HOT lanes aren’t sexy, but they’re all the rage among highwaymen.

They haven’t seen a set of car keys at least since Thanks­giv­ing, maybe not even since Labor Day. To make mat­ters worse, the roads in late Decem­ber, thanks to all of that egg nog, are more dan­ger­ous than aver­age. Yet in the spir­it of the sea­son, we par­ents will turn over the keys to the fam­i­ly car and hope for the best.

His­to­ry records an Amer­i­can pub­lic quite will­ing to embrace new tech­nol­o­gy. But recent his­to­ry also shows a grow­ing dis­trust of Big Tech — from app-enabled mobil­i­ty monop­o­lies to social media giants.

A bet­ter solu­tion would use GPS tech­nol­o­gy to price all roads accord­ing to the val­ue that dri­vers place on them at a giv­en time. Such a mar­ket-based sys­tem would replace gaso­line tax­es and cap­ture the mar­gin­al costs dri­vers impose on oth­ers when they use the roads.