Abstract
Congestion and road damage are the two major externalities associated with road transport. These externalities are associated, in general, with different types of vehicles: urban congestion with private cars and road damage with heavy vehicles. The experience of Sub-Saharan Africa (particularly Ghana and Zimbabwe) shows that the road damage externality is much more important than the urban congestion problem in less developed countries, in sharp contrast to the experience of the developed countries. If fuel taxes are used as substitutes for more sophisticated road-user charges, there is no justification for petrol taxes to exceed the taxes imposed on diesel fuel. (Author/publisher).