Quote:
Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Interesting proposal going around in Texas that will never see the light of day:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...story2/2828417
I think it's an interesting proposal, but privacy concerns are certainly going to have to be taken into consideration. There are some pretty legitimate reasons people wouldn't want the government monitoring their every movement.
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A few thoughts. If someone posted image recognition cameras to capture plates on all cars at every entrance and exit of the Dan Ryan and the Eisenhower in Chicago, the stolen car problem would be cut in half in a few days. Specifically, you put in the cameras and run each recognized plate as it enters and exits. I know the software is out there, and I know there is no right to privacy against having your plate imaged and ran, so I just don't know why its not being done. Send out an alert with the plate, the car and the location every time a plate hits in the computer.
As to your topic, there are companies out there that provide all kinds of tracking chips for tracking products. One of the next Big Ideas I've heard discussed is stuff like what IDSY (that's a Nasdaq stock symbol, I forget the company's name) is doing. Basically, put a chip in all the cars and just track when they pass certain points on the highway. That covers highway-trips at least. I'd be veeery interested in doing this to trucks, as loaded trucks should absorb the costs of road-damage on highways at least.
Otherwise, I like the year-end mileage idea with something like an exponential increase in payments by pounds per tire.
I don't think the problem is constitutional here; nor do I think you are suggesting it is. Rather, the issue might be considered political. One, the idea of a tax on something Americans have been trained to love. The second is the privacy concern.
I think the first could be addressed by implementing the tax along with a 1% decrease (or something like that) across the board in income taxes. If somebody just explained that people are being fairly taxed based on how much harm they are causing to the environment and the roads, I suspect 60-75% of Americans would buy-in. And I don't think the privacy issue is all that much a concern, but the G can be held to promises for any tracking system such that the data would not be available for enforcement of traffic or criminal laws.
As for the GPS stuff, the applications have come a long way in just a few years. However, GPS applications require more than just receipt of the synchronized GPS signals by a moving car. They also require something in the car to provide the information to whoever is doing the tracking. In other words (and I'd guess that you and most others here know this), GPS satellites don't track anything. Its the systems that receive the GPS signals that either track, or are used to track, stuff.
Political or Constitutional? I'm guessing no Constitutional concerns, but somebody may have a decent argument here that I haven't heard or considered.
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