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If the vehicle has RANGER on the back i just automatically assume they are a cunt.
For real. The one car I've seen the most of in Oz was some kind of Ranger, with many even being Raptors.
Runner up would be the Toyota (GT)68, but I really don't mind those at all.
Ranger Raptor RUGGED X TUFF BLACK BLOKE EDITION
Make rego 10x for these yank tank wanks
Increasing the weight of the car by 2x increases the road damage by 16x.
We should charge rego by weight and volume. We should measure safety by damage inflicted, not damage deflected.
We already to. IMHO rego is weight based.
Rego is weight-based, but it's utterly fucked.
My 900kg hatchback costs $149 more to register than a ute up to 4500kg out in the country.
In the city, the rego difference is $1.10.
What's worse, their FAQ says a lot of TAC claims for utes are paid by workcover, not the TAC. That's why it's cheaper.
...so people who purchase a roadblimp to use for school dropoffs are dodging the TAC charge, whilst being a much larger hazard than everyone else.
https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/about-the-tac/our-organisation/transport-accident-charge?drop=6
Canberra charges based on emissions category, with EVs being cheapest to register, and big engine diesels being the most expensive
They are categorised by their CO2 emissions in g/km, so the big and least efficient pay much more
News article, as the ACT government doesn't seem to publish the details in an easy to read format
I did not realize that rego is state specific. IMHO NSW has most sane method.
In NSW your hatchback will cost $270 and 3 tonne SUV $949.
https://www.nsw.gov.au/driving-boating-and-transport/vehicle-registration/fees-concessions-and-forms/vehicle-registration-fees
As a Victorian I am loathe to say it, but this is definitely one thing you guys do a hell of a lot better than us.
Especially with the uptake in EVs, which while better for the environment long-term also pose a similar issue for pedestrians and cyclists, registration costs need to be reviewed and rethought from the ground up.
They need to break it down to a Road Levy and a Fuel Levy.
A 2.5T Tesla Model X should pay more for road maintenance than a 900kg Suzuki Swift.
In the long-term, absolutely, we will need to revisit the fuel levy as we transition towards more EVs.
However I think it would be short-sighted to do anything currently that could disincentivise EV uptake.
I’d honestly much rather see a 1,000 more Model Ys on the road than 100 Rangers.
I would rather see more trains on railway tracks and buses with rational routes that service everyone than a single Tesla.
Oh, absolutely - we’re on the Pakenham line and took the trip through the new metro tunnel last weekend, absolutely brilliant!
But there are trips and roles that can’t rely on PT, and for those I would much rather see EV adoption over more gigantic Yank-tank “trucks” with somehow less bed-space than what the Commodore and Falcon used to offer.
Yeah, I find it hilarious when I see a RAM that is actually being used by a tradie, with two Rhino Boxes and a short stack of Milwaukee PACK-OUTs taking up all the space in the tray, while a Triton parked next to it has an entire workshop of tools.
Depends on the state. NSW for example is one that does vary depending on weight (based on weight ranges, not a full sliding scale) - there's a ~$180 difference between my sedan and van due to the van's higher tare weight placing it in the next category up. QLD on the other hand is one that doesn't - they charge based on the cylinder count instead.
Ban Ford Rangers at least. The drivers tend to be inconsiderate psychos.
They can ride eBikes instead.
Ban F-trucks, Silverados and RAMs.
I saw an F350 Super Duty parked in a suburban mains street the other day.
It is so big, it needed Interstate Heavy Vehicle plates. It was not a tradies Utes; It was not a Tow Vehicle, It wasn’t even an Oversized Load pilot. It was just compensating someone’s inadequacy.
It had a sticker on the window “Patriotism is not Racism” and it looked like a MAGA sticker but with an Australian Flag instead of the Stars and Stripes.
With all my heart, I wanted to get a paint marker and write “GAGYGF Seppo Cunt”, but I was on work uniform and did not have a paint pen. Also, I am not a complete arsehole.
Make an anger management course part of the requirements to register one.
Currently I think it's the other way around. Before you are allowed to own one you sign a contract saying you will at every opportunity drive millimetres from the bumper of the car in front.
Let us bully them again, these dipshits with their shit over sized vehicles used to be publicly mocked for their insecurities, bring that back and you will see a drop in sales for them, shame works wonders.
just remove the tax rebate/incentive
Could it be so simple?
Pretty much yes.
First, the “SUV loophole”: under US law, most SUVs are classified as light trucks, meaning they’re subject to less stringent fuel-efficiency and crash-safety standards than passenger cars.
This has always been baffling to me. Make the standards universal and I reckon people would make very different choices.
Zero BAC requirement for vehicles exceeding various hazard thresholds? Say, 2.5T GVM, vehicle width/length, and a particular vision path requirement.
You don't want to catch small EVs in the rule, I'd do it on dimensions and view angle and classify anything big or inefficient under a different category with different licence rules and conditions. I mean we don't want drivers of big engined fast cars impaired any more than we want drivers of giant utes impaired
On weight, why not? – because F=ma – weight influences the risk posed by the vehicle regardless of whether it is lithium or steel.
Then again, newer cars have ANCAP pedestrian/vulnerable road user safety ratings which could override a weight threshold where available.
ANCAP guidelines are pushing for larger and larger vehicles.
Crumple Zones, and pedestrian protection add significantly to the size and weight of a vehicles, and negatively impact driver awareness.
Driver Assistance is OK to provide an extra level of protection, but result in complacency.
A compact vehicle with good visibility and visceral road awareness will be less destructive on the roads than an oversized SUV with a driver ignoring all the ADAS technology blithely unaware of their surroundings.
That said, a compact vehicle with unobtrusive ADAS would be even safer.
I'm just grappling for an objective measure of the impact hazard posed by a given vehicle which might be more accurate than weight alone.
Impact hazard × Impact likelyhood could form a determination of whether a vehicle should be subject to a Zero BAC requirement.
Impact likelyhood should be determined by dimensions and sight-lines -- maybe there's a good comprehensive measure of this that doesn't give too much weight to things like ADAS?
Time for an anecdote. When Holden were designing the HQ, there was a design paradigm called “Passive Safety”.
The reasoning was that if the driver did not feel safe driving at speed, they would drive more slowly, and therefore be safer.
That is why the HQ had narrow A-Pillars that were unfortunately in the wrong position to observe cross traffic and a suspension geometry that caused terminal understeer.
As terrible as this paradigm was (they reworked the geometry for the HZ) it was vindicated in the 1990s when inexperienced and unskilled Subaru WRX drivers felt so confident in their handling that they would push beyond the capabilities of their vehicles.
I still believe that deliberately engineered flaws are a terrible idea, but I can tell you that I am ultra careful and ultra aware of the traffic in my tiny little Jimny with bad driver crash ratings and live axles front and rear.
I'm guessing the sales of emotional support vehicles would drop overnight with that policy.
Smaller cars and tax the ultra wealthy. Really not that complex.
Speed limit Rangers to 40kph within city limits. They usually speed through school zones and roadworks so it won't slow them down but we might get a few disqualified from driving which will help.
Pretty early the article points out that the top selling car in 2011 was far smaller than the best selling car now, in 2025, a Ford Ranger
It then says:
Four in five new cars sold in Australia are SUVs or utes – more than double the share of 20 years ago.
And follows up by pointing out two parts of US legislation that are driving manufacturing in the US to produce larger cars and ends by pointing out the extra risks with larger cars and how the situation can be improved using local legislation.
Why does the article ignore that the 2011 top selling car was from an Asian manufacturer and that Asian and European manufacturers exist. I went looking for data on sales from regions / brands over time but failed a bit. Anyone want to fill in the gaps? Obviously Mazda is no longer selling the top selling model and Ford is, but was there a swing in sales to Ford, a consolidation of sales on one model or maybe more that people that loved Ford just started buying the bigger cars? Any chance someone knows of some sort of data that helps fill in the gaps?
Replace petrol taxes with a formula based on miles driven and weight of car.
People are surprisingly unkeen on tracking in their car. So kilometers driven wouldn't work.
I'd say just go with a fee based on the weight of the vehicle, exponential of course. We need fewer heavy cars, fewer kilometers driven will be a side effect. And as a bonus effect maybe I'd be able to buy an EV without a range that's 8 times what I actually need.
Odometer reading is a relatively unobtrusive metadatum.
It is recorded when the vehicle is serviced so it is already in someone’s database.
If kms travelled had to be reported annually at the time of registration, no-one will complain (except sov-shit cookers, and they don’t pay rego anyway).
Have you actually driven outside the city here? I need the 400km my EV has to get between capital cities
A child’s skull doesn’t know whether it’s steel or lithium making up that extra 0.5T.
Why would you drive between capital cities? There's public transport for that.
I need to drive from the bush into the nearby major town and back again. 50km round trip.
Eh, people can submit odometer readings once a year with their rego renewal.
Honesty based should be good enough. Penalties can apply if you're caught tampering or severely underreporting.
Double the price of gas. Problem will solve itself.
We have done more than that over the thirty years. It hasn't helped.
$1.65 AUD/L (as per brief google search) is not that expensive. Although, I also find it funny that a Ranger is considered a “large” vehicle. That’s a mini truck in NA. The cousin humper trucks here could literally drive over a Ranger.
I thought that was specifically a North American issue. Damn. Stay safe pedestrians (those drivers of too-large vehicles won't even see you when they run you over)!
Rest of is could vote Green
"Rest of is could vote Green"
"is"? Islamic State?
Oh!... "us"... you meant "us". A typo...
So... the "United States", right?
Am I right?
(I'll shut up now...)