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WRITE TO autocar@haymarket.com
LETTER OF THE WEEK
Pay per mile
I’ve just read your piece on road pricing (News, 23 February). Surely it must be possible to fit a recorder to electric vehicles that simply measures mileage driven, with no record attached to which roads these miles were actually driven on. This would remove any issues around privacy, because there would be no record of where the car has been. Drivers could elect to pay weekly or monthly via a smart card in the car, and if they don’t pay as agreed, the car could be prevented from driving until payment is made.
Leave internal combustion engine car owners paying fuel duty as they do now.
Pete Nichols
Via email
WIN
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Road tax is a myth
Autocar’s editor, no less, stated in his comment of 23 February: “Unlike road tax (£7 billion raised a year), fuel duty goes straight to the central pot of government funds, rather than simply being used on roads.”
Sorry, Mr Tisshaw, but the road fund, originally set up in 1909 to fund repairs to the roads, was all but defunct by 1926 but soldiered on until 1937 when it was finally abolished, the disc in the windscreen becoming just a tax disc (now vehicle excise duty) with all funds raised from it going into the general fund of all government taxes. No tax on vehicles since then has been earmarked for spending on roads, all of which has been funded from general taxation.