Canada expects to announce this week that all new cars will have to be zero emissions by 2035, a senior government source said, as Ottawa is set to unveil new regulations in the latest example of countries around the world pushing for electrification.
Car insurance only covers a small number of externalities. It does not cover tire particle pollution (tires are the number one source of microplastics in the world), air exhaust pollution, noise pollution, etc etc. Even if they never got into accidents, cars would remain one of the most hazardous things to our health. Cars are also the number one killer of children, by far, and insurance doesn’t bring them back to life.
Agreed that a road tax is a good start. But a road tax wouldn’t cover the fact that bigger cars cause MUCH more of all these harms than smaller cars, so externalities remain.