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Comment by philjohn

7 months ago

Except the gas guzzling large trucks seems to be a uniquely north american problem - because of the "work vehicle" loophole.

Plenty of European countries have a work vehicle loophole, though it's not as big as the US one.

Generally it's something along the lines of "a truck or van registered to a business is assumed to be a work vehicle, so pays less tax than a passenger car".

Of course you need to have a business to take advantage of that loophole, but it doesn't need to be a business that actually has any use for the truck- it could be a one-person IT consultancy.

And Australian.

  • You can solve it by adding congestion tax depending on vehicle size and making public transit readily available so people are less likely to take their huge trucks everywhere.

    • You grossly underestimate the average American’s desire to thumb their nose at government regulations, even if it means spending far more money than they should to do so.

      Look at the prices of new trucks, then at the median salary. People should not have car payments that rival a small mortgage, yet they do.