Taxing drivers by the mile

goodoleboy · Dec 29, 2004

Infowars has this story ive heard first a few weeks ago on the clarkhoward show.
Looks like a few states are trying to implement devices in vehicles that will track how many miles you drive instead of paying by the gallon.. Privacy advocates fear it will lead to tracking similar to the ONSTAR issue with listening in to detect criminal activity.

See story infowars taxing by the miles

Bob_Skurka · Dec 29, 2004

There has been some talk of that around here, but not for the purpose of replacing the gas tax when you buy fuel, as discussed in my county, it is to discourage urban sprawl. Our situation is different than the California proposal you have linked, but the outcome is similar. Force people to drive fewer miles, prevent sprawl, preserve city centers . . . and figure out another way to pick taxpayers pockets.

In my county (Lake County, IN) the northern part of the county is highly urban, the southern part is very rural. The northern communities are seeing wealth leave their towns and moving to the south as people look escape crime, crowds and congestion. There is an association of ministers in the north that basically wants to impose all sorts of taxes, zoning regulations, etc on the south and the population in the south part of the county to prevent further development. I am not a racist, but this is very much becoming an economic battle drawn on racial lines, the issue has surfaced each year for the past 3 years. I believe they are looking to some areas of the Pacific Northwest where urban sprawl was slowed down to maintain some of the cities (possibly Portland OR might be a model?)

getut · Dec 29, 2004

I'm a firm believer that directly or indirectly everything bad originates in the big cities. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

This one is right down my alley of pet peeves heheh. Hopefully fair use laws for your vehicle will apply. In other words, it is your vehicle and you have the right to modify it how you see fit (remove the device).

This discussion is also highly related to the new "black boxes" that some vehicles are receiving. Yup.. very similar to black boxes in airplanes. They record on a loop the last 15 minutes or so of driving statistics... speed, brake usage, direction (some are gps based). There are already reports of vehicles "testifying" against their owners.

Fact for the day: My car will never do that.

Once they are standard equipment, the first thing, I'll ever do is rip it apart and rip the guts out. If it is solidly integrated with the cars computer, which will be highly likely. Then I won't purchase a car until new firmware for the computer appears on the internet.

Flash new firmware into cars computer. Car now report 35 miles per hour with no braking forever and my location as going round and round in circles in my pasture. <font color="green">TeeHee©®™</font> /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

btolle · Dec 29, 2004

I can see several big problems with that scheme.

First one being it defeats efforts to raise gas mileage on vehicles. If a Hummer and a Toyota cost the same per mile why not buy a Hummer and enjoy it?

Secondly, this is a computer based system and it won't take long for the hackers to defeat it. With a little ingenuity you could build a system that would only record 1/10 of a mile for every mile driven. Even a GPS based system could be hacked to give false locations.

They could just raise the gas tax to increase revenue but that would be too simple.

Bill Tolle

getut · Dec 29, 2004

And your examples are problems how? /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Its only a problem for them. Not for the people who would modify the systems given the first available chance. heheheh

Insurance companies should not be entitled to one bit more information than they already get (which is already too much).

8561 · Dec 29, 2004

There are insurance implications as there is a concept that your car insurance would be linked to the actual miles you drive. Currently, you are charged based on your age, vehicle, driving history, distance to work, etc. This would add another rating factor. For some it will cost them more annually, others less, based on the miles driven (which is another way of saying based on the exposure to the company). If I'm not mistaken, at least one major auto carrier has a pilot program set up in one state to determine feasibility.

bgott · Dec 30, 2004

"Fact for the day: My car will never do that."

Here's the real fact of the day: If your car has airbags, it already does that. The airbag control module records a bunch of interesting parameters. I can't tell you what they are because GM, at least, considers them top secret. According to the instructor at the GM airbag training class I attended a few years ago, GM has encoded the information in hex and it's just about impossible to break the code. He said the only parameter they would tell him about was " number of key starts since the last airbag deployed accident." That was just one out of, IIRC,9 or 17 (hey, it's been awhile since I took the course! /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif) parameters the box could record. He told us that GM had started the box out with the ability to record five airbag deployed accidents and then had had to expand the storage capability out to 15 or 20. Some cars go through some serious abuse! /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif The point is, they don't have to add a black box, it's already there. I bet there is a whole stack of stuff happening in your engine control module that nobody but the manufacturer and maybe the government knows about, also.

v8dave · Dec 30, 2004

I live in that crazy state. It isn't about recovering taxes to pay for road maintenance. It's about recovering general revenue taxes. The legislature started raiding the "road" taxes many years ago. Now-a-days, they don't even make any pretense about raiding it for "other" transportation things--busses, transit (trolley) systems, bike paths, whole government "transportation" agencies, waterways maintenance. They just take it because they ran out of revenue in other areas and still didn't have enough funding for some other handy-dandy idea.

The voters keep on slapping lids on the taxes the legislature keeps on trying to increase. So, the government figures out ways to make new taxes. This has been going on since the voters cut off the unlimited property tax revenue increases in the 1970s.

rozett · Dec 30, 2004

That is typical "blue state" antics. Here on the east coast, the pols can't raise the sales tax without voter repercussions, so they whack all the little fees.... like licenses (hunting, fishing, docs, etc.) and fees for snowmobiles, ATVs, real estate sales, etc. Here in Maine, the pols are all scrambling to find a solution to the 'property tax problem' since the voters came close to approving a proposition similar to California's. But they just don't get it!!! It's not a tax problem, it's a spending problem. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif