While surfing the Planetizen blog, I came across a very cool posting on the possible benefits of per-mile car insurance. Josh Stephens, the author, has some great points about how pay as you drive – in other words, the more miles you drive per year, the more you pay in insurance – could work to enhance public transportation, motivate urban planning, and further decrease our collective carbon output. While there are surely some issues that would need to be worked out before it could become a fair and effective system, as Josh writes in his post, “when money is at stake, behavior becomes eerily predictable.” Meaning that with a monetary incentive, a large percentage of our human vagaries (which are often what keep some of the best ideas from working) become non-issues. It’s a great idea, and seems like the only logical next step as our country becomes ever more aware of the environmental implications of our daily lives. We’ll just have to wait and see which insurance company becomes the innovator to start the ball rolling – or, in the case of a wheel, to stop it.

Filed under: I'On Group, Urban Sustainability on April 28th, 2008