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California Considers Tracking Your Car
dan_sdot writes "California's budget problem has led the state to consider desperate measures: taxing you based on how much you drive. The only problem is the way they propose to do it. California is now proposing to put GPS devices on all new cars to track how far people drive and tax them accordingly."
I will never understand why we passed Proposition 71 which calls for three billion in bonds over the next few years to fund stem cell reasearch given that our state is broke. Ah well, I dont drive so I guess I dont much care.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Right. Then we'll get a few smart people to develope a means of faking the mileage and paying next to nil. Not only will it not work, but it's not fair. I live in CA and am frankly sick of all the car-related restrictions that we have to abide by!
A blog like any other.
--------
State of California
1 Aahnold St.
Sacramento, CA
Dear Skyshadow,
While we in the state of California appreciate your interest in our state and the contributions you've made while living here the last fours years, it has become increasingly apparent that you're not getting the message. So, let us be direct:
Get the hell out.
Frankly, all of you refugees from Jesusland are seriously overpopulating our state, and we can't afford it anymore. We figured you might have gotten the hint after we destroyed our public school system with Prop 13. We thought you would have put it together when we started referring to pet owners as "guardians" like they were our fucking kids or something. And, really, we're stunned that electing the guy from "Commando" as our governor didn't make you reassess living here.
C'mon, how much is nice weather, a neat bridge and decent wine really worth? A crappy 900 sq. ft. house in Walnut Creek with a postage-stamp sized yard is a steal at $400k because of all you idiots flooding in! Go home!
Anyhow, by now we're sure you've read about our plan to implant a GPS tracker on your car and tax you for every mile you drive. We're proud of that one -- we know you're driving an hour each way to and from work because of the sky-high housing prices around the Bay Area (again: your fault), and we figure that nicely conveys our point. And frankly, if this doesn't get our message across, we're going to have to resort to simply grabbing you out of your bed in the middle of the night and feeding your to that Great White we have on display down in Monterey. Don't think we won't. Hell, we'll feed her your goddamn cheesehead cats, too. Try us.
Move back to Wisconsin. We're not kidding.
Love, California
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
taxing walking to cover pavement depreciation? this kind of stuff scares me...
Wouldn't it be easier and less privacy-intruding if there's a blackbox in the car with GPS, which determines if the car has crossed a state line, and record mileage accordingly?
This way car owners can go to a fee-station any time to pay whatever tax whatever state wants to charge per mile travelled.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
So, does that mean that if I run my car in reverse, the state will start sending me checks? Hmm, no ... that doesn't sound right ...
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable con
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was happy I live in Texas instead of California. At least here, we only obsessively track our children.
Open Source Sushi
Why not just report your odometer reading each year? It could even by done by the service station that performs your annual inspection.
Who has to drive the furthest? People who can't afford to live in the houses they clean. People who run small businesses and have to deliver product themselves. People who deliver pizzas.
This really won't bother your Hummer drivers. They are already getting hit with gas-guzzler taxes.
Share and Enjoy!
Did you read the article? oh wait, I'm not new here, so no, you didn't.
Since a prius will drive much further on a tank than a person in an H2, if both individuals drive 100 miles, the person in the H2 pays significantly more in taxes. They're proposing to change the system so that its based on how far you drive, not how much gas you use.
Moo.
California being in debt is a huge problem, gets lots of attention, in need of desperate measures and so on, but the federal government being MASSIVELY in debt isn't.
Is there a reason for this or is it just because republicans haven't been successful with the federal budget? (not trolling)
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
Can they figure out any OTHER way to try to drive out business out of this state?
We have some of the highest sales tax, the highest standards of living, permits are required to do anything short of wiping my ass and whacking off.
I propose a tax on ravers. We have enough of them. San Francisco could wipe out our debt in and of itself. It's simple to do it too: if the number of dead glowsticks in your apartment/mom's basement weigh more than your furniture, you get taxed. They certainly have the money for it. If they can afford those E hits....
Just a thought,
Joe
No, see, the problem with this suggestion is that it fails to take into account differences in fuel economy. The gas tax unfairly favors those who drive energy-efficient cars, and unfairly burdens the folks who exercise their god-given right to drive Hummers and SUVs. We need a mileage tax that levels the playing field.
The way it was said on the morning radio, KROQ's Kevin and Bean, was that this was coming about because too many fuel efficient cars meant the amount of monies recieved from gas taxes was reduced. So by taxing the number of miles driven a year, they can more accuratly pay for the roads.
Talk about overengineering! If gas/petrol was taxed higher, they could avoid this completely. I suspect what they really want to know is who's where when and how fast they are going. So the can fine you. 'Cos you speed. Just like everyone else. David
Taxing people based on how much they drive is a good idea (because as it stands, the costs of driving are highly externalized -- e.g. the people getting the benefit from driving more are not necessarily the ones paying for it), but there's no reason the mechanism for tracking needs to store any personal info. It's entirely possible to come up with a system for tracking how much you drive, without tracking where you drive.
Nonetheless, rather than tracking your mileage, I'd much rather see gas taxes increased so that the more you drive, the more money the state gets for road maintenance, mass transit, etc. Right now, gas taxes are a fixed number, rather than a percentage of the gas price. You could also include the cost of auto insurance in the gas price, so that everyone's automatically insured to some required minimum, and then you could get more insurance on top of that if you wanted it, rather than the situation now, where it's illegal to drive without insurance (in California) but millions of people, mostly immigrants, do it anyway.
This would also put more of the burden on vehicles that get worse gas mileage, which also tend to be larger, heavier, cause more road wear, are more dangerous to other vehicles, and emit more pollutants.
And of course, people in the U.S. (and especially Southern California, where I live) are so obsessed with being able to drive wherever you want, whenever you want, and not having to pay for it (even though someone has to pay for it!), that they fight gas taxes tooth and nail even though proper application would reduce traffic (by providing more transit options). Europe has the right idea.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
wouldn't it be easier to just tax gas at the pump at a higher rate? while it wouldn't would equate to equal taxes per mile per person (because of mileage variations), it would seem a lot less obtrusive. given the price of gas these days, who'd even notice a few pennies difference anyways? if we absolutely had to spend some money to make money- we could always build toll booths. same function, some of the same privacy issues (a la EZ pass etc.) but would hurt the pizza delivery drivers a lot less hard.
HUGE privacy issue. There is no telling what can be done with these devices. Plus, GPS unit's don't JUST measure distance traveled. Most also track where you are at all times.
This proposal will have the opposite effect
The Raven
This would be seriously easy to crack: GPS receivers must have a clear view of the sky. This gives you a limited amount of obvious places to mount the device. Now cover with a tasteful home-made faraday cage (made from recycled cans or some-such, this being California) and voila, no tax.
So in effect this is a tax on people who flunked physics 101. Just like lottery is a tax on people who failed Math.
They really need to embed these trackers into shoes, so they can also tax those bastards who walk or ride the bus instead of driving themselves.
blog
The article claims this is because of the danger that hybrid cars will eat into the tax income, since they consume less gas and therefore don't pay as much tax.
But the fact is that very few people drive such hybrids, even in California. Far more Californians drive gas-guzzling SUVs; a drive through LA used to surround you with Ford Explorers, but now those seem to be outnumbered by the much larger vehicles like Expeditions and such. A gas tax is a better way to collect income and provide a market incentive to reduce air pollution (as opposed to a regulation, like smog checks, which are expensive to enforce and provide an incentive to cheat rather than to conserve).
So really, this is just a proposal to make sure that people who actually switch to efficient technologies keep subsidizing those who don't. It's completely retarded. It is not only counterproductive to the desire to reduce fuel consumption and air pollution, but requires that the state spend an additional $100 per car just to implement.
Expensive + counterproductive to societal goals = bad government. Bad government! No cookie!
Dumb dumb dumb dumb....
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Some other states apply their car tax by the vehicle's weight, due to the very sensible reason that a heaver car wears down the roads more than a lighter car, and therefore more repairs (and hence, more cost) are required with heavy cars.
Obviously, SUVs and luxury cars pay more, while lighter and frugal cars pay less, PLUS it just makes sense: if you chew up the pavement and make more potholes because of your heavier car, then you SHOULD pay more.
Of course, this makes too much sense for my state's DMV to figure out...
At smog-check time, the GPS memory gets down-loaded into a database... Remember Gray bought $82M worth of Oracle licenses.
Then when a crime goes unsolved, the local police only need to search the monster database of who was where and when. Round up the guilty, and sentence the convicts.
Remember Big Brother is Watching
I'm beginning to think Americans are suffering from a lack of studying Orwell.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
I'm sort of a "tinfoil hat wearing" type of guy, but this seems really transparent to me. With everything that's been happening lately, perhaps tinfoil will become the latest fashion trend, but... Remember that the state of Oregon proposed this same thing perhaps a year ago, Slashdot did an article on it then...
Think of this logically, as some of the others here already have. If the state were interested in taxing you based upon milage, they would simply record your odometer readings at each emmissions inspection and bill you accordingly for your tabs. Yeah, I know about the in-state/out-state argument, why not just ignore that and set the median tax at something reasonable.
If the state were interested in reducing polution and oil consumption, they'd simply increase the already in place tax on gas and let the people in their Prius' slip through with their good milage. There are not really that many of them, and you could always give truckers a rebate at the end of the year if you feel sorry for them. Yeah, you COULD buy gas in Nevada or Oregon or Mexico, but you'd use up that gas getting back across the border, making any savings moot. Besides, the number of people living on the border is pretty fractional.
Seems clear to me, the intention is NOT about simply taxing vehicle use based upon how far you drive, but something more nefarious. Something like the car rental places have been implementing. Looks like California wants to incorporate GPS into the new "black boxes" discussed on cnet a few days ago, those boxes that the government & insurance industry wants to put into your cars in order to give you better rates and let you prove that you're law abiding. They'd have the ability to track all vehicles.
Each of the other taxation methods (checking odometer / gas tax) are simpler and already have the infrastructure necessary to implement in place. Both would accomplish the desired goal (more money for state based upon usage). Because something like this would be all new and would involve MUCH new infrastructure, it seems clear that simple revenue is NOT the intent of this proposal.
California is a big enough market, that they cause defacto standards for cars. The lawmakers know this, and I'm guessing that they are acting as the "stalking horse" in order to get all cars in America fitted with such devices. I don't think the insurance industry alone has the clout to pull this off over the objections of the car driving public, but if each of the players asks for some little addition, they might all be able to get their way. Think of it like this, insurance wants feature A, Feds wants feature B, and state wants feature C. Expect all three features in one DMCA protected box that you must not tamper with, under penalty of law. Expect lawyers to get access to ALL recorded information.
I would expect this proposal to move just about as quickly and silently as the copyright modifications moving through the Senate currently... Think fast and quiet.
Let's be honest here, Not everyone can drive a primus around.
In fact, no one can, because it doesn't exist. Maybe you were thinking of the Prius?
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
Let me tell you how it will be,
There's one for you, nineteen for me,
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all,
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat,
If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.
Taxman.
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
Don't ask me what I want it for
(Taxman Mister Wilson)
If you don't want to pay some more
(Taxman Mister Heath),
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
Now my advice for those who die,
Declare the pennies on your eyes,
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
And you're working for no-one but me,
Taxman.
'Fool on the Hill' was taken already, I guess.
if they don't start salting the roads, and the gps units are only going on NEW cars, The biggest effect they will have is to further depress new car sales [ie get LESS tax to the state]
dumb!
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
A Prius is a $20,000 car (before the popularity markup), about the same as a Camry or Accord. An H2 is about a $50,000 car (also before popularity markup). So no, a Prius is not more expensive than a regular car, and emphatically not more expensive than an H2!
Also, 25 years old would mean cars made before 1980. I don't doubt that there's a lot of '85 - '95 cars on the road, which are also less safe and more polluting, but there can't be all that many 25+ year old cars -- they would either have to have been maintained well, or they would have fallen apart by now!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
A Prius with a low-ball mpg rating of 44 (a real-world number I've heard) and its 11.9 gallon tank can go over 500 miles. How far apart are gas stations where you're talking about? I think the basic problem here is you're assuming the Prius is electric. It's not; it's a hybrid. So why can't the truck be a hybrid?
No, people in rural areas will use more efficient vehicles. Last I checked, electric power also made it out there -- why do you think an all-electric vehicle wouldn't be practical in 10-30 years?
No, it's the perfect tool. It pays for the impact of vehicles in the same way as gambling, smoking, and alcohol pay for their impact: through a sin tax. A gas tax encourages more efficient vehicles, shorter commutes, and public transportation. Taxing mileage only encourages the latter two.
I wish taxes on gas were used for maintaining the roads. If they were, we wouldn't have the severe congestion that gives California such a bad name in terms of traffic.
Here's what's happening in a nutshell:
A group of people decided that they wanted to get Californians to start using public transportation and not use their cars for so many things. So they decided to stop building freeways, on the hypothesis that if there was no more room on the freeways, people would stop coming to California. This goes back to Gov. Jerry Brown, and the idea failed miserably.
Next, they decided to build carpool lanes, which would encourage people to, if not taking public transportation, at least get a few more people in the same car. Wrong again. They don't even have a decent state-wide model for carpool lanes: in SoCal, carpool lanes are carpool lanes 24 hours a day. In NorCal, carpool lanes are carpool lanes only during normal rush-hour traffic, and are normal lanes otherwise. Hence, some freeways have had their capacity increased by anywhere from 20% to 50%, and the lanes are not usable by the vast majority of drivers.
So then they jacked up gas tax rates, promising to build more freeways and add lanes to the congested parts (except then governors, Democrat and Republican, including Schwarzeneggar, started "borrowing" the funds from the gas tax to pay for general fund stuff, and the roads further deteriorated and failed to get expanded). The increases was also allegedly to encourage people to buy smaller vehicles that would be more fuel efficient and cause less wear and tear on the roads. Despite past measures that had largely failed because the California car culture is basically impossible to buck, people actually did buy newer, fuel-efficient cars (but still drive them alone), and gas tax revenues (and hence funding for pet projects that have nothing to do with the roads) went down.
So now they're in a corner. How do they get the taxes back? Why, based on mileage, of course! And with a GPS unit, they can also see when you go over the speed limit or perhaps lane change too often and send you automatic tickets or tax your auto insurance (who may also get a report on your driving habits and thus raise the rates on their own). This isn't part of the proposal *yet*, but I can imagine someone is thinking it.
They're also talking about watching when you're using certain high-use roads, and increase the tax based on congestion, so if you go to work on the 5 through Los Angeles or Orange County at 7:45am, then you get an extra tax because you're helping to cause slow traffic. You know what the really ironic thing is? The people behind this idea are almost exactly the same people who were yelling about how toll roads were going to punish the poor people who couldn't afford them, and now they've come up with a method to not only inflict what are essentially tolls, but to inflict them potentially on every single public road and street in the state.
(Wow, that's a big nutshell. I wonder if there's a walnut in there.)
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Let the brain drain begin!
We here in GA welcome our new CA overlords!
Y'all want grits, right?
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Yes, that's what the FA says. The problem is that it is a poor basis for raising revenue that perpetuates unfairness. (That's leaving aside the enforceability issues and the simple cost of installing this monstrosity.)
Consider, for example, how some municipalities make millions of dollars a year from parking fines. In Boston, that's traditionally been a major revenue source, and meter cops were encouraged by quotas to overinterpret the law and nail people who were 12 inches out of compliance with distance to the curb, or 1 minute overdue on their meter, etc. (This only began to subside a bit in the late 1980s after the infamous case of a driver in Boston who pulled over, fell out of his car, and lay on the sidewalk having a heart attack; as you can guess, a traffic cop proceeded to ticket his car WHILE HE WAS LYING THERE and the whole sorry scene was captured in a photograph for the Boston Globe's front page.)
Anyway, just because cities and towns develop a dependency on this form of revenue does not mean it is a fair or proper way to raise money. In fact, it encourages people to have contempt for the law and for the law to have contempt for people. Stupid, stupid.
We already pay an enormous amount of taxes to keep our cars on the road. Initial sales tax (in most states), annual excise tax based on the value of the car, automobile insurance which is highly regulated and taxed in most states, gasoline sales tax, tolls, license plate renewal fee, drivers license renewal fee, and speeding and parking fines. No doubt I'm forgetting a few things. Ted Kennedy's luxury tax if your car is > $100K?
I believe that gasoline actually should be taxed much more than it is. Go ahead, California; raise the gas tax to $1 a gallon. It's regressive taxation, admittedly, especially for contractors who have to drive vans and pickup trucks and the like, but overall it will help spur the adoption of alternative fuels such as corn-based methanol and coal- or solar-based hydrogen, which will be tremendously beneficial long term. And dare one mention public transportation? Cities without practical bus and subway systems--well, the voters should face the music and ante up for these programs, because as the boomer population ages it's going to become ever more important. Twenty years from now there are going to be about 90 million 75-year-olds out there driving; look out, world.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
You've hammered away at taxes on gas but argue that CAFE-like legislation is the right direction. Consider this counter argument:
Increasing the fuel efficiency of cars through CAFE-type legislation decreases the cost/mile required to operate them. This does not provide any incentive for a vehicle user to travel a shorter distance, rather it allows them to travel further. Legislation like CAFE alone does not work because it does not hit the end user, the consumer, in the one place where she or he will feel it: the pocketbook.
A gas tax is a better solution in a market-driven economy. It hits the end-user where they will feel it and creates a new demand, in this case for fuel-efficient car. There's a reason that small Japanese cars became popular in the 70's and it sure as heck wasn't fuel efficiency related legislation.
The government doesn't need to "tell" to megacorporations anything in this case: they'll go where the money is, whether it's in H2's or hybrids.
That's bullshit. A Prius is a tiny car. You can't compare it to a H2 or a Camary. You should compare it to a similar car in size and features - a $10K Toyota Echo.
The Prius is enormously expensive for what you get.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Isn't this the kind of stuff that gasoline taxes are supposed to take care of?? Since most of populous CA is nowhere near a state border, just raise that. The best part of this, is that if you don't drive, you don't get taxed directly. Who needs more technology for this?
And this will sorely punish the SUV owners that the tree huggers keep bitching about simply by virtue of fuel usage. So, in a way, you are getting taxed by the mile and for having an eco-unfriendly car.
Granted, the whole idea is utter bullshit to begin with...
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
So I take it you don't eat!? Don't forget that every piece of food you eat starts with some farmer in the boondocks, and for them to produce that food they need affordable fuel.
LOL, Cryofan up to his old socialist tricks...
I just calculated what the effect on me would be if we replaced the Federal income tax (FICA) with a national sales tax, as some GOP'ers have been considering. And you know what?
At a $15/hour wage, a national sales tax (a national consumption tax) would put *more* disposable income in my pocket than the current income tax. The income tax does not start looking better for me until the national sales tax reaches about 50% -- and the current claims by the left is that we would have to set it at about 30% in order to reap the tax revenues as the govn't currently takes in via the income tax.
A sales tax is far-more fair, for the simple reason that if you so choose, you don't *have* to buy anything, and thus, you pay nothing in taxes. It'd be a miserable, agrarian lifestyle (much like that of the Amish I suspect), but it could be done.
Likewise, the people who buy the most expensive, most luxurious items -- the Beemer and Rolls-Royce crowd we both envy but only one of us is jealous enough of to support theft to get those riches -- would pay the most taxes on those items, b/c they tend to buy those items in the greatest quantities.
Now, to reduce the regressive nature of the sales tax, were it me, I would eliminate *all* sales taxes on life-necessities: food, any health/medical supplies (including prescriptions), and possibly housing (but not land; the property tax should definitely stay, so as to prevent people from hoarding land).
And I would further raise the sales tax on items which have socially-negative effects: alcohol, tobacco, marijuana (if it's ever legalized), possibly firearms (I'm a gun nut, of course, but I also recognize the socially-negative aspects of them), and so on. I'd probably place a luxury tax on grossly-expensive items (items that only the top 5% of income earners typically purchase -- again, the Rolls, the Bentley, the 50' yachts, etc.).
That way, the tax is made at least somewhat progressive, but still is optional -- people are left free to decide whether or not to pay the tax (by consuming).
You know, a national sales tax ought to appeal to the leftie anti-consumerist, anti-materialist mentality which says that "Americans consume too much! Ach, it makes me sick that all people do is buy stuff! Waaahh!" Funny that they've been silent on the issue.
Anyway, whether the GOP will be so smart as to implement my version of the sales tax is another question...
I'm curious why you think low-income people shouldn't pay taxes. Don't they owe a responsibility to the state? By what right do they *deserve* a free ride? The right of being poor? Under your system, if everyone could get a free ride off the rich by being poor, I think I would remain poor too, just so I could loaf around and do nothing on the rich man's dollar.
Gosh, how nice it would be to sit around and let the rich man work for me. Boy, the world owes me a living!! LOL.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
The older Prius (pre-2004) was a tiny car -- in fact, it was basically a re-engined Echo.
The newer ones are far larger. It's quite a nice four-passenger car, with a reasonably roomy hatchback and other bits of storage space.
And, the new ones are more powerful and more fuel efficient than the older ones. You just cannot imagine the lengths that Toyota engineers went to to get the last few percent of fuel efficieny and pollution-control. Thermos bottles to retain heat in the coolant, carbon canister to trap startup hydrocarbons, drive-by-wire braking to do only regenerative braking until below 5 MPH, fins and baffles under the car to route air more efficiently...the list is almost endless. It basic Synergy drive, which throws in for free a CVT by basically using electricity the way other cars use transmission fluid, is the best known radical system, but it's only the beginning.
Ob-topic -- this is an insane scheme. I have to agree with the tinfoil-hat crowd that the only reason this makes sense is to get the GPS units into the cars for some other purposes -- like making it more expensive to drive through downtowns in rush hour (as they do in London, Singapore, and other rediculously congested cities.)
There are so very many ways that the State (and the state) benefit from more fuel efficient cars, that reducing the incentive to drive them is remarkably short-sighted. Treating the fuel tax as a carbon-dioxide tax really does make sense -- those Hummers and SUV's really do impose a cost on everybody else. Reducing the gasoline-delivery infrastructure is a good thing, from reducing the number of tankers that need to port in California, reducing the number of tankers on the roads, reducing the number of leaky gas tanks under service stations...these reflect costs on everybody that the gas tax goes some part of the way to paying for. Fewer kids dying of asthma would be a good thing.
If they want more money from the gas tax, they should just raise the tax.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.