A War on Killer Cars, User Fees for EV’s, and a Plea for Measure G

Something bad is happening with our society’s first choice for personal transportation, the automobile and its variants. Despite vastly increased safety features in newer vehicles, the number of fatalities is rising.

From 2018 to 2022, the number of deadly accidents in the United States increased by more than 16% — from 36,835 fatal car crashes in 2018 to 42,795 fatal car crashes in 2022. For cyclists, 2022 was the deadliest year on record — ever. 1,105 people riding bicycles were killed by a person operating a motor vehicle on a public road. There were 4,779 pedestrians killed by cars in 2013. In 2022, that number had increased by 52%, to 7,522 dead pedestrians.

Car crashes are the leading cause of death in the United States for people ages 1 to 54. 

(That’s a wide range, and it obscures differences with age groups. For instance, a new report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions shows firearms were the leading cause of death in 2022 for children and teens ages 1 to 17. So I guess if you make it to 18, it’s time to look out for drivers instead of gunmen. )

Controlling for other factors, like distracted, impaired, and higher speed driving, a primary cause of this increased highway lethality is the size of the vehicles we’re driving in the United States.

Over the past 30 years, the average U.S. passenger vehicle has gotten about 4 inches wider, 10 inches longer, 8 inches taller and 1,000 pounds heavier. Many vehicles are more than 40 inches tall at the leading edge of the hood. On some large pickups, the hoods are almost at eye level for many adults.

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) researchers analyzed 17,897 crashes involving a single passenger vehicle and a single pedestrian, examining  the connection between fatality risk and vehicle size and shape. Yup, the bigger the vehicle, the more deaths get caused. 

And those bigger beasties are what consumers are buying. Through August of 2024, SUVs and trucks of all sizes accounted for almost 79% of new vehicles sales in the U.S., according to Motorintelligence.com.

I’m guilty as charged, having made the switch about 8 years ago, trading in our Civic for an HRV, which is supposedly a “compact” SUV. If you’ve ever seen an HRV next to the “full sized” CRV, the differences in size are not that great. And all the manufacturers keep building them bigger each year. Our reasoning for trading up was self-defense; we felt intimidated when driving on the freeways.

SUVs and vans with a hood height greater than 40 inches were about 45% more likely to cause deaths in pedestrian crashes than cars and other vehicles with a hood height of 30 inches or less and a sloping profile.  

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is proposing a new rule setting testing and performance requirements to minimize the risk of pedestrian head injuries. The recommended regulation would cover all passenger vehicles weighing 10,000 pounds or less, but is aimed largely at big SUVs and pickups.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law required NHTSA to set test procedures to simulate head-to-hood impact as well as requirements to reduce the risk of head injuries. Human-like head dummies that simulate children and adults would be used in testing.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that a Second Amendment-type defensive has arisen among personal truck enthusiasts. As in…“you’ll take my Silverado when you can pry it from my cold, dead fingers on the steering wheel…”

The top selling vehicles in the US market are all pickups, and 80% of those owners will trade-in for another truck when the time comes. Furthermore, less than one in four owners of these vehicles regularly use them for hauling stuff/work.

Clearly, there’s work to be done, both for the sake of the environment and safety. A big part of making cars safer should involve making it possible for people to drive less.

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In 2015, the City Council adopted a "Vision Zero" resolution, setting a goal of eliminating all traffic deaths and serious injuries on city streets by 2025. That hasn’t happened, and activist groups like Circulate San Diego and San Diego 350 have continued to pressure the city council each year as budgets are debated. This past June the City Council announced additional earmarked monies to improve safety at the “Fatal 15” intersections known for dangerous conditions.

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Resolving the challenges arising from how we get around is a central issue in addressing climate change. It’s become a culture war issue, driven by those who can’t conceive of the fact that humanity’s great leaps forward have already seriously damaged our planet’s ecosphere, with more to come unless some fundamental changes occur in Western Industrialized countries.

For the Larry Turners and Jim Desmonds of the world, broadening the scope of transportation opinions (along with densification) amounts to a War on Cars. 

In researching this article I found my San Diego Free Press column from a decade ago.

• Papa Doug Manchester’s Mission Valley minions have decided to create an imaginary world to explain away recent court decisions adverse to the planning documents of the county government and the San Diego Association of Governments, or SANDAG.

• Today’s UT-San Diego editorial fantasizes about an alternative universe wherein their “smart growth” principles are opposed by evil environmentalists seeking to impose suffering upon the good people of America’s Finest City by banning automobiles. It closes with a rant about “those who view cars and freeways the same way that most people think about bubonic plague.”

The people freaked out about the possibility of not centering transportation development around an ever expanding universe of personal vehicles really went bonkers when they learned that SANDAG, the regional agency directing infrastructure, had envisioned a “mileage tax” as a source of revenue.

The basis for this idea was that something would have to replace gas tax revenues as more electric vehicles entered our transportation pool. We’re already seeing some benefits from move EVs, as a recent report  about 2022 greenhouse gas emissions shows a 2.4% drop from 2021 to 2022; the equivalent of removing more than 2.2 million gasoline-powered cars off California’s roads for one year. 

“Compared to 2023-24, by 2034-35, gasoline excise tax revenues decrease by $5 billion (64 percent), diesel excise tax revenues decrease by about $290 million (20 percent), and diesel sales tax revenues decrease by about $420 million (32 percent),” the Legislative Analyst’s Office projected last year.

For all the mileage tax chatter in the dens of right wing doomsters, you’d thought they were being asked to give up their assault rifles. Grifter Carl DeMaio immediately started petitions and fundraising about a drawing board item, and smaller city mayors made it a point of pride to denounce the idea.

By the time it came to actually have a conversation about such a possibility, the mileage tax had become so politically charged that nobody was willing to make the arguments about how such a thing might function. The answer was “No,” and don’t even talk about it again.

This heretical proposal is the reason you won’t see the word “SANDAG” in any of the literature connected with County-wide Measure G. The advocacy for G is coming from contractors, unions, and some environmental groups, and the monies raised through a one half of one percent sales tax will ultimately be spent by the agency-we-can-not-name.

The opposition to Measure G is unhappy about the amount of funding dedicated to more transit. In their minds, adding another lane to a highway is a sacred obligation, and riding the bus is for “others.”

• About two-thirds of the dollars raised through this tax would go towards public transit, which doesn’t work for most San Diegans.

And there’s the usual drivel about ‘no new taxes,’ along with the unspoken promise that governments would be forced to defund programs these folks don’t like to build future infrastructure of any kind.

Let’s just call it a ‘road user charge’. Drivers would pay based on the number of miles they drive. People who drive more pay more, and people who don’t drive don’t pay. This road user charge system is more equitable for those who don’t own vehicles than other potential infrastructure payment methods, like a highly regressive sales tax or the state budget’s general fund.

The fact that Measure G could raise monies to be used as matching dollars for joint state and federal funding gets left behind with these folks.

LetsGosd.org is the website for those supporting Measure G.

As for the dreaded “mileage tax”, it’s a user fee. Even an author from the libertarian Reason Foundation agrees that it’s a decent future revenue source:

• Transitioning from gas taxes will take time, and California can learn from other states’ experiences. Oregon has some of the strictest privacy laws, ensuring drivers’ personal data is protected from the government and other actors. Virginia has the most extensive pilot program and the best overall state model thus far.

• Virginia’s Mileage Choice Program is a voluntary program open to drivers with vehicles that average 26 miles per gallon or higher. Electric and hybrid cars that don’t enroll pay the state’s highway use fee, averaging $200 to $300 a year. Fuel-efficient internal combustion engine vehicles not enrolled in the program also pay Virginia’s annual highway use fee. Most of those drivers found it cheaper to pay a road charge than the annual fees, so almost 20,000 people enrolled in the program, five times higher than any other state.

• It’s time for California to be more forward-thinking in its road usage charge program by opening it up to more drivers and moving more quickly to a long-term replacement for gas taxes.