Although this would put them out of business, it sounds like drone deliveries are becoming a real necessity.
(or just end poverty — but you know, drones.)
I think the reality many people live in, means that all it will do will force people to make choices like whether or not they’re buying food or gas. Many people don’t have a lot of options, you know. They can rely on mass transit (which they’re living further from since they’re being pushed out of cities thanks to the rising cost of living) to get to work, which is probably far from home. Or they can have a car, which affords them some flexibility in that. Gas goes up, they don’t have the choice about buying gas if they want to get to work. Meaning they have less to spend on housing, food, clothing, their kids, utilities, etc. Oh, and lots of other goods rise in cost if gas goes up - including necessities, because it becomes more expensive to get them to stores.
Then we need to make massive changes to public infrastructure and cost of living. Otherwise, all you’re going to do by driving up the cost of gas is to punish poor people.
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It would never occur to thieves to steal your bike and your phone.
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When riding, my phone is in a zipped pocket inside my zipped motorcycle jacket. Not so easy to grab it and run. (And, oops, it was the Bluetooth camera shutter button in a different pocket.)
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What surprises me here is the lack of use of cheap technology to combat these simple crimes.
- Body/helmet cam ($50)
- Deterrent pepper spray on the outside of your jacket ($20)
- Blue-tooth interrupt or other cut-out device ($100)
- Kevlar jacket/pants (which you shouldn’t really be riding a motorbike without anyway!) $300.
- Distinguishing paint-job on the bike ($10)
- Make the bike unrideable by those unfamiliar with it (free)
If you’re gonna spend $5k+ on a decent bike, why skimp on a couple hundred for safety? It’s like the folks who spend $1k on a phone and then won’t spend $20 on a decent case to protect it (FFS 
).
Regarding item #6 this really is simple. Anyone who rides a fixed-gear bicycle can tell you how hilarilious it is to see someone try to steal it, only to wipe out 100 yards down the street (see also stick-shift cars in the US nowadays!)
Using item #5, I’ve personally recovered 2 stolen bikes on craigslist because they were painted so uniquely they could only be mine (having the original receipt with the frame numbers helped the police with the recovery). Having the brakes and gears wired-up in an odd way helps with both identification and theft prevention.
The stolen mopeds will be used for smash and grab raids. Such raids so familiar to Londoners that the BBC hardly felt the need to elaborate on it, only for a couple of seconds at 6:25.
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Toggle on the key.
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I’m not advocating policies that would punish poor people. Policies like the level of taxation on gas don’t exist in a vacuum. The US, even with low gas taxes and therefore prices has greater income and wealth inequality than does anywhere else. Gas prices aren’t the cause of, nor the solution to that.
So there’s nothing can/should be done, eh? Here’s a couple of ideas:
The gas tax could be used to fund vastly public transit and the building of infrastructure that allows safe active transport (walking, bikes, e-bikes and scooters).
The issue that it is a “tax on poor people” is true at one level, but the issue of wealth inequality in the US expends far beyond transport. Using the increased gas tax to for example subsidize housing for disadvantaged groups or provide better health care or just improve public facilities generally could all be considered.
The reduction in car use could allow the current ludicrous number of parking spaces to be reduced and re-purposed to foster more compact and liveable communities where we didn’t have to drive everywhere for absolutely everything. Lines of cars, stored for free along our roads could be removed to allow for more mobility options (Like bike lanes! Oh, the horror! Millions will be late!).
Many cities (perhaps all) comprise large wastelands of freeways, parking lots and strip malls where car is king, and people who aren’t driving are odd at least, and in some cases viewed as the enemy.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Correctly pricing the use of private automobiles (rather the continuing with current subsidies) would include consideration of pollution, climate change, land use and heath effects. The US, with it’s comically low gas prices is very fucking far from pricing private automobile use correctly.
Whilst ever the F150, Ram 1500 and Siverado pickups are the best-selling “passenger” vehicles in the US, and whilst ever the vast majority of vehicles on the road contain only the driver, I’ll accept no argument that gas prices are too high. They are nowhere near high enough.
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Serious impact of this: motorbike insurance has sky-rocketed. I can’t ride mine now, looking to offload it.
These little fuckers are straight from Clockwork Orange. They don’t care about anything.
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No, but raising gas prices does have real world consequences, and ends up putting the costs on consumers, instead of the oil companies.
that’s not what I said. Just raising the cost of gas taxes isn’t the solution, though.
Yes, I’m well aware of that. Small changes like this, disproportionately impact the poor.
I agree, and some of the ideas you suggest are good ones. My entire point was that JUST raising gas taxes isn’t a solution to the overall problem, and really only acts as a tax on the poor.
Which isn’t of course a problem that is solely on the consumers side.
And yet raising them, with out any of the other changes you suggest is simply putting the larger burden on those least able to do anything about it.
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Sounds exhausting.
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It won’t let anyone drive fewer miles tomorrow. It will change what new cars people buy, which will determine what used cars are available in 3-10 years. It will increase use of, and support for investment in, public transit and higher density zoning and mixed-use neighborhood development.
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I was shocked when someone broken into my pickup truck. They don’t know me, I could be some crazy redneck and blew them away.
It mostly is. No-one forces anyone to buy a truck. But yes, tax policy and marketing make these pedestrian-killing, fuck-you-little-people, penis extensions quite appealing.
I’m not proposing a small change. I’m proposing a massive change.
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Considering that the auto industry killed street cars and other forms of light rail transportation and electric cars in the past, no, it isn’t entirely. People make choices, but we don’t make choices that are entirely unfettered from the decisions corporations make, since they are the ones producing these goods for market and shaping our understanding of them. I’m all for taxing cars, especially those that are high end, gas guzzlers - but you do realize that most poor people have even less choices on what they can drive (usually older, gas guzzlers that are cheap).
I don’t disagree we need it. I also don’t want to see millions of human beings hurt in the process. How about we build the infrastructure, tax the higher end luxury vehicles and impose penalties on corporations for not making electric, hybrid, or high fuel efficient alternatives that are affordable to widest number of people. We could also tax corporations who sell gas guzzlers to the luxury market directly in order to help build up the infrastructure. Let’s switch to electric buses and light rail that runs on electric inside cities. Let’s force cities to have affordable housing units for working class families, near good schools and decent jobs, hopefully ones where they can walk or bike to work. Let’s make city centers car free to encourage that. Let’s force energy corporations to pour their profits into alternative fuels, instead of into their own pockets.
But how about we get away from putting on the burden on the working poor, because they are far less responsible for the structures that they are forced to live within.
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The Pepper Spray would be illegal over here in Blighty. We have to resort to “tutting” and “social cutting”.
Liked because you are correct. But also you will find a LOT of diesel engined cars in Europe. For some models it is hard to find a petrol engined version. Air quality is a real problem - resulting from govts encouraging diesel as being more fuel-efficient (cheaper to buy and more MPG) so assumed to be ‘burning less fossil fuel’. Until the air quality thing became an issue in cities.
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Let’s play with the idea some. You move out of range, the lock kicks in. To unlock, an “all clear” needs to be received. Maybe a PIN?
Problem 1: false positives. Bluetooth can be wonky, so the signal will need to be more like a dead man’s switch that can tolerate a missed signal or two. Maybe like 30 seconds to reconnect, otherwise it will lock down?
Problem 2: coerced unlocking. Perhaps a Panic PIN that will lock down harder, send an SOS and other inconveniences?
Possible non-wireless solution: a fob that clips via magnet to a part of the handlebars? Push the rider off the bike, the fob disengages and the brakes sieze up after 30 seconds. This gets the thief far enough away from the rider to not just rip the fob as well.
Silent alarms are possible as well, I guess. Just not to the cops, they will get annoyed by false positives. More like a cell phone connection with triangulation built into the bike frame that is accessible by app, and then the owner can forward to the cops?
EDIT: This is specifically brainstorming of systems for someone like a cycle courier or food delivery via cycle (Deliveroo, Foodora). The idea is a system that should be usable for bikes as well as powered scooters and mopeds. Just enough so that the bikejacker will abandon the bike as not worth the effort, and escape to contemplate an easier way to get wheels for his next robbery.
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There is little in your suggestions that I really disagree with. But don’t see any of them having much effect of dis-incentivizing a lot of people from buying big, inefficient vehicles and then using them to drive (by themselves) everywhere for absolutely everything, like they do now. The externalities of those decisions need to be priced in. Taxing the purchase price (taxing corporations and taxing consumers is the same thing) leaves the variable cost of the decision-to-drive comically low. The result is a disaster in terms of congestion, livability of neighborhoods, safety, health outcomes, land use. There is pretty-much nothing that isn’t fucked-up by cars. If there were no cars you’d better believe we’d have great transit, higher density living, walkable and bikeable neighbourhoods. Our friends and family would live closer. Our jobs would be closer. Our recreation would be closer.
In terms of building infrastructure, that’s what the gas tax was supposed to be for. Instead, the deliberate failure to index it has meant that in real terms, it is now trivial. Gas has never been cheaper in the US. Expenditure on gas as a percentage of median income has never been lower. And it shows. People on moderate incomes can afford to drive a monster truck. My commenting started with challenging the initial assertion that UK gas prices are comically high. That simply isn’t true.
Cars ruin everything I love.
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