SUVs: Tax Gas Based on Mileage

Thank you for John Balzar’s excellent proposal to restrict bulky SUVs to the slower truck lane (Commentary, March 17). As for the notion of “increased vehicle fees,” how about implementing a graduated air quality tax whereby the cost of gasoline would be determined by the vehicle’s fuel efficiency: If a Ford Exposition averages 12 mpg and my Toyota Corolla averages 36 mpg, it seems only fair that the Exposition driver should pay three times as much for each gallon of gas. That extra money could go toward treating the health and environmental consequences of air pollution.

Balzar’s right on when he says, “If it’s right to tax smokers, it’s just as right to tax SUVers for the same reasons.” Besides that, having to pay more than $5 per gallon of gas (to go only 12 miles) would probably cure most of the current SUV mania and alleviate some of the pressure on our environment.

Lloyd Cunningham

Torrance

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Balzar’s piece raises an important question that is rarely heard in the SUV debate--why should personal vehicle choice trump the health and safety of the general public? We no longer allow smokers to endanger the health of others in public places. Why should SUV drivers be allowed, with impunity, to spew two and three times the pollution of other vehicles into the air we all must breathe?

Over a decade ago the California Legislature passed a bill that would have increased registration fees on the most-polluting vehicles and given rebates to the cleanest ones. The legislation was vetoed in a shortsighted move by then-Gov. George Deukmejian, but the time has come to revive the concept. If SUV drivers are going to contribute disproportionately to our air pollution problems, then they should also be paying more to help clean the air.

Sandra Spelliscy

General Counsel

Planning and Conservation

League, Sacramento

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Balzar tipped his hand with the highlighted excerpt, “Big guys on the right, little guys on the left. It has a nice ring, doesn’t it?” He would have done better had he applied logic instead of the worn-out left-wing habit of deciding how you “feel” about any issue, social or political, before taking a position on it.

I don’t smoke and I don’t own an SUV, but I know that some liberal has a bad “feeling” about something else that I like to do or something else I own, and somebody like Balzar will eventually try to tax it beyond my means, take away the reason for doing it or owning it, or take it away from me altogether.

Balzar proposes to destroy some of our most precious freedoms and uses the specious “research” of a biased newspaper writer to support his views. As a result, Balzar is far more dangerous than carbon monoxide or oxides of nitrogen.

Richard Keck

Monrovia

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Why is the assumption that SUVs are safer allowed to slide by unchallenged? Statistically, SUVs and pickup trucks do not do a better job of protecting their occupants, and their poor handling characteristics increase the chance of a traffic collision.

I know many fine people who purchased large SUVs under the mistaken assumption that they were doing something to protect their loved ones. Pickup trucks and SUVs only protect the automobile manufacturers from having to be more efficient and responsible.

Jay Hoffman

Palos Verdes Estates

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Finally someone has eloquently expressed my view of SUVs, or AHVs, as I refer to them (absurdly humongous vehicles).

I am sick and tired of blindly following a Navigator or Escalade and not being able to see what is going on ahead in traffic. Whatever happened to the concept of defensive driving, scanning ahead to see what’s happening down the road?

For those of us who still drive Corollas, driving defensively now means trying to not get sideswiped by some idiot in an AHV who forgot to check his blind spot and didn’t bother to use that little lever on the left side of the steering column (yes, folks, the turn signal was meant to let the folks around you know what your intentions are). Let’s call a truck a truck, let’s tax a status symbol luxury vehicle as a luxury vehicle and let’s pass legislation raising minimum mileage standards for these gas-guzzling, environment-polluting, resource-wasting behemoths.

James A. Peck

Los Angeles