alt Hacker NewsNot literally exponentially, but the damage is proportional to the FOURTH power of the axle load. Imagine how expensive shipping would've become overnight if all these trucks had to pay their fair share and passed the costs to their customers.
Honda Civic weighs 0.7t per axle, or 0.24tttt of wear.
F-150 weighs 0.9t per axle, or 0.65tttt of wear.
A school bus weighs 7.5t per axle, or 3164tttt of wear. That's more than thirteen thousand Honda Civics' worth of road damage. Imagine the driver of the Honda had to pay 1c per mile. The school bus would have to pay $130 per mile. Yes, it's carrying 78 passengers, so the cost would be $1.67 per mile per student, but I think most people would just drive their kids to school.
>Imagine how expensive shipping would've become overnight if all these trucks had to pay their fair share and passed the costs to their customers.
The roads are already being paid for and maintained at their current state. All you'd be doing is making goods slightly more expensive and other taxes slightly less. About 1-4% of your total tax burden goes to the roads. That's a small enough total number to be easily buried among your annual spend on goods.
Like if roads were these huge financial burdens that didn't amortize away to practically nothing.