Tax Fat Cars

I think the government should think about putting a tax on extra-wide cars. It might turn the trend away from ever-wider and wider models, which would save an awful lot of bother and expense, and at the same time raise a little revenue to pay for the damage done to our roads. 

Fat cars are as much of a nuisance in a carpark as they are in a narrow lane; for their owners as well as for everyone else. And in a subtle but undeniable way they are somewhat insulting to the 'ordinary' person (who is content with an 'ordinary' sized car). Only by driving with extreme humility can a fat car owner avoid the implication that he or she thinks they are 1½ times as important as their fellow road users. The wives sometimes manage it, by looking helplessly lost in the great space of the interior, while they grip the great wheel and peer over the dashboard, slowing to nothing as they approach another road-user. But the husbands seldom try, preferring to display their road-skills, and panache.

Of course, cars are getting bigger and heavier because they incorporate ever higher safety standards; as is pointed out by Richard Bremner in the August 2019 number of Autocar (https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/features/investigation-why-are-cars-becoming-so-wide). But I am not talking about the merely-wide; rather the too-wide, and the unnecessarily-wide.

Cars that are over 2 metres wide automatically fall in this category. But I think it would be fair to bring the road-fund 'super-tax' in at 1990 mm.

Car                                                    Width (mm)

Landrover Rangerover sport                1990

Audi Q8                                                1995

Landrover Defender (90/110)              1996

Bentley Bentayga                                 2010

Landrover Discovery (mirrors out)      2220

You see, I am thinking of the inconvenience to fellow road users, as well as the damage to our roads. It is bad enough when a wide car meets a normal car. But as the frequency of these giants increases every year, there will come the time when a fat car meets another fat car. Something has to give. Richard Bremner recounts a London traffic jam caused simply by the fact that a Bentley Continental GT and a Range Rover were unable to pass one another in an ordinary street. The resulting jam took 20 minutes to clear. 

If the verges are soft, it is the verges that have to give. Think of the cost to the public purse of repairing or widening the 214,900 miles of minor roads that we have in Britain. If we cannot halt the trend towards wider cars, we can at least start to put money aside to repair the damage.

(See also: https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2012/04/higher-tax-bands.html
https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2016/09/estate-tax-and-limits-to-wealth.html
https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2018/04/government-spending_2.html
https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2012/03/budget-2012.html
https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2012/11/positive-money.html
https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-money-masters-positive-money.html
https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2012/11/positive-money-2.html
https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2014/07/monetarism-1.html
https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2016/10/why-tax-why-not-just-print-money.html
https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2019/07/bank-capitalisation.html
https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2011/10/deficit-spending_11.html)