Posted on 06/05/2024 10:51:19 AM PDT by Red Badger
Bicyclists OWN the roads.
I would think a one-time $10 tax at NEW purchase would be sufficient to compensate for any infrastructure wear from a bicycle..................
It’s good enough for traffic following in gridlock hands free it follows the car in front of you at 5 feet to 10 feet distances. When they stop you stop when they go you go like a duckling following momma. It also steers as well even curves following that car. On the motorway it does the same thing but at 80mph it.follows the car in front at 40 feet or so you can set the following distances when that slow down you slow and if they speed up you speed up to what ever top speed you set. If you are the first car and its a interstate that the Tesla recognises it will let you go hands free in the lead spot. If you haven’t spoofed the mandatory hands on every few minutes it will require you to wiggle the wheel every so often and to keep your eyes on the road. Mirrors glasses stops that annoyance and there are ways I won’t say on an open forum how to spoof the hands on every few minutes but if you know you know . I have gone hands free for over an hour on ih20 in both directions out of Big D. Once from the onramp for bucees at Camden Texas all the way to the exit 19 in Shreveport LA 100% hands and feet off the car. So technically not door to door L5 but way better than top end 2024 Toyota’s drive assist which only radar follows down to 20 mph, doesn’t brake hold nor autoresume , doesn’t steer nor follow the lead car.
If it uses the same roads motor vehicles require licensing to use,
a bicycle should be required to be licensed to use the same roads.
Autos are taxed at the pump to support roads - not just damage, but replacing roads as they end their useful life, repairing damage to roads from weather, signage, lights, etc.
Bicyclists contribute nothing to that.
They freeload.
Most bicyclists around here use the sidewalks.
They aren’t supposed to, but the cops don’t say anything..................
In Texas you don’t need a licence to ride a bike on the road but you can get a DUI for being above 0.08BAC on a bike and lose your licence for a year or more. Same for anything motorized electrics like a kids stand up escooter or a riding lawn mower. It used to be it had to be 50cc or more than 3hp to be a motor vehicle and therefor driving under the influence but the Republicans wanted more revenue which at 0.08BAC is nothing but a revenue stream for the state, county and their insurance lobbies who fund their campaigns. Crazy that a kids toy after three beers can cost you $10000 and 250 a month for an SR22 again this is Republicans who passed that crap.
Even stranger, in some states you can get a DUI when riding a horse.
I wish they would here… or at least obey traffic laws.
Around here the cops consider the sidewalk more safe than riding in the streets.
We have bike lanes, but I never see anybody using them. Always on the sidewalks. We had a terrible accident a couple years back when a drunk plowed into a group of bicycle riders in the bike lane and killed one and hurt several others........
Agreed. Alabama's flat EV annual tax of $200 was part of my math on list of pro's and con's with whether we should get an EV and do most of our driving in it. I'm not complaining at all about it -- us EV owners should also pay our share of road upkeep.
I'm just saying it is what it is, along with the increase in my monthly car insurance premium to cover a more expensive car, and more tire replacements to account for the fact that my EV weighs about 10% more than the ICE car it replaced, and increase in my power bill (especially if I didn't have solar), but no gas, no oil changes, less brake work because of regen braking.
By my judgement, with the past year's worth of power rates and gas costs in Alabama (and the aforementioned items like the EV annual fee), I'd say about 12K or 13K miles per year of home charged miles is the threshold for if a married couple ought to consider one of their next cars being an EV. That's just from a costs vs. savings perspective, not other things like zippy acceleration and the convenience of charging at home, etc.
As I've posted before, for me the main thing about having an EV is that I can provide most of my power homemade from solar so that our transportation is a bit more self-reliant. But I wasn't willing to do that unless it also was feasible enough to recoup the costs. (For us with solar that comes out to about 8K miles per year of local home charged driving, of which we do about twice that.)
The data is a bit old, but there were only 800 EVs and 600 plugin hybrids registrations in Wyoming for 2022. The road tax might pay for repaving an on ramp after 20 years,
“Now, do bicyclists using roads.”
AMEN to that. The idiot Californicators up here in Idaho LOVE taking street parking and space on the shoulder for bike lanes. NO ONE rides a bike, unless they have DUIs and aren’t allowed to drive. AND, even if there were a bunch of bicyclists you can only ride outside 5 months of the year.
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