Hacker News Reader

Comment by fcbrooklyn | Hacker News Reader

Your first two examples are cute, but your third has the unfortunate side effect of undercutting your argument. A car you built yourself (or more often a motorcycle) actually _can_ be driven on roads in the US, as long as it has the appropriate indicators (brake lights, turn indicators, headlights). There's a crazy subculture around building bikes that would never in a million years pass muster as production vehicles. (let's drop a chevy small block into a harley).

View on HN

Well, the "appropriate indicators" would need to meet the "required standards" mentioned in the parent post. I think the example is ok.

The indicators are a tiny subset of the actual requirements involved in a production vehicle. In fact, there are examples of European production cars that can't be street legal in the US, and the companies involved chose to simply not sell them here. Smart cars were impacted by this for awhile (no crumple zones), they eventually dealt with the problem though, and as I recall there was a production ferrari that couldn't be driven here because ferrari chose to simply not sell in the US rather than conduct two crash tests or something like that. Can't recall the details.

It was a Porsche, and Bill Gates owned one.

"While most Porsches can import quite easily from Europe to the USA, the 959 had complications abound, making it impossible for US citizens to get their hands on one of these supercars. One of the citizens was Gates, who ordered a 959 from Porsche, only to have it impounded at customs. The reasoning provided to justify the impounding was that the 959 had not yet cleared crash-testing requirements and did not meet EPA standards. Gates’ German supercar sat idly by for over a decade."

https://blog.dupontregistry.com/celebrity-cars/bill-gates-am...

Ah yes! That's the one. And he owned it but could never drive it on public roads. Thanks very much.

> A car you built yourself (or more often a motorcycle) actually _can_ be driven on roads in the US

Such a car cannot be driven on the road within The Netherlands without it being validated as safe (plus some other inspections).

For US, same seems to apply. Per https://www.dmv.org/car-registration.php it mentions: "Pass a vehicle safety inspection.". So again you need to deal with paperwork and read what those safety regulations are.

Yeah, for "specially constructed vehicles" that safety inspection is extremely minimal. For a production vehicle, the requirements are much more extreme, and cost millions to comply with.

Some rules are decided by state. For example, Idaho has no vehicle inspection process, just registration (i.e., paying a fee and getting a license plate and license plate sticker).

FWIW, dmv.org is not an official government site.

Dmv.org is not associated with any government body. Its advice should be taken with a grain of salt as such matters are not uniform across the US. Moreover their state specific info is often a paraphrased summary that only represents best practices and not the full scope of the applicable law.

> A car you built yourself (or more often a motorcycle) actually _can_ be driven on roads in the US, as long as it has the appropriate indicators (brake lights, turn indicators, headlights).

They don't do safety inspections in the US?

Doesn't the vehicle need to have brakes, a means to change direction, emission checks and so on?

TIL in some states they do emissions checks (although in a lot of states motorcycles are totally exempt from those anyway). And no, they don't do safety inspections of "specially constructed vehicles". And based on the ones I've seen, I can't imagine a world in which they'd pass. [1]

[1] http://bosshoss.com/supersport-bike/

However, at least some states (probably most) require a minimum level of insurance from a carrier licensed in the state. There's nothing that requires those carriers to provide insurance to vehicles that don't meet their minimum requirements.

> However, at least some states (probably most) require a minimum level of insurance from a carrier licensed in the state.

Don't most have a bond alternative to insurance?

They vary wildly. Some states (washington used to be this way when I lived there) don't require insurance for motorcycles at all. But yeah, private companies can often make their own rules.

Well, kinda. A lot of states will still require your homebuilt car to pass smog, which requires a new, not-built-yourself engine.

You could build and drive a car you built yourself with no regards for your personal safety - it's your car after all, and it's your business if you get injured. But could you sell such a car?

You could build and use a service with no regards for your personal privacy - it's your service after all, and it's your business if your data gets leaked. But could you offer such a service?

Yep. You could totally sell it, and in fact that's exactly what Boss Hoss motorcycles does. I believe each vehicle has to be unique, or something. Not sure where the line is between these custom vehicles and "production" cars, but it involves the scale of the production. Exactly the kind of exemption people are suggesting for the GDPR.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com