How costly is our cheap gas in the US?

This national refusal to increase gas taxes—which have gone unchanged at the federal level since 1993—has two enormous impacts on everyday life. The first is that drivers no longer cover the cost of road and bridge maintenance, as the gas tax originally intended. UC Davis scholar Mark Delucchi recently estimated that drivers fall short in this respect by 20 to 70 cents per gallon. General taxpayers have made up the resulting budget gap in recent years, whether they drive or not.

That's not a horrible injustice, since most Americans still travel by car. The far bigger problem is that America's gas taxes are too low to offset what economists call the "externalities" of driving. Don't let the word spook you; all it means is that driving creates all sorts of negative social impacts that aren't being compensated for: personal time and work productivity lost to traffic congestion, lives lost to car crashes, and health risks created by air pollution, to name just a few.

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/01/the-real-reason-us-gas-is-so-cheap-is-americans-dont-pay-the-true-cost-of-driving/384200/

Robert J Sakimano wrote:
plus, it's hard to get a DUI walking home from The Peanut Barrel..