Aside from the privacy concern, I am not clear about the concept, that is, the reason for the tax because it penalizes people who have made good choices in their vehicles. It taxes a Humvee and a Prius at the same rate? One could argue that someone who chooses a fuel intensive vehicle would not care about another cost added to their ride and would just pay it. So the tax will largely be additional pressure on people who have already done the right thing. Since car cost and impact on the environment and on the infrastructure are almost always related to the wealth of the person buying the car it is a regressive tax ending up being a bigger proportion of income for someone who buys a VW Polo than someone who buys a large Mercedes. It does nothing to encourage someone to buy a smaller, more fuel efficient auto.

It seems to me that increasing the fuel tax would be wiser and more effective hitting hardest at the vehicles which impact the fuel use and the infrastructure the most.

There is also the concern that something similar will be applied in areas where large segments of the population do not have a public transportation system that will get them where they need to go. They will be taxed for behavior they would have no control over. Not exactly a good outcome for a tax the stated purpose of which is to modify behavior.

Just one more thing. When people are presented with something like this where there is a disconnect between what it does and its stated purpose and it invades areas of privacy never done before, people start looking for hidden motives.

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Where does it say they're *replacing* the gas tax with mileage tax?

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Looks like I misread. Correction, the tax will be in lieu of the sales and ownership tax on new automobiles. I would still prefer a gas tax increase instead of the sales and ownership taxes, since the total revenue can be made the same. However, the cost to drivers would be distributed BOTH on how much they drive and what they drive/how economically they do so.

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KK, the privacy concern is, in fact, valid, and here's why. While it is true that the government must ensure the safety of its citizens by curbing crime and otherwise providing for their safety, giving them too much leeway in doing so promotes abuse of the system. Let me give a few examples of what can happen:

Ex. 1: Let's say you are someone who, for some completely legal reason, angered a local politician or other government official with ties to organized crime (of which there is plenty in the Netherlands). Said official can bribe someone to track you and intimidate/threaten you or your family, or worse.

Ex. 2: Let's say you work at the agency responsible for the GPS tracking. You don't have much respect for the law and you want money. You can track someone wealthy and get your buddies to carjack or kidnap that person.

Ex. 3: Let's say you work at said agency and you are a pervert. You can use the system to stalk women/other people when they are driving.

Ex. 4 (very slim possibility): The government becomes hostile to its own people and uses GPS tracking as a way to keep people in line.

KK, planes are different. Flying a plane involves special certifications that are difficult and expensive to maintain, and because there are no physical "roads" in the air, artificial ones must be made by aviation agencies to maintain communications between traffic controllers and planes regarding their location and flight paths. This is the only way that safe and efficient air travel can happen.

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Thedman, kudos to you on the textbook example of the "slippery slope" argument.

"Next thing you know..." and "whats to stop them from..." and "sooner or later they will..."

Sorry but that is a logical fallacy for many reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

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thedman - your argument seems to boil down to: "the government shouldn't have this information, because someone in the government can break the law and use it for inappropriate purposes." But we already trust the government with military secrets, classified technology, social security records, tax records, census records, etc. It makes no sense to draw the line at car GPS data.

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I had to lol pretty hard reading all the comments worrying about privacy. Most coming from Americans I guess, but hey, everyone has their little cultural oddities. It's just funny to me as an European because among the countries of Europe, NL is one of the last places I'd think of when it comes to pondering the potential to become bleak, oppressive orwellian surveillance states. I can't imagine the GPS idea gaining much political support, when it's obviously much more convenient to use the odometer reading from the annual tech inspection which is being recorded anyway for insurance purposes. It's not like the Dutch don't have a strong civil rights movement either, as exemplified by their progressive stance in areas like same-sex marriage, drug legalization or euthanasia.

As far as discouraging people from buying efficient cars and driving economically goes, that doesn't really hold any water. For one there's still the gas tax, secondly EU emission laws and national incentives still apply,but most importantly, from the AFP article:

"Every vehicle type will have a base rate, which depends on its size, weight and carbon dioxide emissions."
The 3 cents is an estimate for a "standard family saloon", think Ford Mondeo or Audi A4.

All in all, it's a very fair proposal because it only taxes drivers according to their impact on infrastructure and environment. Living just across the border, I'd gladly take it over the German system which is basically an "ownership tax" and thus fundamentally unjust.

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I also greet the proposition from the Netherlands with open arms. As for the privacy, anyone who bought a GM-vehicle in North America in the last 10 years drives about with a GPS and I don't hear anyone complaining.

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Onstar is on if you pay for it. Even though it is free for the first year in many cars, you can opt out if you choose. also, you don't have to buy a GM car. Some of us prefer less government intervention in our lives.

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OnStar doesn't continuously send location information back to OnStar headquarters, it only sends your GPS location when assistance is requested or the airbags deploy in an accident.

In an accident situation, the average sane person would want OnStar to know exactly where they were so help could be sent right away.

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And who dispatches the ambulance? 911(i.e. gov)? would it not be quicker to just have the gov know first instead of, accident, GM, 911, response, just have accident, 911, response.
On another note you seem to trust GM so much that you feel they only track you if you subscribe or pay for it. Do you not think they may be obtaining driving habit profiles and/or locations of where their product is going and using that to sell more specific and targeted vehicles. Perhaps seeing which options are sold to people who drive more or less. Perhaps seeing how far someone is driving per year and then having specific parts fail so they would need to be fixed. I would bet you anything they do this. No but that is crazy talk! No company has never in the history of business abused it's customers information.
A simple odometer linked to the normal one, or a yearly check would work just fine, and thus would avoid the whole issue of "big brother" I am sorry you fear your government, perhaps you should make them accountable to you instead of just griping on the net about them. Take this idea off the screen you are looking at and look at the wall beside you and remember you have power and you can make change.

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In addition to airbag deployment and impact severity, the Vehicle Comm and Interface Module can also record whether you're wearing your seatbelt or how fast you're driving. It keeps data related to events immediately before, during and after a crash for about 45 days. The Call Center retains received information for over a year so that it can maintain quality and follow-up on customer complaints.

OnStar says that it passes this information on to auto manufacturers to improve vehicle safety. However, critics speculate that it could also be used to:

clear auto manufacturers of wrongdoing
deny warranty repairs
find you at fault in an accident
increase your car insurance premiums or change your coverage

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/onstar4.htm

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Event Data Recorders
Although OnStar is relatively new, event data recorders are not. GM first used a type of event data recorder (EDR) in the mid-1970s in conjunction with air bags, and the technology has continued to evolve. In the mid-1990s, GM began using them in racecars and some passenger vehicles to collect crash-related data. Today the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) estimates that 65 percent to 90 percent of vehicles in the United States contain some type of EDR. Often the driver doesn't even know that it's there [ref]. In 2004, the National Highway Traffic Saftey Administration recommended that EDRs installed in vehicles built after September 1, 2008 meet a set of minimum standards. The NTSB wants to go one step further and make standardized EDR installation mandatory for all manufacturers.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/onstar2.htm

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