What If We Paid the Full Cost of Driving?

Economists use the elasticity of demand with respect to price to estimate this. This tells us how much demand drops as prices increase. The short run elasticity of demand for driving (measured in vehicle miles traveled) with respect to the price of gas is about -0.05, meaning for every 100% increase in the price of gas, there is a 5% decrease in gasoline consumption (which correlates to driving in the short run, in the long run there is also a shift in vehicle fuel economy). So if we hold that to be true for all costs, going from $0.05 per minute to $0.34 per minute is 676% higher cost (a 576% increase), leads me to expect about a 29% reduction in fuel use (mileage) in the short run if people paid their roughly fixed costs plus infrastructure plus externalities of vehicle ownership as variable costs instead. Of course at the magnitude of shift, the elasticity values may no longer hold. In any case, this is no small matter. Certainly the direction is right, countries with much higher fuel taxes see much less driving in general.