This is a common carbrain argument
"I already pay the gas tax"
The problem is that it's false.
In a recent study, researchers Stefan Gössling, Jessica Kees, and Todd Litman calculated the social costs of driving. They found that the social cost is about 30-40% higher than what car owners are actually paying
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800921003943?via=ihub
That cost is paid by non-drivers.
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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
It’s a shame we let those damned bikes take up so much room, and for free too.
And my brother was telling me how bikes don't pay enough of their fair share of the road tax and all that ...
Doing a bit of napkin math here, but presuming an 80kg person in a 1200kg car vs a 15kg bike (commuter and mountain bikes are in this weight range), accounting for average speeds of 50 and 15 mph...
By my count, to do the same amount of damage to the road, as a single car of the above specs, you'd need somewhere between 30 and 50 thousand bikes travelling down the same road, in 4-5 columns.
And that's a pessimistic estimate.