Homebuilt pickups: How underage teens skirt the law to drive in Sweden (2016)
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Personally I hope they get banned, because I am pretty tired of being passed on my morning commute by often multiple (EP)A-traktors going 100km/h on a 70 km/h road, driven by someone without a driver's licence.
That is the reality. Not the romaticism in the article.
It has been somewhat of a sport to find new sneaky ways to make the cars go fast and/or quickly lock and unlock the car with a hidden lever.
And most of the cars are in rural areas with little police presence. Outside of urban areas sweden is very sparsely populated. My parents live out in bum-fudge nowhere with something like 2 people per square km. Up there every other 15 year old has an EPA-traktor.
Still, I hope you took down the plate number(s) and reported it.
The case you’re talking about is a very very small minority and that driver would probably drive a car illegally if they didn’t have access to an (EP)A.
The vast majority of vehicles in this class is unable to go 100km/h.
Where would you stick the license plate on a tractor?
https://www.lantra.co.uk/sites/default/files/course_images/t...
Different countries different rules, plates on these vehicles would be great anyhow, but I can see why it's not required.
They're not at a high risk of speeding at the same time as that.
That being said, I would find it likely that the local police would already be aware of these hooligans and where to find them.
I am personally a car person and absolutely love the idea of an EPA in general but I've seen both crashes from them going dangerously slow (30kph on E4an, a motorway where everyone does 120-150kph) and also 250-300kph trying to outrun the police because it's a 15 year old that panics when they see the police because they were going slightly over 30kph, and conclude that flooring their overtuned Volvo 740 and escaping the police is the only thing they can try to not get a license suspension when they become 18.
The issue is that 15 year olds are just that, 15 year old kids.
>Sixteen- to 19-year-olds represent 3.9% of licensed drivers, but account for 8.6% of drivers in all crashes and 6.0% of drivers in fatal crashes.
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/age-of-dr...
Especially since those are the least experienced drivers. I wonder how 18-21 drivers look in countries with a higher age.
Though one way to look at it is that a teen driver today is just as safe/dangerous as an average driver 20 years ago, much safer than an average driver 30 years ago, and over twice as safe as an average driver 40 years ago. At least as far as fatalities go.
You would have to look at number of all collisions, not just fatalities to get any idea if today’s teens are safer compared to teens in the past.
Yes, that's my point. When cars are vastly safer, maybe it's not so bad to let moderately worse drivers be on the road.
> You would have to look at number of all collisions, not just fatalities to get any idea if today’s teens are safer compared to teens in the past.
Depends on what kind of safety you're worried about. Also I couldn't find any raw collision statistics.
Tell that to the pedestrians, cyclists and motorcycle drivers and see what they will say.
Andrew Gounardes, a NYS senator, attempted to push through a bill that would require additional ‘pedestrian safety’ ratings be posted for vehicles for sale in the state[1]. But otherwise, I don’t know any other state that has any safety ratings for people outside of the vehicles in the US
[0] https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/Ped%20Spotl...
What I'm getting at is that while we should improve car vs pedestrian design, I don't think pedestrians are a reason to say teens shouldn't drive.
Feel free to cite some sources and specify what you mean by a small fraction... The United states is large and I can point to several areas where pedestrian and cyclist injuries and fatalities are not a small fraction. They tend to be where people are allowed to walk and bike and not just areas where it's only legal or feasible to drive.
> The average crash kills more occupants than pedestrians
In the United States, that is by design. Besides a handful of primarily coastal cities, you cannot legally or feasibly bike or walk in many places.
> I don't think pedestrians are a reason to say teens shouldn't drive.
I can't find anywhere in this thread that anyone was making a claim that teens shouldn't be able to drive. I believe people were saying we shouldn't allow people who are, statistically speaking, the least capable of driving safely to drive just because they'll be safer if they crash. We shouldn't lower our already extremely low bar for driving standards just because cars are getting bigger and occupants are more likely to survive when they run into a person or a tree.
I'd be perfectly fine with a driving age of 16, as long as the license was limited to vehicles that were under a specific size/weight and our driving standards and tests were greatly improved... With states like Georgia moving ahead with allowing anyone to get a license only with parental approval[0], I have no faith in things getting any better.
[0] https://www.complex.com/life/2020/04/georgia-drops-driving-t...
https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/Ped%20Spotl...
I cite this source and it says 17%
> I can't find anywhere in this thread that anyone was making a claim that teens shouldn't be able to drive.
To be clear I meant "under 18" there when I said "teens", because that's the group for which the law differs by country. "teenage minors" is normally what that word means to me.
So specifically, the chain of conversation went like this:
"The issue is that 15 year olds are just that, 15 year old kids. "
"How come 16 year old kids can drive just fine in the US?"
I very much read that as talking about whether teens are a hazard and should be able to drive, deliberately making a comparison to 18+ rules in Sweden.
"They can't. [...] Sixteen- to 19-year-olds represent 3.9% of licensed drivers, but account for 8.6% of drivers in all crashes and 6.0% of drivers in fatal crashes."
That continues the same comparison. Then I argued that the total rate of fatalities has been dropping tremendously, so teens these days are less of a hazard than non-teens in decades past.
> I believe people were saying we shouldn't allow people who are, statistically speaking, the least capable of driving safely to drive just because they'll be safer if they crash.
Do you mean Aeolun's comment? It's definitely not what I meant and nobody replied to that comment. So I don't think that's what the conversation was about.
> We shouldn't lower our already extremely low bar for driving standards just because cars are getting bigger and occupants are more likely to survive when they run into a person or a tree.
I'm not sure which age bar you're talking about, but honestly it depends on what you're trying to optimize for. And it's not just occupants surviving more. People in other cars survive more, and if you look back at the same years pedestrians survive more too! In the last few years the pedestrian fraction of vehicle deaths has been 16-17% of 1.15 deaths per hundred million miles, and in the late 70s it was 16-17% of 3.3 deaths per hundred million miles. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
The improvement is less if you go per capita instead of per 100 million miles, but it's still a big improvement.
And yes I'm aware that pedestrian deaths hit a low point and have been rising in the last few years, which is a real problem, but they're still significantly lower than they used to be.
Back in the day when costs were lower it was much more common to reconcile things without involving third parties and the legal requirements for max damage in low speed collisions were much more stringent.
They're also the only cohort that can't legally drink, which probably lowers their fatality rate somewhat.
It's driven (no pun intended) by a culture around cars and driving being a right, without consideration for whether everyone should.
Like a small city in Calfornia vs. Barcelona was a world of difference. The US has lots of wide, straight roads instead of the nightmare of one-way streets, bus lanes, bike lanes, mopeds and motorcycles etc. in Europe.
The challenges are different, but the probability of a fatal collision is higher in the US, whether per person or per vehicle, than in most EU countries. This doesn't surprise me, and it's not just due to driver training.
Navigating small streets built before cars is very likely to lead to broken side mirrors and scratched paint, but not injury or death. Misusing a bus lane gets you angry honking and gesturing from bus drivers and maybe a ticket from the police, but not injured or killed. A low-speed car-on-moped collision is bad of course, but not as bad as a car on one of those wide, straight American roads running a red light at 60 MPH and crashing into your driver's door at a right angle.
Here's a study with evidence that very wide lanes result in people driving faster and crashing more frequently, a particularly bad combination for safety.
https://www.academia.edu/12488747/Narrower_Lanes_Safer_Stree...
I find this hard to believe, a shoebox with wheels going that fast, even with the most powerful engine (2.0 L, 200 hp stock).
You can actually quite reliably get 450-500hp out of a 2.3 redblock without even spending that much money, redblocks are notorious in tuning communities for this, almost like the 2JZ of Sweden
And I think you're actually agreeing with GP here, since the outcome of those attempted escapes are typically fatal accidents rather than teen escaping.
Over time, the rubber loses its resilience, and doesn't keep things located as they should be for best handling.
Metal on metal pivots wear as well, springs get less springy, dampers degrade in damping ability, etc.
You're unlikely to notice at regular speeds, apart from getting in a new car and the handling feeling sharper. I presume at high speed and under the sorts of maneuvers one might try as a teenager doing teenager things, the results could vary.
It is absolutely baffling to me that these things are allowed on roads where they can only manage less than half the speed limit.
I can understand that slow traffic can be quite annoying, but calling it a safety hazard puts the blame on the wrong party.
Shift blame to the pedestrians instead of the cars.
This is partly for safety of course, but it is also intended to support throughput. People and goods do not flow easily in cities where trucks move at walking speeds.
Just by looking at tractors, cyclists and pedestrians you know they are not going very fast, but a car going 20mph where the limit is 50mph is insanely dangerous because your brain instinctually thinks the car is going about as fast as you are and you have to get quite close to pickup the speed difference.
Here in Denmark you can get a fine for going too slow, it's called being an unnecessary nuisance.
It is an entirely different matter, that one isn't allowed to drive unnecessarily slow to not block the following traffic. This is about the traffic flow, not of safety.
The thing that annoys me is that there is not even cursory control that these cars are used in connection with agriculture. It was fine in the past, because it was relatively rare that the regulation was abused. After a recent change in the law that made it cheap/easy to convert regular cars, it has become a menace.
https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/teena...
Both are bizarre and unsafe solutions to the problem that the Nordics have a driving age of 18, and yet, people under 18 who live outside the city still need to go places.
Nordic politicians in the cities pleasure themselves to the thought of a world without cars (cars and gasoline are taxed into oblivion), while ignoring the reality that the sparsely populated nordics lack the density necessary for good public transportation outside of the central districts of the biggest cities.
So if you’re a young person who does sports or has an after-school job, you’re out of luck if you don’t have well-off parents with a flat in city.
Hence, this weird outcome.
I come from a town of about 30k, and I’ve never once felt the need to go anywhere outside of town for any of those things. Given the total number of sports or work locations available, I think that’ll hold true until around the 5k people mark.
As far as I can see it’s not really related to being well-off or not. More related to expectations.
The towns that are "important regional centers" in Northern Scandinavia are often smaller than that.
For a more northerly North American example, High Level Alberta, Canada has a population of 3100 and a service population of 20k. First settlers in 1947, it was incorporated in 1965. There is a paved airstrip long enough for a 747, and a hospital.
It would be the sleepiest of little villages in southern Europe and/or the USA, and would have a service area not much bigger than its population.
The further north you go, the more towns have and require outsized services.
I don’t think it invalidates the point that you can’t expect to find all amenities if you live in a community that cannot support them.
I’d be willing to bet that 95% of people lives in more populated places, and 90% of the remaining 5% lives so out of the way by choice (e.g. if they _wanted_ to move closer to a more populated place it wouldn’t be an undue financial burden).
The place I grew up was around 1k.
Even in America, 30K is not a small town. I've lived in and visited probably a hundred places with populations in the hundreds or low thousands.
There are counties in America bigger than New Jersey with less than a thousand people.
There was the initiative to install a speed limiter to regular cars to turn them into "light cars" for kids but that didn't pass for some reason. EU regulations? How is it possible in Sweden?
Countryside can be really sparse, with current amount of people a kid's nearest friend might live 5 km away. Cars make so much sense there. Lots of people learn to drive really young with a "peltoauto", a field car. That's legal as it's on private property.
Edit: He lives in Fairbanks, where the fat bike originated. He doesn't ride one since he doesn't like the bounce, but people ride them all winter for fun. I think, like many places, the key is having trails to ride on to improve safety.
You'll wish you were in a car the whole time you're doing it though.
Of course, the availability of trails has a huge impact on that choice and it's safety. Sled dogs, snow machines, and now other bike rider make sure that there are lots of trails all over.
If so, good for you, you rugged badass! But I’m not sure we need to force everybody to do the same.
Just get a good bicycle light (B&M have some dynamo powered 80lux or 100lux lights) and then it's easily possible.
Basically, some parts of the country are really "car country" - and it makes total sense there.
One shouldn't try to shoehorn cars into city centers, I agree about that. This is something else.
We have excellent driver training, including training how to drive in slippery conditions, cars have regulation that they need automatic light leveling, there's yearly checkups for cars etc.
Cars with proper winter tires is far easier to keep steady, than a bike. Especially if windy.
Most teens out here drive tractors to get around. Personally, I'd prefer if Finland went the Swedish route here - an old Volvo with limited speed is still less dangerous than a large tractor.
I grew up in rural Michigan, so similar weather and density to the Nordic countries. There are PLENTY of times when driving is perfectly safe and I wouldn't bike. And I prefer walking/biking to driving most of the time.
So, pretty much outside city limits in every state in America that gets snow?
Teens die a lot because of gross errors in judgement, drunkenly flying off a cliff on their way to prom with eight people in the car, that kind of stuff. Those kinds of errors mostly tangential to snow and lighting.
I live in a rural area. I can think of exactly four street lights that are within a 10-mile radius of my home, and I'm not that far outside town. So yeah, it's pretty dark at night.
Yes, roads around here are mostly cleared of snow and ice, but they're still dirt/gravel roads and the snow is usually pushed off to the shoulders where a bicycle would be riding, and even then, I'm sure you can understand that dirt absorbs water and will then refreeze. It's not a particularly safe place to be riding a bike.
This is exactly the circular problem that everyone in Sweden always points at: the roads are too dangerous and poorly developed for people to cycle on safely - therefore the answer is... more cars driving unsafely on the roads, making them too dangerous for cyclists.
It's a car-culture here. Nothing will ever happen to change that.
Incidentally, anyone romanticizing this as some sort of grassroots, badass rebellious movement should bear in mind that around big cities like Stockholm, parents buy their teenage kids Porsches to be converted to EPA-traktors.[0]
[0] https://www.dn.se/sthlm/han-kor-porsche-i-30-kilometer-i-tim...
Riding a bike in Finland seems to work just fine, given decent infrastructure. (Where "given decent infrastructure" is a constraint for practically any vehicle).
This is what the roads looks like in the rural areas during winter https://www.google.com/search?q=maantie+talvella&source=lnms...
Rain is even worse than snow by the way. Wind is also killing. But if it was a snowy day with not much wind, cycling is actually fun.
For the occupant yes. Less so for everyone around.
> that didn't pass for some reason.
It's still a 1500kg block of steel in the hands of people with lesser developed sense of danger (still applies to some adults but that is a different discussion). I get the "people need to go places" but apparently there are no adults who can provide the "service" of driving someone somewhere in the countryside.
The tractor exception was valid in my place as well and was dealt with in a updated law, it's not european afaik simply most countries banning it.
In the US people start driving at 16, no? In Austria and Germany you can get an early license with 17.
I got my moped license with 15, but that is probably a hard sell in the north ...
I'd say reduce the age at which people can get a license, make drivers education better, and put a limit on horsepower (same way it is done with motorcycle licenses).
Also several of my friends got mopeds at 14 and would drive them around town. Not good for driving on gravel roads but was great for the kids in town.
The farm kids out of town would drive their parents trucks/cars in and around their property starting around 13/14 but that was generally to haul feed and equipment around.
There are limitations- an accompanying adult, number of non adult passenger restrictions to limit distractions etc, but the reality is they are still in control of the vehicle.
Out in the country, it is relatively common to drive yourself to school the last year or two. Trying to raise the age to 18 would not go over well at all!
What do kids who aren't old enough for homebuilt pickups do to visit such friends?
Heated bridges? I've never seen one and roads are not even fully desnowed in my town.
My dad and friends used to do 50 mile round trips on bikes back in the day. I hung out and talked to people online. It was also normal to do things like go home with a friend after school to hang out and have a parent pick you up when they got out of work, or hang out at practices after school. So it's doable but it requires a lot more logistics on the part of the adults, which is why everybody's happy when the kids can drive.
It's a remnant of wartime legislation, when farmers had a genuine need to be able to use modified old cars for field work, because real tractors weren't available. In return for the lighter taxation on farm equipment, they were glad to accept the requirement; probably had to gear them down anyway, to be able to pull a plow etc.
So they're legally registered as tractors, not cars. The moniker "EPAtraktor" has nothing to do with the US Environmental Protection Agency; it's an originally derogatory reference to Enhets(P)ris(A)ktiebolaget, a long-defunct low-price retail chain. So, ~ "Dollar Store tractor". (Or "Alepatraktori"?)
The founders were literate and routinely wrote down their thoughts (see citations at the bottom of wikipedia).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_S... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_C... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise
Consider that in Canada's House of Parliament, we similarly have votes in rural areas overrepresented compared to their urban counterparts. Did that system arise from slavery as well? Of course it didn't, and any Canadian suggesting so would be laughed at.
Can you explain why? I probably have a childlike understanding of the histories of Parliament and slavery in Canada.
The reality is that the early US was a lot more similar to a federation of independent states at its birth than today. A senate ensured the spirit of a federation would be kept.
This book definitely agrees with GP and disagrees with you. You might want to check it out.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/our-governm....
[2] https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2012/12/before-there-w....
Here's the 1802 house just to drive the point home. I suggest sorting by the "seats" column
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1802_and_1803_United_States_Ho...
In addition, the public transportation system has been steadily declining in the last 30 years. If I remember right, they even removed laws some time in the early 2000s that required public bus service in remote areas. I also recall that it wasn't that uncommon for lines to be usually empty or with just a handful of passengers, but this was part of the costs of having an available public mass transportation system. They also combined the then national postal service with bus service so that those mostly empty buses provided a secondary service of transporting mail.
I don't think so: Back in the days when Mum was more likely to be a housewife, families were also much more likely to possess only one car, rather than two. And that one car was parked outside Dad's job during the workday, so Mum couldn't drive the kids anywhere unless Dad was around to do it himself anyway.
A crappy car that cost around or less than $1000, standing there for the primary reason that two adults with children has an occasional use for a secondary car.
But then I take a deep breath and think about the perspective of the teenagers here. Often stuck in rural parts of Sweden with little or no public transport. And taking the bicycle or the moped in -10C is not very appealing.
The freedom it brings means everything for them.
That said - in my area (relatively populated) I have not seen them speeding.
I have helped a friends son with such a coversion this year: It doesn't take that much really. Just an electronic box that kills the spark coils when the box senses that the drive axel is spinning too fast, and a big plywood box to make the back seat unusable.
Electronic conversions where made simpler to put them more in line with the EU moped car class (except those can do 20 km more per hour).
I think one recent trend is that these cars are not primarily a "out in the sticks"-thing any more: Most new conversions are done by (small) town kids, who drive around in the town, not out on the dirt roads.
Actually, they are getting very common in Stockholm and the type of base car is more often a newer more expensive model, like BMW 5 series, Porsche Cayenne, Nissan Navarra etc.
I have even seen an example of a Dodge RAM 1500 EPA.
https://www.pinterest.com/amp/pin/827888343996178331/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CC0lhSan6XX
Looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4PqGzzhaXo
It's called "Ellenator" after the inventor: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellenator
It was just where all the kids cross the road to school. That was when I changed my mind from "youthful fun" to "ban them".
More than half of all dangerous situation I have been in concerning cars have involved EPA-traktors.
Now whenever one is coming I either walk in the ditch on the side of the road or jump to the other aide of it.
Driving from where I lived to the closest school I was usually passed by 2-5 EPA-traktors, despite driving 80km/h.
I could go on.
At least a driver with a license have been officially trained with security in mind.
Those EPA drivers are, actually, teenagers trained by their teenagers friends. It’s normal for teenagers to underestimate risks and dangers.
That’s basically why a licence is needed to drive : not to explain you how to control a car (that’s a rather simple skill) but how to act on the shared road.
While I don't doubt that some people would not give a shit and self-learn and drive the A-tractors without a license anyway, at least lowering the age for a license would mean that those who want to be safer can get it.
You could even attach restrictions to said license that incentivise safer driving over time - a teenage license can be obtained at 15 but comes with some restrictions that get lifted over time (unless caught breaking the rules) and inherently "converts" to a full license by the time you're 18 assuming you haven't lost it beforehand due to unsafe driving.
Then somebody figured out that some real cars can have their software 'downgraded' to limit the car to 45 km/h, and it can be classified as a moped.
I forgot what was done to get rid if this loophole.
That wouldn't apply as you need a moped license for those back when they were allowed and a tractor license now. There is no "only this type" revocation in the law in the Netherlands and you lose all your licenses. And yes that means driving drunk in your car on Sunday as a truck driver can cost you your job.
I make do with my hatchback and rarely rent or borrow a truck, but there really isn't a good option for "small, economical, but can carry long/wide items once every month or two". At least nothing that's currently produced (old S-10's and Rangers, etc. are hard to find and cost way more than they would as "commodity" cars).
Utility trailers are not very popular? Over here in Sweden that is the go-to answer rather than buying a special purpose cargo car.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailer_(vehicle)#/media/File:...
It's very rare to see a vehicle here that isn't a pickup to have a towing hitch installed.
Or rent them for like a few euros/hours on a gas station.
So you don't really need a parking space.
There are a couple companies here that rent trucks/trailers and focus their marketing towards people that are moving. Their base rates for the trucks and trailers are the same and start in the same $20 ballpark. The trucks are a little more expensive for long moves as they have a per-mile surcharge if you exceed a certain distance with them. Most people still opt for the trucks over the trailers with the rarity of cars with tow hitches installed.
Those are utes! You don't see them about as much as you used to, but they've been big in Australia for decades. Not home-built, and regulated like other cars, but that's what they look like!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ute_(vehicle)
(They are also popular with young people, and have a bad rep for causing accidents. This is more because they are usually massively overpowered, and all the weight is on the front.)
I assume the reasoning was, so farmers don't try to get the more favourable tax rate for a tractor applied to something they actually use as a pickup truck. Real tractors don't have big load beds either.
I cry a little bite about the mercs and bmws though, some would have had much more value in restauration than conversion to a mobility scootesr :/
They should have just limited the ECU of the more modern cars and once you turn 18 they remove the limits. In germany we do that do the heavy bikes for young people
- has to be road-worthy before the conversion
- must be modified to ensure that they can’t transport more than two passengers including the driver
- rear cabin wall can’t be more than 10 centimeters (about four inches) away from the front seats
ok so can anyone tell me - which midship convertible don't fulfill these criteria?
You probably can't understand this video[1] but just look at it, it's a 14 year old kid being interviewed about his mechanic interest out on his family's farm.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-_DNllO0hE
That channel have interviewed John several times since, he's a wizard with engines and always has work to do around the farm or for his friends.
Heck, I'm a greybeard, and I've never seen an EPA store.
Looks like there are moped licenses available at 16 but those licenses also allow these converted 'tractors'.
Made me pronounce it Trücklå.
Sadly, I failed to find a good El Camino pun name.