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Sorry to inject facts into your soap box, but here is the US Government Department of Transportation manual:

Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices

The definition of what a yellow light means is in section 4D.04, and the federal rules for yellow lights is in section 4D.26.

For the definition of yellow: Vehicular traffic facing a steady CIRCULAR YELLOW signal indication is thereby warned that the related green movement or the related flashing arrow movement is being terminated or that a steady red signal indication will be displayed immediately thereafter when vehicular traffic shall not enter the intersection.

For the minimum and maximum timings: A yellow change interval should have a minimum duration of 3 seconds and a maximum duration of 6 seconds. The longer intervals should be reserved for use on approaches with higher speeds.

Yes this.

Standards were fixed? Irrelevant! They don't matter,the fuel economy of real vehicles in that time frame do. And reality shows the fuel economy of vehicles in the last 30+ years rising year after year:

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/si...

The only thing "fixed" in that link is the fuel economy of *imports*

The new standards are merely the auto industry road map, made by engineers and codified by Congress.

Automated driving systems DO NOT need to be foolproof.

True but they do require reliable oversight and/or fail safe systems if they are not including most a well trained, alert and competent driver. The less competent the driver(s) the more competent the automated system needs to be.

Near 100% of highway accidents are the result of humans. The amount due to equipment failure is so small as to be statistically insignificant

Not true. While you are correct that the vast majority are a result of human error, the NTHSA has done studies which show that equipment failure does account for a statistically important percentage of accidents. Blown tires, failed brakes, failed steering, deficient equipment etc. See page 26 of the linked study.

From the Federal Highway Administration:

The main goals of vegetation control include: [...] Removing trees close to the roadway which could result in a severe crash if hit.

It's hard to get numbers for all commercial drivers, but for those with commercial licenses, it looks like there are a little under five million in the US: http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/Intern...

I would guess that there's probably a similar number of drivers without commercial licenses, as those are mostly needed for larger vehicles. That would give a total of ten million, about one in thirty.

It's also worth noting that there are a bit over thirty thousand fatalities per year in car crashes. Roughly a third (down from a half) of these are precipitated by drunk driving. Presumably those fatalities would disappear entirely if we eliminated manual driving. It's unclear how many of the remaining twenty thousand could be eliminated. Presumably some number of software errors would replace human error.

Unless you count gas-taxes re-appripiated for mass-transit as a 'profit'.

Most of the Interstate is supported by fuel taxes. Fuel taxes are paid for by drivers. Who use the Interstate. So, I'd say that it's a pretty good case of 'user pays'.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/highwaytrustfund/

So far this year, gas taxes paid 22,953,703,750 into the trust fund, but outlays were 29,591,663,901. That is excluding transfers to/from the mass transit fund and excluding bailouts from the general fund. So users paid about 77.6 % of costs of highways.

Amtrak, on the other hand, covered 88% of its operating costs through fares last year.

Sounds like Amtrak is closer to "user pays" than the highways.

You aren't backing your airbag claims. The article I linked has collected information that proved the effectiveness of airbags. Millions of dollars have been spent comparing airbags to no airbags by car companies and airbag manufacturers.

Instead I'll point you to the numbers. This link is a formal evaluation ordered by Washinton DC. I also included a newer report that includes more than just airbags.

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/p...
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/P...

Look at table 1. Seat belt and airbags together are considered 54% effective while seat belts alone are 48%. If you look at the next table you can see how important the airbags are. Belts on their own do very well while airbags alone do nothing. After all they are designed to work together.

Although smaller children see no improvement in effectiveness it doesn't reduce the effectiveness to have air bags.

You aren't backing your airbag claims. The article I linked has collected information that proved the effectiveness of airbags. Millions of dollars have been spent comparing airbags to no airbags by car companies and airbag manufacturers.

Instead I'll point you to the numbers. This link is a formal evaluation ordered by Washinton DC. I also included a newer report that includes more than just airbags.

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/p...
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/P...

Look at table 1. Seat belt and airbags together are considered 54% effective while seat belts alone are 48%. If you look at the next table you can see how important the airbags are. Belts on their own do very well while airbags alone do nothing. After all they are designed to work together.

Although smaller children see no improvement in effectiveness it doesn't reduce the effectiveness to have air bags.

I think that figure was for the ratio of wear between all other vehicles and heavy trucks. Here are some sources for more details:

Road wear from Heavy Vehicles - an overview (PDF warning)
US DOT article
Some guy's blog that shows how that 99% was calculated

The direction US cars have gone is based on things like this 1997 weight study, where the conclusion was that passenger cars would be better with an extra 100 pounds.

So we're not gluttons, we're just pioneers in the field of safety consciousness?

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Lighter cars are typically safer than heavier cars (as is indicated by your link).

I screwed up with that source and deserved the moderation down, but this isn't true either. Heavier cars are safer for the person driving them. The direction US cars have gone is based on things like this 1997 weight study, where the conclusion was that passenger cars would be better with an extra 100 pounds.

However, having a fleet of heavy cars around is more dangerous for the average person, which is what the EU statistics show, and that study points it out too. At the same time as showing cars would be better if heavier, the study also shows making light truckers lighter would be good. The important point in their words, and I'll bold it because it's the most important thing here: "When trucks are reduced in weight and size, they become less crashworthy for their own occupants, but they become less capable of damaging other vehicles."

If everyone has a light car, the average accident isn't as bad as two heavy cars colliding. That's Europe right now. Average car is heavier but you're also in a heavy car, that's the American roads. Worse overall, but it's not as bad if you are in one of the heavy cars! The really bad case is when you're driving a light car and you hit a heavy one. That's what I was describing with the EU car on I-95 example. The end result is a sort of arms race in American car design. Everyone has a a personal incentive to drive something heavier for their own safety, but everyone would be safer if, collectively, we didn't do that.

Another reason the busy American highways are dangerous is all of the trucking used to move things around. My personal distaste for being in a light car here in the US comes from watching a few car -> tractor-trailer accidents back when I used to drive quite a lot here. Whenever I'm in something like a London taxi, worrying about a collision with a truck in that tiny vehicle makes me crazy. I have to remind myself that the road isn't filled with those big trucks though, and overall that's an improvement.

So everyone should start carrying external spare batteries.

I've seen a 22400 mAh portable Li-ion battery for less than $50. Imagine a whole plane full of those. And no, consumer grade Li-ion batteries never explode.

Up to two spare Li-ion batteries up to 300 Wh ("large batteries") are allowed in the carry-on baggage. So external USB chargers/accumulators up to 60 mAh should be OK.

The number of users of parking spaces will be many times the number of spaces. Each space will be used multiple times a day.

You can add "at any given time" to that to make the statement an accurate model. And assuming you're able to change pricing dynamically (which SF is), it's the correct model to be using. If you can't change pricing dynamically, you're in a bit of a pickle because the price at the beginning of the workday will obviously be totally wrong at, say 10:30pm.

If you force ten percent of those users to go elsewhere because the price is too high, you've lost ten percent of your users.

When you say "lost ten percent of your users", do you mean that if we randomly sample the number of spaces occupied, we'll find 10% of them empty? What's the "correct" number of occupied spaces, given the fact that having drivers driving around without access to empty spaces comes with a cost?

If you make the price high enough on an hour meter, you will increase the number of people who will not simply drive away from time left on the meter. They've paid for an hour, they might as well use it. That reduces the number of users as well.

This, I think is where your model breaks. You've just described a market in which raising the price increases the amount of the resource a consumer is willing to consume. Those markets exist, but they're extremely rare exceptions, and I don't think street parking is one of them. The real model goes more like this:

1) As you say, people who have time left on the meter might be marginally more likely to use it instead of leave early. That has a minor negative effect on turnover.
2) People will put much less time on the meter to begin with because spending time parked in an expensive space costs money. They'll plan to get in and out, minimizing their exposure to meter costs. This has a significant positive effect on turnover.

The net effect should be that (2) dominates (1). Increasing the price should increase turnover significantly. That's what reserach shows, and it's what basic economics predicts.

And, of course, you will lose completely those who would have tried coming downtown to shop if the cost of parking had not become too high to justify it.

By going the other direction, you lose customers who would be willing to pay to park but who don't venture into the area because, "parking is a nightmare." There's no free lunch there. Creating a situation in which a resource is used to its maximum and is rationed by a mixture of luck and waiting in line deters people who aren't willing to drive around in gridlocked streets for an hour looking for a space just as much as a few extra bucks at the meter deters people who don't want to pay a few bucks.

Can you show me where I said it did? Your straw man is very flimsy.

I was mistaken. Most people erroneously think that the number of parking space user-hours isn't limited by the number of parking spaces and that they can somehow get more user-hours out of a space by making the space free. Your error was in thinking that lower prices increase parking space turnover. That's also wrong.

You're right, that isn't the problem here. The problem here is inflating the prices and driving people away, not trying to attract more. And the original problem is increasing the price by running a private auction for a public resource.

The very existence of that auction is due to the fact that SF is underpricing its parking spaces. With their advanced meters, they could very easily just let the price float to market rates. That would have a few effects:

1) The excess revenue earned by the auctioneers would go to the city.
2) Parking would be maintained at optimal density and turnover.
3) This app would go away completely and we could all sleep soundly knowing that nobody had an incentive to ransom spaces, and SF wouldn't have to spend a penny on policing the issue.

A bus is a lot bigger than a car, with a lot less margin for error. I have a city bus that's converted to be a RV. All that extra space beside a car becomes pretty much non-existent. According to the FHWA, lanes are 9 to 12 feet wide. My bus is 8.5 feet wide, so on a narrow road, that gives me 3 inches on either side on a local road, along the 40 foot length of it.

The last drive I took it for a drive, I cruised down a 6 lane "local" road, with 9' lanes. It was like threading a needle with giant steel elephant, and people get stupid around large vehicles. Sure, it can stop on a dime, as long as that dime is the size of a Buick.

Bus passengers tend to be more annoying too. They tend to argue, just because they can.

The "don't talk to the driver" rule is mostly there so the driver can say "Go away, I'm driving." I've had plenty of bus drivers that like some idle conversation. I'm not asking how to get to some obscure place, or demand that they take the bus off-route to drop them off, so they like talking to me. :)

but then people got used to it and the benefits of the third brake light went away.

You've extended that into a myth. The benefit did decline, but not to zero. This says it peaked at 8.5% and long term is 4.3%. There are pretty wide margins on those numbers, but third break lights are still effective.

Anyone who's paying half attention to the roads can see the problems that cellphones are causing. Maybe if you put your phone down and joined the safe drivers, you'd notice too.

Fast forward to today and the HTF resources are being funneled into Transit systems, ferry boats, bike paths, and nature trails. All worthy causes but the money should not come out of the HTF. That's why it is underfunded.

According to the Federal Highway Administration $820M is allocated to the Transport Alternatives Program (bike paths and nature trails) out of the HTF for FY2014 (~2%) and $67M is allocated for ferries and ferry facilities. The HTF received a $10.4B allocation from the general treasury fund in FY2014 (~25%).

The HTF would be $9B in the hole even without the $900M spent on ferries, bike paths and nature trails.

Fast forward to today and the HTF resources are being funneled into Transit systems, ferry boats, bike paths, and nature trails. All worthy causes but the money should not come out of the HTF. That's why it is underfunded.

According to the Federal Highway Administration $820M is allocated to the Transport Alternatives Program (bike paths and nature trails) out of the HTF for FY2014 (~2%) and $67M is allocated for ferries and ferry facilities. The HTF received a $10.4B allocation from the general treasury fund in FY2014 (~25%).

The HTF would be $9B in the hole even without the $900M spent on ferries, bike paths and nature trails.

Fast forward to today and the HTF resources are being funneled into Transit systems, ferry boats, bike paths, and nature trails. All worthy causes but the money should not come out of the HTF. That's why it is underfunded.

According to the Federal Highway Administration $820M is allocated to the Transport Alternatives Program (bike paths and nature trails) out of the HTF for FY2014 (~2%) and $67M is allocated for ferries and ferry facilities. The HTF received a $10.4B allocation from the general treasury fund in FY2014 (~25%).

The HTF would be $9B in the hole even without the $900M spent on ferries, bike paths and nature trails.

And you'd be wrong.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/motor...

The revenue from the collected Federal fuel taxes are deposited into the Highway Trust Fund, which has several accounts. Though the percentages vary depending on the fuel type, the majority (approximately 83 to 87%) is deposited into the Highway Account, to be used on road construction and maintenance. An additional amount (approximately 11 to 15%) goes to the Mass Transit Account, and for many fuels, 0.1 cents per gallon goes to the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund.

Highways are net contributors to the fund; transit sucks away 2 dollars for every 1 dollar gained by cars.

If it's anything like it was in 2004, highway/automotive gas taxes are a net income to the Federal Government; transit (especially rail) is the big consumer. The issue isn't the amount of gas taxes collected - the issue is a huge amount of the gas taxes are spent on transit and railroads.

We understood that the Commerce Clause authorized Congress to construct interstate highways. The web is the interstate highway of the 21st century and the Commerce Clause authorizes Congress to invest in a functioning web for all U.S citizens just as much as it did for highways. The FCC doesn't have a vote.

It is of the most fundamental importance that the United States should think in big pieces, should think together, should think ultimately as a whole.

Read the recall link I posted. The car is sitting in my driveway on a jack stand. This just happened two weeks ago. I have no desire to sue. I would accept the car being fixed by Hyundai but that seems it is not going to happen. Based on some searches, some people got the actual control arm fixed for "free" but not the axle that pulled out, not the tie rod that busted off and not the fender that was damaged or the washer fluid bottle that sits in the fender that was smashed from the tire and who knows what else as the bottom of the car hit the pavement. I am constantly getting the run around from different dealers and Hyundai US customer service on the phone. It's hard for a company to admit there is a problem because of the potential lawsuits. My "actual damages" are minimal (about $1000 to repair) and the price for a tow 100 feet to my house. It's just not worth it to me to sue. If my daughter were on the highway and was seriously hurt? You but your ass I'd be filing a lawsuit. She was driving out of our cul-de-sac at 15 mph when it broke. What is MORE important to me now is that people with these cars should be notified of the potential problem and they expand the recall to more areas or all areas. I have filed a safety indecent with the NHTSA at https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/...

At least my indecent will be on file for reference.

GM is not the only one doing this. I just had a lower control arm fail on a 2003 Hyundai Elantra and the drivers side passenger tire and suspension went with it leaving the car dragging to a stop. Luckily we were only going about 15 MPH when it happened. Google searches show people have died from this. Turns out there was a safety recall for this but only if you lived in certain states.
http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/c...

Hyundai and the NHTSA determined that if your car was registered in certain states that put a relative high amount of salt on the roads in the winter, you were at risk and your car was recalled. I live in VA and we were not on the list for the recall. Northern VA most certainly does get snow and most certainly puts salt down. DC, MD, WV all were on the list. I work in DC and take many trips to PA. My failure was exactly as described in the recall. Luckily no one was hurt in my case but I think the NHTSA and Hyundai were negligent in not at least informing everyone regardless of where you lived. My ball joints and tie rods are still perfect on the car, no design should have the control arm physically failing before those parts do. What studies and justification did they use to determine which places on the map where the car is registered were at risk and which ones were not? No accounting for where you actually travel, where your car goes in the winter and how often. Their criteria it determining risk is FLAWED. I should have at least got a letter in the mail and I would have done due diligence and checked it myself or paid someone to look at it above and beyond the annual state inspections. It rusts from the inside out and is not visible or obvious during a normal inspection. More people are going to die from this defect. Hyundai knows about it and the NHTSA knows about it.

So you followed through and filed suit, correct?
Or did you just make up a story for the internet?

GM is not the only one doing this. I just had a lower control arm fail on a 2003 Hyundai Elantra and the drivers side passenger tire and suspension went with it leaving the car dragging to a stop. Luckily we were only going about 15 MPH when it happened. Google searches show people have died from this. Turns out there was a safety recall for this but only if you lived in certain states.
http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/c...

Hyundai and the NHTSA determined that if your car was registered in certain states that put a relative high amount of salt on the roads in the winter, you were at risk and your car was recalled. I live in VA and we were not on the list for the recall. Northern VA most certainly does get snow and most certainly puts salt down. DC, MD, WV all were on the list. I work in DC and take many trips to PA. My failure was exactly as described in the recall. Luckily no one was hurt in my case but I think the NHTSA and Hyundai were negligent in not at least informing everyone regardless of where you lived. My ball joints and tie rods are still perfect on the car, no design should have the control arm physically failing before those parts do. What studies and justification did they use to determine which places on the map where the car is registered were at risk and which ones were not? No accounting for where you actually travel, where your car goes in the winter and how often. Their criteria it determining risk is FLAWED. I should have at least got a letter in the mail and I would have done due diligence and checked it myself or paid someone to look at it above and beyond the annual state inspections. It rusts from the inside out and is not visible or obvious during a normal inspection. More people are going to die from this defect. Hyundai knows about it and the NHTSA knows about it.

Flashing red signal indications shall have the following meanings: 1. Vehicular traffic, on an approach to an intersection, facing a flashing CIRCULAR RED signal indication shall stop ... The right to proceed shall be subject to the rules applicable after making a stop at a STOP sign...

As a quick check, both CA and FL laws reflect that usage, as is to be expected.

Here is the link to the safety order at the DOT PHMSA website http://www.fra.dot.gov/eLib/Details/L05223.

Never inspecting things is not allowed actually... http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/co...

Spill detection is present on every pipeline, it's just a matter of how sensitive it is. It is in a pipeline's best interest to keep product in the pipe as a leak is lost product even if you didn't have to worry about disasters and cleanup.

Airplanes have the same problem as pipelines. A lot of them were made a long time ago, and people have been trying to string them along past their design lifespans. New pipelines are far safer than old pipelines. Trying to block construction or replacement of pipelines is counter to making pipeline disasters less likely.

I just hope you call before you dig... The biggest single cause of pipeline releases is 3rd party excavation damage:
http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/co...

It hasn't worked..

This is complete bullshit. Driving has been getting safer for 40 years and the trend is even longer and more obvious if you report fatalities per mile driven.

People still drive drunk

Drunk driving is down, even if you use the inflated "alcohol related" numbers.

"Twenty-three percent of road crashes—nearly 1,312,000—are weather-related. On average, 6,250 people are killed and over 480,000 people are injured in weather-related crashes each year." - www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/weather.

http://wwwcf.fhwa.dot.gov/exit... http://wwwcf.fhwa.dot.gov/exit... http://www.polytrauma.va.gov/d... http://www.wdtb.noaa.gov/scrip... http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.e... http://www.nestlegoodfoodgoodl... http://www.gd.gov.cn/jump.htm?... http://sasisa.ru/go_title.php?... http://4ygeca.com/index.php?na... http://www.stereohead.ru/?name... http://www.transtats.bts.gov/e... http://www.roc.noaa.gov/script...

http://wwwcf.fhwa.dot.gov/exit... http://wwwcf.fhwa.dot.gov/exit... http://www.polytrauma.va.gov/d... http://www.wdtb.noaa.gov/scrip... http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.e... http://www.nestlegoodfoodgoodl... http://www.gd.gov.cn/jump.htm?... http://sasisa.ru/go_title.php?... http://4ygeca.com/index.php?na... http://www.stereohead.ru/?name... http://www.transtats.bts.gov/e... http://www.roc.noaa.gov/script...

I used to work at a public safety/traffic research center and knew people who did studies on RLCs that basically said they do nothing good and tend to cause quite a bit of economic damage.

This is wrong.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/public...

Serious injuries reduced after the introduction of red light cameras. Even though the number of rear end crashes increased, the total number of injuries decreased because rear end crashes aren't as dangerous to occupants are right angle crashes.

Besides that, an increase in rear end crashes only demonstrates a problem with drivers, not the cameras. If drivers are rear-ending other cars at the lights they are not:
1. maintaining a safe distance (sufficient distance to stop without impacting the vehicle in front).
2. aware of their surroundings.
3. watching traffic ahead of them (I.E. they're only watching the car in front of them).

These are significant problems with driver habits, not road design. They wont get fixed by removing red light cameras, they can only be fixed by proper driver training and law enforcement. Removing red light cameras will only see the number of right angle crashes increase again.

Also a rear end crash blocks one lane, a right angle blocks several lanes in both directions. if you don't see how this alone is more costly, you are not smart enough to talk about economic damage.

If you really want to improve fuel economy, drive a motorcycle. You'll get FAR better gas mileage than any car you can buy and you won't have to drive slower than my grandmother while doing it.

This is a provably false statement. The average MPG of motorcycles is actually worse than passenger vehicles. Then you have to consider the additional risks of riding a motorcycle, and it's a no brainer - just buy a slightly more efficient car since those are averages for cars, so half will be more efficient.

So what you're saying is, roughly 3.23% of worldwide traffic fatalities happen in the US, and that somehow implies that it's typical to see serious injuries in major car crashes despite improvements in vehicle safety over the last half-century? How about some recent data for the US (PDF): nope, some basic math shows that 0.55% of police-reported crashes in 2012 were fatal (30,800 fatal crashes / 5,615,000 reported). Even as a percentage of only those crashes where someone was injured (2,362,000), that's still only 1.3%. Sounds pretty damn infrequent to me.

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/P...

An NHSTA sponsored study says at any given moment during the day, 5% of Americans are driving while using a cell phone.. The study has some caveats - it relied on phone surveys, visual road-side observations, and only goes up to 2011, so may be significantly under-reporting cell phone usage. I estimate that number is closer to 10% based on casual observation while driving. So in a two -car accident that gives a 10% chance of a cell phone used in one of the cars. If the real cell-phone usage number is closer to 15%, then the 26% number is meaningless as it's typical of the overall population regardless of cell phone use.

When I see a stupid driving move, the person is invariably holding a cell phone to their face, talking and gesticulating wildly while they're the only person in the vehicle (hands-free), looking down at something (texting or dialing), or it's a woman putting on makeup while driving.

Actually it could be both....in complex situations like the accident rate variables rarely change in isolation. Look at some of the official stats on accident and age and what you will find is that by far the biggest drops in fatalities are in the very young and very old age groups(in fact the rate of fatalities is actually increasing in the groups most likely to be using cell phones and driving....) This is probably due to increasingly stringent laws regarding teen and elderly drivers. Even Florida recently passed a law that requires the elderly to come in for an eye exam every year when they renew their license, before that they could renew by mail. Not saying cell phones are necessarily a cause in accidents, but your reasoning doesn't really hold.

As cell phone use has increased, vehicle-related fatalities have gone down both in raw numbers and more importantly in per miles driven. Driving is *safer* than ever, not more dangerous. Those are facts supported by data from NHTSA. http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/...

You can not say that it is "certainly not because people now use cell phones." The data could be interpreted to support the opposite conclusion but is in fact inconclusive.

Remember red-light cameras? One of the arguments is that they are good because even though there are more rear-end collisions at intersections with cameras, there are fewer side-impact collisions. This is acceptable because side-impact collisions are more dangerous. So total accidents is up, fatalities down. And that is a good thing when discussing life safety issues. Money is replaceable, people are not.

If cell phone use causes more actual accidents--remember we don't know, only that it increases the odds--but results in fewer fatalities then it would be *against* public policy to prohibit their use while driving.

Anything in a head line is being used by someone to advance their agenda, usually for power or profit. That's about the only reliably truth there is or ever was.

At the end of the day the public education campaign should be about how dangerous driving is no matter who you are, what you are doing, what type of vehicle you are in, etc. It's about convenience versus security and personal accountability. A little understanding of how to critically evaluate data and statistics would do a world of good. I'm always dumbfounded by how many people confidently drive as if two stripes of yellow paint will actually stop an opposing vehicle....

We already tax a small bit of the wealth flowing through the country to fix roads and bridges. They're called "gasoline taxes" and "road use taxes".

And neither gasoline taxes nor road use taxes are sufficient to pay for the roads.

Per the Federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics, roads and cars more than pay their fair share; in fact, the taxes raised not only cover roads but also airplane and train passenger costs (the former being lightly subsidized per passenger mile; the latter being heavily subsidized per passenger mile).

Cars and trucks more than pay their way; it's just that tax dollars are fungible and the various Governments know people will NOT stop driving, so that's a fixed tax base that can be increasingly levied against - and the extra funds can be spent in other places where there can be more political gain as compared to economic gain.

Also the subsidies for an ICE (oil and refinery subsidies) vehicle are built into the subsidized fuel price. So the $7,500 electric vehicle subsidy should be included as part of the price as well for an Apples to Apples vehicle cost comparison.

Exactly.

Most of those so called "subsidies" are provided in the form of facilities. Roads.

Take what ever you prefer to think of as a subsidy, and compare it to the cost of roads. The cost to build roads exceeds all other supposed "subsidies" you can marshal.

So since Electric Cars pay no gas tax, you can make the case that tax break they get is exactly backward, and it should perhaps be a $1430 tax bill instead.

The US fleet average for cars 35.6 MPG. (Note: that seems unrealistically optimistic).
The average US gas tax is 49.72 cents per gallon.

Its easy to get 100,000 miles out of current production cars.
So the average car will consume an optimistic 2,857 gallons of fuel over 100k miles, and pay gas taxes of around $1430 to the road maintenance fund.

A more realistic estimate of MPG is probably closer to 20, which would show the ICE vehicle contributing $2,270 to road maintenance over the same 100k miles.

Since there is no reason to expect an EV to damage the roads LESS than an ICE vehicle, they might not be paying their fair share of road maintenance tax. States are already becoming aware of this because gas tax revenues are falling short simply due to better MPG in recent years, and having a whole new class of electric only vehicles is going to impact that shortfall even more.

I think you can expect to see that $7500 tax break disappear over the next few years.

Price difference, I will be ahead of him for 10 years at $4.00 a gallon gas before the Leaf saves him enough money to reduce its TCO to my civic.

Are you bad at math?

A base four-door Civic is $18,300, and costs roughly 10c/mile worth of gas to drive.
A base Leaf is $21,400 after the tax credit, and costs roughly 2c/mile in electricity to drive.

That means you take 38,750 miles before you've both paid $22,175

The average person 20-54 drives 15k/year.
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/...

The average person breaks even in cost of driving half way through YEAR THREE, not ten.

A Versa Note is about $8,000 less than a Leaf after incentives. [If you can actually afford a new car, you can probably take advantage of the tax credit. YMMV.]

The Versa Note costs about 10c/mile to drive in gas.
The Leaf costs about 2c/mile to drive in electricity.

The average 20-54 year old drives about 15k/year.
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/...

The Leaf becomes cheaper than the Versa Note late in year 6.

Here's a table of how much people in the US actually have flown, by year: http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_40.html

The upshot is there was a slight dip in 2001-2002, but then it kept climbing. Until 2008, when it dropped slightly again and stayed dropped. This is easier to explain by price than by TSA.

Meanwhile, in reality, you ignored the following tiny caveats:
* the average price of a 16kW solar PV rig will be around $72480
* 1/10 of that will buy you around 1812 gallons of gas (at $4/gallon)
* a good, fuel-efficient gasoline car with around 50 mpg will drive approximately 90600 miles on that
* at the average of 15000 miles driven per year this will last you around 6 years
* 72 months is easily above the average amount of time that owners hold on to cars (somewhere around 60 months)
Oh and lest we forget, during the day, when your solar rig is producing the most power, is also when you're most like to be out with your car, i.e. not charging it. This effect will be least problematic during the summer (longest day, lowest energy consumption by car), and most problematic during the winter (highest energy consumption by car, and a day most probably too short to get any sunlight on the panels while the car's in the driveway).

in nearly all states, collected gas tax doesn't actually get spent on roads

"[E]ven if [fuel tax] funds were fully devoted to highways, total user fee revenue accounted for only 65 percent of all funds set aside for highways in 2007."

Therefore, if we want the roads to start paying for themselves, we'll need to raise the gas tax, increase other taxes or fees, and/or allow some roads to return to nature so we no longer have to maintain them.

Because air pollution is proportional to the amount of fuel burned, the gas tax is a good way to pay for air pollution, which costs us up to $1,600 per person annually in medical costs, lost days of work, and so on. It's also the least bad way to pay for global warming. Ideally, the gas tax should also vary according to the quality of the vehicle's emissions system, because older cars pollute more per gallon of gasoline than newer cars.

But the gas tax isn't a good way to pay for road wear, which is proportional to the 4th power of the axle weight. For that we'd need a mileage fee that varies according to vehicle type or weight.

And the gas tax also isn't an effective way to manage traffic congestion, which varies by the hour and the location. For that, we would need some kind of congestion pricing such as variable express tolls or a mileage fee coupled with information about when and where you drove (but there are privacy concerns with that option).

So if the goal is for the roads to pay for themselves, then the most efficient and equitable way to achieve this goal in a capitalist society where people pay each according to the benefit they receive and the burden they place on the system, is with not just a gas tax but also some kind of mileage fee and congestion pricing. Then we could lower transportation sales taxes such as Prop K in San Francisco or Measure R in Los Angeles.

Couldn't find figures for Europe or UK quickly, but according to the US DOT, the average fuel economy of a passenger vehicle in the US is 35mpg. (us gallons, btw). Do you have a source for european cars getting under 3 liters per 100km?

It is also worth mentioning, with all this Tesla fire hype: Recalling parts for safety reasons in the automotive industry is the rule not the exception. Almost every model from every car manufacturer has had some parts or systems recalled. Fire is the cause of a significant percentage of recalls. It is hard to get exact numbers as each country has it's own database. I looked at the US one quickly for an example. Selected a random model and year (Aluma 2009), and sure enough there were three recalls for that year alone. The first one i clicked had the text "THIS DEFECT COULD RESULT IN A FIRE.".

Given the percentage of the vehicle fleet that is made of Teslas, this is not really relevant news.

You do realize that 500K miles is a very small sample. From http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/13octtvt/index.cfm, for October 2013, the latest report available, "Travel for the month is estimated to be 258.7 billion vehicle miles." 500K total represents 0.000019% of ONE month's driving in the US.

Oh, you want to know why your HID kit isn't available in the USA? It FAILS DOT SAFETY REGULATIONS BECAUSE OF THE SEVERE AMOUNT OF BLUE LIGHT EMITTED.

You do realize that DOT regulations (not laws, just guidelines which most states adopt in their vehicle code) REQUIRE light to be thrown upwards for overhead street sign illumination. The euro-spec headlights have a much sharper horizontal cutoff which while not passing US DOT standards, throw much less light above horizontal into oncoming drivers eyes.

You are correct that DOT specifies chromatic limits for "white" headlights, but that range is pretty wide. http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/administration/fmcsr/fmcsrruletext.aspx?reg=571.108.

The cheap aftermarket HID retrofit kits that place an HID bulb inthe stock housing are dangerous because they have such a horrible light pattern that throws a lot of dazzling light into oncoming drivers faces. They are illegal in most of Europe. They are also illegal in most of the US states, although I've never actually heard of someone getting a ticket - just failing a safety inspection.