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Sounds great! I’m glad my family and our disabled daughter will have to pay more because our wheelchair accessible vehicle is so heavy. I really appreciate your opinion here.

After all, my wife is being very selfish to want to get a terrible gigantic minivan so my four year old can visit with friends and so my wife can transport her without literally popping a hernia (has happened once already!) to move our daughter in and out of the wheelchair on a regular basis.

Maybe I’ll encourage her to get a basket to transport our kid on our backs to get around in a convenient world where we don’t have parking spaces, or perhaps we can have a top unloading vehicle to get her out since the minimum width has been reduced when a handicap spot isn’t available (which considering how many elderly people there are is quite often when we go shopping).

I’m glad developers are forced to make the USA handicap accessible, and would encourage you to consider the knock on effects of the less advantaged when heavy handed legislation is passed to ban “wasteful” vehicles. Minivans and SUVs being mass produced and thus relatively affordable (although still quite expensive) are a ticket for people like my daughter to be able to even leave their houses on a regular basis.



Wouldn't it be even better if people who have a legitimate need, like you, could get the vehicle and associated taxes subsidised or even free, while people who don't need it do pay more for their choice?

(This was the case for a relative of mine in the UK who got a car paid for by her local council because of her husband's disabilities; organised by the same department/funding as pays for caters for him.)


No.

I wrote a long well thought out response but my browser crashed.

The long and short of it is dealing with bureaucrats seems to increase our chances of getting CPS called on us, constantly wearing us down, they tried to get our daughter a tracheostomy and we had to fight against it.

I don’t trust the government to be competent at all. It’s almost like an AI following programming and sometimes incidentally it produces some good outcomes. But it doesn’t care about anything. And it’s filled with people blithely executing in whatever mandate they’ve been given.

We are looking at a privately funded charity to help us, although we could likely afford it in our own.

Government money always comes with strings attached and they act like they own my child.


You have a perfectly legitimate reason for using a large car, and you should advocate for support. Laws can be designed to discourage things bad for society, while not further punishing the disadvantaged. I realize this doesn't always happen the right way, but using that as a blanket reason for not even trying the reduce amount of tanks off the road also doesn't seem reasonable.


The strong interpretation of the GP's proposal is that such a system would include carve-outs for assistive vehicles.


Yeah but that’s not how the market works. Like how there’s effectively no such thing as a market for small trucks because of legislation effectively banning them even if not de facto.

This is just more middle brow intellectuals thinking they can make everything alright and solve the worlds problems when they’ll end up making things worse. If people can afford large vehicles then let them have large vehicles.

For people like us it means a market for used vehicles already exists and I don’t have to rely on the whims of some bureaucrat to approve my vehicle apportionment, comrade.


This is a tragedy of the commons. A tragedy in real terms, that everyone is worse off because of.


Sure, all those trucks, pickups, vans out there are all for disabled people and of course it is totally unthinkable that disabled people could get exceptions. Sorry, your comment actually makes me want to question if you really have a disabled child.

Reduce the number of parking spaces by half for every store and make 10% disabled parking only, 2 disabled parkings minimum and you would be fine. Give a 50% rebate on car tax for cars for disabled people and you should be fine overall.


It makes you question it because it goes against your agenda. Also it’s against the hacker news rules to assume I’m lying.

Also it’s a long con since I’ve been talking about her since she was born, here on Hacker News. But thanks for being rude.


If you don't want to pay more, Don't cause more damage.


Heavier vehicles use more fuel. Roads are paid for based on fuel taxes primarily.

I’m sorry my daughter’s equipment for her wheelchair is causing you such distress and ruining the roads. Let me just sling her over my shoulder and carry her everywhere from now on instead of using all this polluting road destroying equipment.


Instead of being sorry, compensate everyone else for the damages.




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