Taxing every mile you drive

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

If the government does stuff like this, then suddenly the glorified Amtrak high-speed train the politicians in my state were proposing looks much more attractive.

But not to me; the closest proposed stop is at least an hour and a half away from me.

As if I needed another reason to never buy a new car. It's above my pay grade to begin with.

[insertNameHere]

Actually, most people don't realize many cars have had these black boxes for years I would really have to ask my dad what is on them because they pull information off them during major accidents/fatalities to get a better idea of what went down.... Fun fact, certain makes and models require a proper connector or you get erronous data. Like the one jackoff who used a Chevy Module on a GM and got a speed of like 137 or some rediculous number that the car physically wasn't capable of maintaining and would have had signifcant damage compared to the 70mph or whatever it was that the accident occured at. Or what about data security, computers get hacked all the fucking time, I really don't like the idea of someone being able to REMOTELY fuck with my car..... Or on-stars stolen vechile assit where they say it will only ever be used IF you report you car stolen and if the police are behind it..... but really, you decide to pull an OJ simpson kill your ex and her lover and go on a high speed chase, what is to stop them from killing you engine especially if the courts order it.

I mean is minority report so far fetched as being our future or like in i robot where the car drives itself???? think about it

[Racket_Man]

Well, your company is free to do as it likes, but if the mileage tax is truly crippling for its drivers, their drivers will quit. Then they will have the choice of paying up or not having any drivers.

you would be surprised what delivery drivers these days tolerate as far as tip-credit, $4 per hour wage, the lower number of runs compared to only a few years ago, under-compensation for the use of their vehicle and increasing job duties for said sub-minimum wage (even though those duties are not allowed under the FLSA as interpreted by the DOL), the myth of the delivery charge (as in it does NOT go to the driver and the companies doing little or NOTHING to dispell that myth), falling tips as the DC goes up so the stores do NOT raise regular menu prices, and the whole security thing (as in being out there on your own with food money a vehicvle, cellphone, etc,).

efforts have been made over the last decade or so with no real success or improvement. there are only a few individual stores nationwide that have been "caught out" on labor law violations as the US government/ Dept of Labor seems NOT to have any interest in the breaking of US labor laws. National/big Unions deem delivery drivers to not be worth it.

and the problem is is that a lot of drivers seem HAPPY about getting it up the brown dirt road with no lube

yeah I am getting to the point of serious job hunting.

[lordlundar]

Actually, most people don't realize many cars have had these black boxes for years I would really have to ask my dad what is on them because they pull information off them during major accidents/fatalities to get a better idea of what went down.... Fun fact, certain makes and models require a proper connector or you get erronous data. Like the one jackoff who used a Chevy Module on a GM and got a speed of like 137 or some rediculous number that the car physically wasn't capable of maintaining and would have had signifcant damage compared to the 70mph or whatever it was that the accident occured at. Or what about data security, computers get hacked all the fucking time, I really don't like the idea of someone being able to REMOTELY fuck with my car..... Or on-stars stolen vechile assit where they say it will only ever be used IF you report you car stolen and if the police are behind it..... but really, you decide to pull an OJ simpson kill your ex and her lover and go on a high speed chase, what is to stop them from killing you engine especially if the courts order it.

I mean is minority report so far fetched as being our future or like in i robot where the car drives itself???? think about it

Wait wait wait... You're trying to tell me that getting accurate readout in an accident instead of guessing or being able to shut down a high speed chase before an innocent bystander gets killed is a BAD thing? Are you seriously that paranoid?

To put simply, I don't like the abuse of such items, bar none and using them to tax mileage is one such abuse. That said, your examples either rely on abuse of the system or the use of them provides a benefit.

[insertNameHere]

Wait wait wait... You're trying to tell me that getting accurate readout in an accident instead of guessing or being able to shut down a high speed chase before an innocent bystander gets killed is a BAD thing? Are you seriously that paranoid?

To put simply, I don't like the abuse of such items, bar none and using them to tax mileage is one such abuse. That said, your examples either rely on abuse of the system or the use of them provides a benefit.

I am saying, if you don't have the proper tools to read the data and you get erronous data that makes a situation look worse than it was. I don't like the whole big brother thing, it just is screwed up, just another erosion of privacy.

Yes, it bothers me To have big brother able to shut my car off because they have the whim to, because that power could easily get abused or lets say, I'm not pulling over because I am driving someone who needs to get to the hospital immediately and my engine gets killed I coast to a stop. And that 5-10min of being stopped explaining the situation bothers me.

Then you have the whole cyber security aspect, everything these days is being hacked. the fucking pentagon gets hacked, sonys whole playstation network gets hacked. HB Gary the security firm gets fucking hacked. So lets say Onstar gets hacked, again in my medical emergency with no cops chasing me, person dies because my car fucking stops and there isn't anything I can do. Can you imagine the hassle in a major city where the freeway is clogged with stopped cars.

How about Iphone recording data of locations the phone has been at and not being able to be deleted, along with uploading meta data into pictures so it is possible to know when and where the photo was taken? You don't find that bothersome?

[Tanasi]

My cars these days have OBDC II ports and one of the pieces of information available is the odometer. A gas pump could be fitted with an OBCD II plug on a long cable, you plug it in before you can start pumping gas. Now granted the hardware and software already exists to change this setting but if you're filling up after having only driven a 100 miles then some red flags ought to be raised. For older cars with ODBC or nothing then a pump that charges the tax per gallon instead of a tax by mile.
For antique and/or classis cars putting a lot of miles on them only serves to devalue and wear them out.
All that being said I think it's a bad idea I already pay one of the highest road taxes in the nation, I'd rather not add to it. I've read that polls of truckers regarding the better roads my state does very well. If that's true I'd hate to drive in the states that are at the bottom.

[HYHYBT]

I have no idea where Georgia falls on a road quality list, but I think they're pretty good here. Of course, we don't have much snow, with the accompanying scraping, or even that many freeze/thaw cycles per year. And that also means they can do road work pretty much all year around, rather than trying to get it all done at once.

(And we're paying for it, with 100° temps this week and it's barely even June!)

More on topic... the hacking is an interesting point. I'm not really worried that the police would abuse the shutdown system, at least not on anything close enough to a regular basis that it would outweigh benefits. But a terrorist group or hostile government or other such entity could, if they got into the system, perhaps shut down *everybody's* car at once, and think what a mess that would make!

[Tanasi]

Seems like I remember a disgruntled employee of a GM dealer hacked several customers cars via the OnStar system. He shut down the cars and the dealership had to fix them or have them fixed.
I don't think it's a matter of if but when the system would be hacked for whatever reason.

[wolfie]

My cars these days have OBDC II ports and one of the pieces of information available is the odometer. A gas pump could be fitted with an OBCD II plug on a long cable, you plug it in before you can start pumping gas. Now granted the hardware and software already exists to change this setting but if you're filling up after having only driven a 100 miles then some red flags ought to be raised.

Let's see - filling up jerrycans for your lawnmower, snowmobile/jetski/ATV/motorboat, light aircraft with mogas STC, whatever, is something that should raise a red flag? Since provision would need to be made for older vehicles without this type of diagnostic port, what's going to keep someone from just not plugging it in? What about liability issues - unauthorized (by car manufacturer) devices hooked up to the diagnostic port could cause damage and void the warranty - who pays when (not if) someone's car is damaged by the gas pump?

Who's to say that the cable is plugged into the car's port, rather than a "fake" one? I'd be tempted to set up n OBCD II simulator on a laptop, and have it give impossible data (tax department says that I drove 50,000 miles in the past week and wants me to pay for it? Obviously their computer is screwed up - that would require driving nonstop at almost 300 MPH). Or maybe someone planning a drive-off (with covered/removed plates) decides to have a bit of extra fun by setting up a fake port connected to an inverter, feeding 120 VAC into the snoop connector).

[Tanasi]

Let's see - filling up jerrycans for your lawnmower, snowmobile/jetski/ATV/motorboat, light aircraft with mogas STC, whatever, is something that should raise a red flag? Since provision would need to be made for older vehicles without this type of diagnostic port, what's going to keep someone from just not plugging it in? What about liability issues - unauthorized (by car manufacturer) devices hooked up to the diagnostic port could cause damage and void the warranty - who pays when (not if) someone's car is damaged by the gas pump?

Who's to say that the cable is plugged into the car's port, rather than a "fake" one? I'd be tempted to set up n OBCD II simulator on a laptop, and have it give impossible data (tax department says that I drove 50,000 miles in the past week and wants me to pay for it? Obviously their computer is screwed up - that would require driving nonstop at almost 300 MPH). Or maybe someone planning a drive-off (with covered/removed plates) decides to have a bit of extra fun by setting up a fake port connected to an inverter, feeding 120 VAC into the snoop connector).

First of all the last sentance of that paragraph that you left out said "For older cars with ODBC or nothing then a pump that charges the tax per gallon instead of a tax by mile." That could also apply to other gas using machines.
I'm not saying that my suggest is "the" solution but "a" solution as the technology already exists.
Regardless of what becomes of this there's always going to be someone(s) that will try to beat the system, some will succeed most won't (a through tazering to the genitles for the won't.)
Personally I'd rather stay with the per gallon tax.