyone?

Options:

1. Pay the bluddy tax/toll to use the road

2. Use transit

3. Work from home

4. Move to Cuba

If people don't like this guess what people should do? Not put the black box in the car when the government tells us to.

Oh, but they'll penalize you for it! So what? If no one does it, they can't penalize everyone. Civil disobediance would do us some good in this situation, for this is some mighty bullshiat.

All I know is that if PA would ever institute such a tax, they better make damn sure that the roads are in tip-top shape more than 20% of the time.

Or else I'll... I'll... uh. Oh, actually, I don't really use my beater of a car much anyway. Nevermind.

Picolo I use a combination of #2 and #3 currently.

Dan of 76

Yeah, but Roads don't build themselves, nor do they self-heal!

So who's gonna pay for the roads? You'll save a few bucks on 'taxes/fees', but you'll have to drive your suv in the rough!

The UK is going to introduce the same per-mile road tax system. You thought that photo-radar was a nasty way to collect more tax...

1. Big Brother knows where you are;
2. Big Brother knows where you're going and where you've been;
3. Big Brother knows how fast you're driving;
AND:
4. Big Brother is keeping the gas tax too to pay for all the extra technology this requires.

Options:

1. Pay the bluddy tax/toll to use the road

2. Use transit

3. Work from home

4. Move to Cuba

5. Invoke the forth amendment.

6. Who is John Galt?

Great Janitor
Honestly, I don't think it would pass. The privacy issue alone would be what kills this. I think it's more of a media enduced scare story.

All they need to do is hype it as a scare story, convince everyone it's for their safety in some crazy way, and it'll pass. More likely they'll find a will-pass bill, tack this on as a rider at the last minute and it will go unnoticed.

/Riders should be illegal >_<

There is an intersection in my city that has some potholes in it.

The city street department is in charge of repairing it.

They have been working on that single intersection for 29 months now.
Every weekday you see four or five people standing around, leaning on brooms.
Every weekend you see at least a dozen people.. standing around, leaning on brooms.
Every holiday it looks like a podunk family reunion at the intersection.. leaning on brooms.

Over 2 years worth of pay, overtime, double-overtime and triple-overtime being paid out to dozens of people.. to lean on brooms.

Yeah.. tax dollars well spent there.

I'm just glad that it's a hippy government screwing over the other hippies. So, for once, people can't really blame Bush.

I do sometimes wonder what the road workers are doing all day, wheisenberg, and I'm a civil engineering specializing in transportation for crying out loud... At UGA there was one street under construction the day I arrived, still had the same lane closed down when I left a year later, and nothing changed. Same thing at GA Tech, the same 2 streets have been restricted since I arrived and nothing ever changes. Makes you wonder, sometimes

To bad the cat's outta the bag.
(should never have made the speed limit 65. 60 would be wiser to save fuel).

How about just penalizing the speeders! Wasting fuel! Hit them with a $1000 fine! Jack their insurance up to $3000/yr.

I told you NJ farkers that April is reckoning month! Thanks to Whitman for not putting anything into the pension funds! And misallocating the highway funds to other "needs". Muhahahahah!
Blame Corzine all ya want, but Whitman, the Prune-etti schmo and that fairy, McGreevy and toilet paper-challeneged Florio started it all.

/Hybrids are not the solution.
//Eliminate Soccermoms with SUVs.
///All pickup trucks need to be diesel/electrics
////tax vices (like the Shopping Channel, sports-fan items, cigarettes and caffeinated sports drinks, and fat and sucralose.
...come on...you can doit! (dora voice)

Melchior Why don't they just implant a computer tracking chip in every single one of us at birth and be done with it already?

I guarantee they're working on it. And no doubt making some fine progress I might add.

deadpo3t:

So am I going to be getting speeding tickets in the mail when I exceed the posted limits?
A friend weas driving from San Diego to China Lake in a car rented from Enterprise. He got a call on his cell phone from them worndering why there car was heading out of town at over 120 miles and hour.
Oh and in case anyone is wondering Enterprise keeps the transmitter in the rear view mirror.



There's gotta be an easy way to hack these devices, as well as the one the federal government wants to put in our cars as well. Give the boys down at Wired magazine a few weeks, and they'll come up with a cheap and easy bypass. Some sort of transmitter that blocks or spoofs the signal. Fark the gub-mint. Whenever they try to come up with this type of things, teh l33t h4x0rs come up with a remedy.

stiletto_the_wise:

In my almost thirty years of life, I'm absolutely sure of only one thing: THE MAN will always find a way to stick it to you. That's THE MAN's job: To take money away from you. Look at anyone who takes money from you without you having a choice in the matter. That guy is THE MAN. The government? THE MAN. Your insurance company? THE MAN. Telephone company? THE MAN also. If you try to "stick it" back to THE MAN you'll find yourself in jail.

THE MAN is everywhere, and every day he's making sure he's more and more a part of your life.



Well said. I too dislike anyone who takes money from me under the threat of violence.

Xai: the tax should be proportional to the mass of the vehicle raised to the power of 1.25 (e.g. 3^1.25) - i.e. it's damaging effect on the road surface (a 40-ton truck will do approx 100 times more damage to a road surface than a 1 ton car. BTW this is a fact)

This would be fair and that means a SUV driver would pay aproximately 4 times the tax as a hybrid driver would.



Yarrr, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress.

Vosh:

This will never pass because people will percieve it (wrongly or rightly) as an imposition on their ability to go on road trips, to enjoy tooling around in their personal, 6 ton, land cruisers.

There is one way it could become law, and that is if you could get job security with it - and since I can't think of a way they could attach job security with this, it doesn't seem likely. Can you think of a way?



They'd do it the same way they started the whole drug testing frenzy: it starts with government workers. They'll start putting them in all government cars (just like they started testing government employees for drugs), then corporations will start putting it in all their fleet vehicles (just like corporations followed the governments lead and started drug testing). Sooner or later, people will start to think of being tracked as a normal part of life. Hell, anyone with a cellphone already does accept being tracked.

And that's the point at which having one in your own personal car will become mandatory. Unless there was some sort of national uprising or boycott of sorts the likes that this country hasn't seen in generations.

As somebody else on Fark said: when it comes to predicting the future, I'm a lot more impressed with George Orwell than I am with Nostradomus.