CityNerd's Ray Delahanty tallies the personal costs of driving and then the externalities that car dependency imposes on everyone else, with numbers for each. It is an urbanist case that driving is heavily subsidized and costs society far more than drivers pay.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN commenters cite it as the video version of the research on the social cost of driving when arguing cars impose uncompensated costs on others.
“each mile you drive in your car incurs costs on the rest of society that nobody directly pays”HN comment, 2024
“That paper has a YouTube version on the CityNerd channel”
Video version of the paper on the social cost of automobility.
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I think the mentioned report is "Transport transitions in Copenhagen: Comparing the cost of cars and bicycles" at link Along these lines, in a less scholarly form: "Cost-benefit of cycling infrastructure" - link "Making the Economic Case for Cycling" - link A related paper is "The social cost of automobility, cycling and walking in the European Union", link That paper has a YouTube version on the CityNerd channel, "Cars Are A Disaster For Society -- Here Are the Numbers " this video
Cites itdangusNov 2024
“each mile you drive in your car incurs costs on the rest of society that nobody directly pays”
Supports argument that driving imposes uncompensated costs on society.
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I think about this the other way around. The federal government and other states have artificially low gas taxes that are a direct subsidy of gasoline car dependence. A state like California imposing a tax like this makes them one of the few states that's actually aware how much the consumption of a gallon of gas costs society and manages to charge someone for it. - The federal gas tax has been 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993, and has not increased to account for inflation - Vehicles are more fuel efficient than in the past, which has reduced the demand for gas by the gallon on an individual basis. - The cost of infrastructure materials has increased (e.g., building new roads and bridges) There is a very decent argument to be had that nobody is actually paying the societal cost of driving, that all of society just loses value by driving. In other words, each mile you drive in your car incurs costs on the rest of society that nobody directly pays, and therefore everyone pays. this video
Cites itchriswarboDec 2025
“which I heard about from a CityNerd video”
Source for the externalities of driving versus cycling and walking.
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> TLDR, UK road users pay for far more than the road network. Right, but driving has far more externalities than just the cost of the roads. For example: > Results suggest that each kilometer driven by car incurs an external cost of €0.11, while cycling and walking represent benefits of €0.18 and €0.37 per kilometer. Extrapolated to the total number of passenger kilometers driven, cycled or walked in the European Union, the cost of automobility is about €500 billion per year. Due to positive health effects, cycling is an external benefit worth €24 billion per year and walking €66 billion per year. From "The Social Cost of Automobility, Cycling and Walking in the European Union", link (which I heard about from a CityNerd video this video )
