Perhaps because this is just one of the external costs, and these costs are absorbed through taxes (for instance, road wear is higher for heavier vehicles, so lighter car effectively pay for the SUVs and trucks)
There's many instances of direct subsidy going through SUV [0]. I don't remember the exact framing, but basically tariffs and other rules carve out a SUV shaped bubble for US makers to operate with extra low competition, and subsidies will often go there too when they don't want to make it explicit it's only for US makers.
The recent EV plan would be one exception to this, where it's worded straight as a middle finger towards foreign makers.
> instance, road wear is higher for heavier vehicles, so lighter car effectively pay for the SUVs and trucks
The correct answer in that case is to quit wasting time & effort creating taxes for personal vehicles, and just make commercial truckers pay it all. It spreads the cost of the roads around to everyone who benefits (even if you don't have a car, you benefit from the roads existing). And since the damage to roads scales to the fourth power of the axle weight, the difference between a car and SUV isn't too dramatic, compared to the difference between an SUV and a big rig.
> even if you don't have a car, you benefit from the roads existing
That's the most interesting part to me. Trucks using the road is really important to our society, and if everyone benefits from it I'm not sure it makes much sense either to make commercial entities pay in full for it.
The same way railroads where heavily subsidized and water ways are also usually state/government projects, road maintenance could be (and probably is up to a point?) handled at the same level.
My ideal would be to get rid of SUV preferential policies so there is no need to counterbalance their use on other aspects. In a balanced setting, SUVs are rarely a rational choice (cf. the cars that get chosen everywhere else in the world).
> Perhaps because this is just one of the external costs, and these costs are absorbed through taxes (for instance, road wear is higher for heavier vehicles, so lighter car effectively pay for the SUVs and trucks)
The externality we are specifically talking about is the safety risk to others that comes from having a larger vehicle. Other externalities can be solved different ways, but doe this specific one this seems like precisely the scenario addressed by liability insurance.
There's many instances of direct subsidy going through SUV [0]. I don't remember the exact framing, but basically tariffs and other rules carve out a SUV shaped bubble for US makers to operate with extra low competition, and subsidies will often go there too when they don't want to make it explicit it's only for US makers.
The recent EV plan would be one exception to this, where it's worded straight as a middle finger towards foreign makers.
[0] https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Hybrid/story?id=97505&page...