Co-Sponsor Request: Increase Fees on Heavy Vehicles
E = mc² increases with mass should come with increases in fees too.
There is legislation carried by Senator Gounardes + Assembly Member Mamdani (S6657/A7978) in the NY State Legislature to increase the registration fee on vehicles based on vehicle weight.
Data shows that there is a correlation between steadily increasing vehicle weights and the toll that takes on everyone outside of the vehicle. This toll clearly happens in the form of increased injury to pedestrians+cyclists but it also shows up in the impact to air quality from increased fuel use and even in air quality impacts from heavier break dust environmental impacts from accelerated tire wear. The increasing weight of vehicles shows up in increasing wear on roads requiring larger maintenance and repair budgets, and as we have seen it requires even stronger parking garages.
Those hit by the heaviest vehicles—cars weighing more than 4,000 pounds — are two to three times more likely to die than people hit by smaller cars. Heaver vehicles = deadly (and it’s not an exaggeration).
I'm also personally concerned about the accelerated tire wear on EV's and the impact to air quality which isn’t well understood yet, and I believe heavier fees (pun intended) on heavy vehicles can help mitigate that.
Policy makers in the EU and now in DC have picked up this approach. Please co-sponsor this important legislation in NY to reverse our trend of ever-increasing SUVs.
"The larger and heavier a car, the more likely it is to kill pedestrians. Until now, NY has ignored that cost.” Zohran Kwame Mamdani
Thank you to my representatives Senator Hoylman-Sigal and Assembly Member Simone for co-sponsoring.