> Germany's LKW-Maut is a toll for goods vehicles based on the distance driven in kilometres, the emission category of the vehicle and the number of axles.
It's meant to compensate some of these damages caused by high weight. If I remember correctly, road damage scales at a power of four of axle weight. It's billed semi-automatically (wireless stations along the road + device in the truck) and you don't even notice it as a normal driver.
Legal side note: Germany also has a vehicle tax that roughly scales with the size of the vehicle. But this only applies to vehicles registered in Germany. Because of the European Single Market, a lot of trucks running on German highways are registered in foreign countries (esp. Eastern Europe since drivers from those countries draw smaller salaries). The toll was enacted specifically to ensure that those foreign trucks contribute towards road maintenance as well. It does apply to German trucks, too, because the EU has rules against laws that discriminate against foreign EU citizens.
It's incredibly easy for trucks; they're already licensed and weighed. Most trucks in the US already have something in the cab to handle signaling the driver to pull in to the weigh station, implying that adding tracking & billing wouldn't be too hard. We're also starting to see GPS & LTE in the trailers too, to fight theft, so that's an easy integration point.
It's a bit harder with cars, since there's a lot less infrastructure to track usage, and people would rightfully balk at the invasion of privacy.
