The correct lesson to learn from this is that the car manufacturers should make small, light, safe cars (cf HyperCar from RMI[*]) which will both a) benefit the drivers and the environment (safer and cleaner); and b) remove the irrational decisions made by stupid pressures that lead people to buy hummers.
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Yes.
In the US, rail transport cannot completely replace personal and commercial vehicles for reasons you've patiently explained time and again (much having to do with terrain).
A Wojtekian 'punish the driver' program, the mainspring of which is a hope you can whip people via financial distress towards rail, would be unwise and damaging.
It would be much more productive to pursue robust deployment of rail where it can be robustly deployed (the super dense corridors along the US coasts immediately come to mind...no doubt other zones could use rail much more heavily than is the current fashion - in an ideal world, the US Dept of Transportation would be tasked with analyzing the best areas) while mandating vehicles with sharply reduced - and eventually eliminated - carbon outputs.
I'm done with moralist condemnations of people for selecting from the short menu of choices (from a carbon concern POV) available in showrooms. Give them (us) better vehicles, less destructive vehicles, and we'll happily buy them.
.d.