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If a tire tax is to generate enough money for that purpose then it'll significantly increase the cost of tires. As a consequence, lower income earners will not replace their tires when they should, leading to more road accidents.
I'm not a California native, but a quick google search shows that California already has vehicle inspection requirements and if they fail, they are not legal to drive on California roads. Tire wear check could be added as one of those things check and fail it, if tires are in need of replacement.
I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that many many people are driving around on tires that are way below minimum acceptable tread wear here in California. Some of them just don't understand. Some are incompetent. Some are poor.
When I recently got all 4 of my tires replaced I watched the tire techs warn several customers that the tread on their tires was too low and every single one of them said they couldn't afford new tires right now so rotate them and let them leave.
A tire tax would likely just increase the number of people trying to stretch a tire way past it's recommended minimum tread depth for safety in order to save money. This would have a negative effect on road safety in the long run.
Not to mention it would also just incentivise people to put on the hardest and longest lasting rubber they can find meaning that in cold or wet conditions they will have significantly worse performance again leading to more accidents.
The tire tax idea seems like a very bad idea.
It's not just hitting the poor. Like, if it were, you'd only see the poor living paycheck-to-paycheck. But...that's not actually the situation. The bulk of it is going to be financial literacy, which at least when I went through school was not something covered at all. I think that financial literacy is seriously an area where the US doesn't do all that well.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/31/61percent-of-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-even-as-inflation-cools.html
Only time my car has been inspected has been a rare repair or during smog tests, and many are exempt.
Actually, yeah, it was 120,000 mile service. New clutch, water pump, timing belt, and synchro ring. Pretty much the only inspection. Hmmm, timing belt is coming up again...
So the process and infrastructure for automobile checks is already in place. The only changes needed would be to remove the exemptions, and potentially increase the frequency. Many states have annual inspections already.
I should clarify, it was a free inspection, courtesy of the shop, with the car in for a repair I scheduled, not at the request of government.
We so have "star stations" where some vehicles can be selected for more elaborate smog-related inspections, but that can be a crapshoot.
I've had one car pass only if we installed leaky OEM exhaust pipes on, and another fail because it did not have a CARB decal on the catalytic converter. (Fun fact, the cat we were forced to buy and install didn't have a decal either, but it "passed" after. Yeah, it was a shakedown)