I've been thinking about car taxing. With petrol tax becoming increasingly difficult to put up due to the ridiculous levels already reached, the government is understandably looking to other ways to increase the tax burden on drivers. Often we hear of road pricing being mooted in various forms, but I think that that is a rather untargeted tax. The real scourge of driving is wasting petrol. Petrol tax already penalises wasting of petrol through using an engine that is unnecessarily powerful, so now we need to penalise the other great way of wasting petrol: Braking.
Every time you brake you are wasting the petrol just burnt, so surely we can deduct directly from drivers every time their brake pedal is depressed. I've noticed in motorway driving it is not necessary to brake more than about once every fifty miles, though some drivers seem obsessed with whizzing up so close behind others and then jamming their brakes on. Braking tax would also target the other scourges of the driving world: the school run drivers, the nip down the shops drivers and the tailgaters.
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3 comments:
I almost agree. However, when driving downhill I often free-wheel, just using the brake pedal to regulate my speed. Your system would penalise me when it should be penalising those who are driving in a low gear.
Mr Guts,
You are utterly mistaken. New cars actually use NO fuel at all when the accelerator pedal is totally up (ie not pressed at all) and in gear. They rely on the motion of the wheels to keep the engine running. However, when idleing, when the car is stationary, or when the clutch is depressed and the car is free-wheeling, the engine needs to use a little petrol to keep the engine going.
So you free-wheeling nonce should be taxed for using the break pedal cos not only is it dangerous, but its also making the sky fall in
It's a good job I don't drive very often then, or this planet would really be in trouble.
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