How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania
danwilkerson.com
danwilkerson.com
As others have noted, these are fantastic utility vehicles, which have an important place in many rural areas. They can come with many important features like 4x4, diff-lock, dump beds, etc, all with a very reasonable 660cc serviceable engine.
I personally suspect that this push comes from lobbying by side-by-side manufacturers, like John Deere and Polaris (which go new starting at $16k).
[0] - https://www.thedrive.com/news/42057/rhode-island-is-trying-t...
(1) https://www.princeedwardisland.ca/en/information/transportat...
(I assume the "and" in the list on that page is the conversational meaning, not the legal meaning, since there aren't very many 25-year-old street sweeping mail trucks out there.)
PEI feels like the perfect sized province for a kei truck!
Government says "no" for no good reason other than corruption. And we all just sit back and take it. Hmm.
If a manufacturer made a truck similar (or slightly larger - not much room for people 6' and over in them) available for the market here, I'm sure they'd sell well. Seems like the biggest impediment is the safety laws here though and American insistence on having the biggest vehicle on the road.
People do import <25 year old kei type vehicles for use exclusively on private property on large ranches and such.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Motor_Vehicle_Safety_S...
google "usa 25 year import car rule".
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=USA+25+ye...
Whether categorically blocking kei car registrations is consistent with the laws of some of the states doing it is a question in some ongoing lawsuits, though.
Marijuana regulations and firearms (and limitations of different types of firearms) are two obvious examples. Other things like per-state family leave laws for employees, employment law, landlord tenant law as well.
Definitely! Especially here on HN. A lot of the questions & criticisms I see from people outside the US likely stem from ignorance about how the government of US is constructed. The states really are very powerful, even ~250 years into the experiment.
“Do non-americans realize that the United States is literally just a bunch of countries in a trench coat that agreed to be semi-nice to each other in order to sneak into the Big Boy Club? Because let’s be honest that’s just what the USA is”
Well the US was hardly the first to take that approach!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdo...
However, I would point that here in the UK I suspect most people are actually completely unaware of the fact that there are multiple legal and education systems in our "country of countries".
And in fact, the states hold absolute power over the federal government because the Constitution can be amended by a two-thirds majority of the states. Absolutely noone in the federal government, including Congress and the Supreme Court, can get in their way because the federal government derives their power from the states.
The only entity that the states answer to is the people, from whom the states derive their powers.
Or 2/3 majority of both houses to propose and 3/4 of state legislatures to ratify amendments.
Your examples are actually different state laws, not different “unique” interpretations of laws, which is a pretty big mistake for someone who talks about needing to explain the situation to others.
IIRC some federal countries like Canada or India have even greater variance between states.
A different example would be emissions testing. Good ol' Michigan doesn't do it, so if you are moving to another state that does do it, it pays to think about whether your vehicle is going to pass.
In the UK you basically just need it to have some form of braking system and nothing likely to slice open or skewer pedestrians as you drive past, and be able to insure it.
Or, maybe just Scotland and NI, and Wales and England can become independent.
Yes, sorry I did not mean to give the impression that that was a major thing, just one more item that I've seen people use in creative ways. But obviously it's just a tiny footnote in a much, much larger tragedy.
> but one upside is that it gives us room to rejoin as a proper member, using the Euro, in Schengen, etc.
Can't wait.
> Or, maybe just Scotland and NI, and Wales and England can become independent.
England will put up a ton of resistance before allowing that to happen.
Though Japanese highways go marginally slower, 60mph is pushing the poor kei to it’s limits.
Lets just say I don’t enjoy sitting in a kei truck that’s attempting to do maximum speed.
These are urban vehicles, not intended for highways, except in a pinch.
The real reason is because everything is small in Japan due to a lack of absolute space. Remember, the place is a god damn island nation with mountains for its interior.
Roads are narrow, particularly in the countryside and especially if we're talking about roads crisscrossing between farms and rice paddies. Normal sized cars quite literally don't fit, much less normal sized trucks.
Consequently, out in the towns and cities you see far more normal sized cars because the roads are wider.
> In most rural areas they are also exempted from the requirement to certify that adequate parking is available for the vehicle
Kei cars have a number of prescribed limitations (yes, because space is at a premium, but so is / was fuel, metal, etc), and even have special number plates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car
Also, there are designated parking spots for them where other cars won't fit:
> Some places in the parking lots are smaller than others and usually painted with the character “軽自動車” or just “軽”. These spaces are reserved for the small “kei” cars
An owner might be able to use it as an off-road vehicle only (no title, no tag, with maybe only comprehensive insurance), but that's not the point of buying one for a lot of owners.
If you’re crushed in a Kei car they probably won’t be able to salvage much.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/01/health/organ-donation-motorcy...
Also motorcycles are a part of Americana history (there's no "Easy Rider" where two guys ride a Kei truck cross-country). I'm not at all sure motorcycles would be allowed if they just started popping up 10 years ago in the US, we've gotten risk averse in recent times.
They're a lot of fun though.
A pet project of @FilmThePoliceLA is filming & posting videos of cops’ personal vehicles with illegal modifications. He calls them out directly if he sees them, they never have any reasonable response.
A lot of state RMVs are starting to refuse to register these vehicles, and that's why you often see them being sold for very cheap.
That's what the OR DMV suggests, but this is their own made-up policy, not law. They didn't even bother putting it in writing until relatively recently. So far they've failed to put their actively enforced kei policy into Oregon law [0]. They simply decided to stonewall a subset of 80's and 90's Japanese cars.
It's not about safety, or emissions, or top speed, or size. Titling and registering underpowered microcars from not-Japan is quick and painless. Pre-80's kei is fine too. Multiple pre-'80's Subaru 360 and Mazda R360 literally-kei cars sport current Oregon license plates, also relatively more common eventually-kei pre-'80's examples like Honda N600/Z600/S600. Also kit cars, street rods, from-scratch homebuilt cars, and literal golf carts the DMV is explicitly happy to title and register [1]. All they're unilaterally regulating is the taint of one specific Japanese initiative that they don't like.
Just for fun, kei trucks now get a vaguely worded exception. So if you feel like a gamble it could be possible to buy one and legally drive it to your mailbox or tow behind your RV. Or you'll draw an uncooperative DMV employee, and depending on where you live, zoning or your HOA might force you to destroy it if they catch you keeping it quietly locked up in your garage. The DMV can create an illegal situation that you are liable for by refusing to title a car, even though the car itself isn't illegal by law.
Oregon DMV's policies have long been inconsistent, arbitrary, capricious, and some other things besides.
[0] https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors801.html
[1] https://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/Pages/vehicle/vehicletypes.a...
Dammit. Even with his money he barely managed to scratch his own itch.
I certainly would, if the license plate would offend my aesthetics.
I mean, you forgot that the PNW outside BC exists, so it seems fair.
If we allow motorcycles to drive on roads I don't see why we couldn't have some sort of limited road use exemption for these simple vehicles. At the very least you should be able to just buy them for farm use.
Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas.
No you can’t
It’s like people who spend thousands of dollars on a wristwatch. They don’t do that because they need to know what time it is.
(1) https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/americas-cars-trucks-ar...
Edit: Don't be grouchy and just downvote. If you really think a Kei truck with a 1000 pound payload and 60mph [optimistic] top speed is comparable to a full size pickup, explain why. It's the same payload as a Corolla, not a full size body-on-frame pickup. And even then, that completely ignores towing, which is a very common use case for full size trucks today. A Corolla would do -that- better, too.
Kei cars are neat, but be realistic.
If they aren't, you can replace them with a cheaper, safer, more fuel efficient vehicle that meets US safety standards and is easier to maintain and register than a Kei, and probably at a comparable or far cheaper initial price than the Kei.
If they are using it for a practical purpose, you can't replace it with a Kei.
Either way, a Kei is probably the wrong choice for most US buyers.
(There are newer import-legal minitrucks that don't have the registration hassles, like Nissan Clipper, which makes the range of situations where the Kei makes a lot of sense outside of particular brand attachment even narrower.)
> There are newer import-legal minitrucks that don't have the registration hassles, like Nissan Clipper
I'm confused - the Nissan Clipper is a Kei truck/van. Kei isn't a brand, it's just a description of a specific style of car (low weight, engine size etc incentivized by the Japanese government).
Often people living on large properties and in rural areas have vehicles that never hit public roads, and Kei car class vehicles or their equivalent get used every single day. Just think about the logistics of living down a long road on 30 acres - getting the mail, taking garbage bins out, moving tools, water, animal feed, debris, etc. Large trucks don’t even fit through some gates and Polaris/atv/small vehicle is often the best solution.
They're useless for most consumers.
Edit: flat bed pickup trucks that is, not lorries.
Regardless, the comparison was between Kei trucks and pickup trucks.
> Larger cars aren't inherently safer.
Yes they are, you're probably better off in a crash without a seatbelt in a bus than in the highly safety rated mini the bus crashes into. Newton matters.
I would like to see a citation on this. Car doors have gotten larger partly because there is so much more stuff going on there than 20-30 years ago, mostly a bunch of new electronics. They are also larger because, well, the cars are larger.
> ... you're probably better off in a crash without a seatbelt in a bus than in the highly safety rated mini the bus crashes into.
This is obviously not a fair comparison. I would be safer in a tank as well. Fact is, a current generation Toyota Camry is effectively safer than an early 2000s F-150.
E.g. [1] has a decent overview of the side impact saga for the Euro NCAP since 1997. I'm less familiar with how the American version has kept up.
In any case most mass market American cars target the Euro NCAP's safety tests, so it affects car design across the pond too.
> [...]mostly a bunch of new electronics.
I can't think of any electronics in doors than weren't there in 1995.
Powered windows have gotten more common, but if it weren't for safety considerations the thickness of doors should have reduced since then, as all the electronics involved are smaller now.
> Fact is, a current generation Toyota Camry is effectively safer than an early 2000s F-150.
Probably, but some quick internet searching reveals that if you add the weight of one person to the modern Camry it's probably heavier than the 2000s F-150, or thereabouts.
What I was referring to is that crash safety tests don't account for crashes between differently sized vehicles.
That's probably intentional, as regulators don't want to cause an arms race towards ever bigger cars.
1. https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/53189/19-0278-the-development...
Electronic locks, speakers, electronic bits of heated mirrors, airbags, etc. were absolutely not that common in the average 90s car.
Also, car dimensions are generally larger because we ourselves have become larger and taller. This becomes exceedingly obvious when comparing European cars in the past 40 years. If we look at the last 15 years, the trend is to make larger, more spacious cars, to the point where most firms are betting on SUVs over sedans.
> What I was referring to is that crash safety tests don't account for crashes between differently sized vehicles.
They do, though. What would be the point of testing a car safety measures only against cars of its size? In fact, there are plenty of videos out there of crash tests between sedans and trucks.
> That's probably intentional, as regulators don't want to cause an arms race towards ever bigger cars.
Uh? Manufacturers have been steadily increasing the size of cars in the past 20 years. Each Camry generation is larger than the previous one, and has nothing to do with regulators, it’s just that buyers want spacious cars.
Yes, but we're not talking about what's more common, but about how recent regulatory changes affected car design.
You can look up luxury models of mid or late 90s cars, and they had all those features. Now look at the same models today.
> car dimensions are generally larger because we ourselves have become larger and taller.
This is mostly due to changed regulations. Look at e.g. a 1980 model of a Toyota Corolla:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Corolla_(E70)
If you wanted to make a car with the same outside dimensions today you could barely cram two people in it, due to all the mandatory crumple zones etc.
Of course consumer demand is also part of it, but in some cases car manufacturers are still making 1980s design cars today (e.g. the 79 series Toyota land cruiser), they're just outlawed in Europe due to safety, pollution etc. regulations.
> In fact, there are plenty of videos out there of crash tests between sedans and trucks.
I'm talking about official safety ratings, e.g. this in the Euro NCAP:
https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-expla...
Although as that page explains the particular bias I had in mind was "fixed" in 2020, now it's a 1400 kg mobile trolley, so heavier cars are tested somewhat more realistically.
Well, no. You said that cars are larger because of safety regulations.
But the obvious rebuttal to this is that larger cars have been trending upward for decades, and the most obvious proof of this is the decline of the sedan in favor of the SUV.
> You can look up luxury models of mid or late 90s cars, and they had all those features. Now look at the same models today.
These were larger cars than the average as well. The 90s Mercedes E-Class doors were significantly larger and heavier than the ones in a Toyota Camry.
A current generation Mercedes E-Class is also larger than the one from 30 years ago, mostly because it has gone through a significant increase in interior space. Again, this is not something only Mercedes has done to their line, all automakers have gone down the same route.
> If you wanted to make a car with the same outside dimensions today you could barely cram two people in it, due to all the mandatory crumple zones etc.
That car is roughly the same size of a Volkswagen Polo, which fits 4 people, and holds pretty much the same volume in the trunk. The Polo has an five star EURONCAP rating. Hell, even the SMART Fortwo is a pretty safe car, and it's mostly plastic.
Yes, small cars exist and are safe too, but people just like larger cars better.
(This doesn't make Kei trucks safer, but it might have the same paradoxical effect as helmets on cyclists[1].)
[1]: https://slate.com/technology/2023/01/bike-helmets-cyclist-de...
They don't. I used to own an F-350 for a race team and when I sold it for a Corolla I had a long argument with my insurance agent as to why the Corolla was going to cost me more to insure.
Despite their outrageous cost to own (which you would think would primarily be the driver of insurance fees), apparently large trucks are both stolen much less and get in fewer accidents due to their size. Hard to argue with the insurance company on the stats there.
IIHS and NHTSA have figures that are generally consistent with my speculation[1]:
1. Overall car occupant deaths have nearly halved since 1975, but have risen by 25% in the pickup category.
2. Trucks have fewer rollover accidents as a category, but those rollovers that do occur make up a far larger percentage of occupant deaths.
3. Consistent with (2), truck drivers appear to drive without seatbelts more often than other categories do (based on overall incidence in accidents), and suffer higher fatalities as a result.
This is the correct solution with auto insurance in America. You should never stay with the same company more than 3-5 years, just like you should never stay at the same job longer than that. Loyalty is penalized in America, and you can get a better deal by jumping ship. Always shop around for better rates when your auto insurance policy is due for renewal.
I would say that a non insignificant portion of pickup truck owners, don't even need a pick up truck to begin with.
People spend $50k because they want that truck, not because they need it.
The cheapest Model S you could buy back in 2012 was ~$70,000, while the Leaf started at half of that in 2010, ~$35,000.
We buy cars that provide more than our needs so we aren't left needing in case we come across something that goes beyond our expectations.
Always buying just what is necessary right now in a bid to be efficient leaves no margin for error and will end up being inefficient in the long run.
I don't deny that driving a Ford F-350 is great in its own right, though. That thing screams 'Murica, and all the better if it gets us out of an unexpected rut every so often.
People got by just fine with sedans. Most folks who own a giant pickup drive it in the exact same way as a Honda Civic and have no actual need for a pickup. It's very apparent in how tall these vehicles are now. If you are actually hauling goods, you don't want clearance to be that high.
"*I dont even own a car - but everyone I know who has a pickup truck is never picking up ANYTHING...
Thats like me walking around with a large empty suitcase.
'OH... Are you going on a trip??'
'No, but I look like someone who *COULD*'
If you've read the article, you'd see its because these vehicles don't conform to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.
They look like utility vehicles to me, but then again I had a miata and a grom...
https://www.nhtsa.gov/importing-vehicle/importation-and-cert....
I would happily buy a kei truck, but something like an older Toyota Tacoma is my best bet right now.
If I could reasonably get and register a Kei truck in my state it would be the perfect replacement, literally all I need is some hauling space for big trash cans, and the occasional Home Depot run.
If they made them electric I'd already be getting one!
I've hauled bikes, lumber, furniture, rocks and soil for landscaping. Unfortunately, it's no good on the highway, so long distances are out, and your knees are the crumple zone, so I drive the same way I bike...hyper-vigilant and try to anticipate danger. Still worth it.
Not trying to persuade you, I just love to talk about my truck!
You can't, though: “half-ton” pickups start much lower than $50k and near universally have a 1,500+ lb cargo capacity (the half-ton designation is historical and almost never actually meant what it seems to, quater-ton is even worse.)
Seems more competitive with the $27K Hyundai Santa Cruz, with similar cargo capacity (by weight), 40 MPG mileage, US new vehicle standards compliance, but trading off a shorter bed length for a second row of seating.
Where!? I just priced a few 2010 F-150s at $30-40k.
Some kind of partially assembled new Kei truck that counts as "car parts" during import, and can then be assembled to create a "kit car". The kit car process is almost equally onerous, but at least you could get a new car on the other end.
We have the right to own a gun, but in most of the US owning a car is a necessity. There is some route available in most states but it's incredibly cumbersome compared to something like making your own gun.
Hypothetically, "Motorized transportation, being necessary to the mobility of a free State, the right of the people to keep and drive automobiles shall not be infringed."
Imagine the vehicles we would have. For one thing, the impossible-to-meet CAFE standards, which make it economically infeasible to sell compact pickup trucks in the U.S., would probably have been declared unconstitutional. On the other hand, laws requiring seatbelts and airbags probably would have also been unconstitutional.
Over here, we can freely import pretty much anything. If it's more than 10 years old, you just register it. If it's less than 10 years old, you can still bring it in as a personal import, but it'll need to pass a slightly enhanced version of the normal annual inspection. It's a point of principle that any vehicle that passes inspection should be road legal, hence oddities like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paIGBOlkQr0
Because we're a right-hand-drive country, Japanese imports are commonplace. If you want a Kei car or a JDM-only luxury minivan, you can just have one. That taken-for-granted freedom gives me a certain degree of empathy for the 2nd amendment lobby.
There are some perfectly reasonable arguments against the cost-effectiveness of mandatory vehicle inspection, but I have some doubts about the validity of those arguments. Road safety and traffic law enforcement involve a lot of complex interrelated factors; Creating a culture of road safety is difficult to distil into discrete interventions.
There's a libertarian argument that driving a car with bald tires is a matter of individual liberty, but obviously that's a vastly broader argument than the question of mandatory inspection. If you're going to have laws against driving a car with bald tires, it's less onerous and more effective to primarily enforce those laws through administrative rather than criminal justice mechanisms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
As is typical with US regulation, it's a "worst of all worlds" hodgepodge that makes no logical sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax#Circumventing_the_...
> You'll need to find a truck that is at least 25 years old. In the US, cars more youthful than that must comply with FMVSS (safety standards).
> No air bags, [...] power steering, or crumple zones.
I feel like this sort of thing is a fantastic illustration of the irresponsible level which most drivers (in the US at least; can't speak to other countries) feel that they are just so so good at driving that they believe all these safety features are fine to go without.
Sure, this is presumably not your sole vehicle or daily driver. And sure, you're not going to be taking one of these on a 65mph highway. But a 30mph head-on collision with another vehicle will almost certainly kill you in one of these trucks. And I know if I was the driver of the other vehicle, and survived, even if I wasn't the one at fault, I'd probably need years of expensive therapy to get past it all.
The thing that boggles my mind his how this 25-year-old grandfathering thing works. I think it's totally fair to allow old vehicles on the road that may not comply with today's standards, but did comply when they were originally made and titled (in the US). But there's no good reason we need to allow people to import old, unsafe vehicles like this.
You know what vehicle I see all the time that doesn’t require a license or minimum age, doesn’t have any safety features and can go 15-20 mph alongside traffic and often on a city sidewalk amongst pedestrians? A bicycle ;)
It's dumb to mandate helmets or any other specific technology because it removes the possibility for something better or for context-based decisionmaking.
Suppose you ride your motorcycle into the desert and then lose your helmet into a canyon. Your phone is dead. Your choices are a thirty hour walk out of the desert which might cause you to die of dehydration, or riding your motorcycle without a helmet. Should you get a ticket for making the obvious choice?
This doesn't contribute to the upkeep of roads in the same manner as a yearly tax on those that use them.
So no, not the same benefit at all.
But also, the value of roads scales poorly with any of these things. The ability to have a package delivered to your front door is valuable regardless of whether or not you even have a car, and the value of it depends on what's in it rather than how much the truck cost. The most sensible way to fund any kind of basic infrastructure is from general revenues.
I'm stating that a number of charges go towards the upkeep of roads and related services (at least in the country I'm present in) these charges include driver and vehicle licences, fuel taxes, etc.
> So the most sensible way to ..
Proposing an alternative doesn't negate the present practices, moreover it makes sense that as much of the public cost associated with roads should come from those that use the roads the most.
It's the fact that the driver license fee is paid at renewal, which isn't yearly in any US state for anyone under the age of 79. Moreover, the amount of the fee is such that it's essentially paying for the licensing bureaucracy, which you wouldn't need if you didn't have licensing.
> Proposing an alternative doesn't negate the present practices
Present practices have to be meritorious to justify preserving them.
> it makes sense that as much of the public cost associated with roads should come from those that use the roads the most.
But what does that mean?
If it's contribution to the cost of road maintenance then the cost should be paid almost entirely by a per-mile tax on large trucks, because road damage is proportional to axle weight to the fourth power and passenger vehicles are a rounding error.
If it's value of the roads then we're back to general revenues because the value is proportional to economic activity enabled by basic infrastructure which has no real relationship to number of miles traveled. One truckload of electronics is worth more than ten truckloads of scrap iron. One life-saving ride in an ambulance is worth more than a thousand days of commuting.
That's your quibble?
When doing the bookkeeping on revenue flowing in against cost going out it's a simple matter to look at licence fees per annum, axle taxes per annumn, fuel taxes per annum Vs road program costs per annum.
These can be broken down to monthly or per quarter, etc.
Here we have licences that can be paid for three months, or six months, or twelve months or for three years, even so the public data from the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development (the federal department that oversees all the road related revenue (multiple sources), plans and funds road upkeep and extensions) talks about licence numbers per year.
The median license renewal cost in the US is around $30, for an interval of typically 6-8 years. Which is to say, less than $5/year. Subtract the overhead of the licensing bureaucracy. If the result is nonzero there's a decent chance it's because it's a negative number. In neither case is it paying for a material amount of road maintenance.
> axle taxes per annumn, fuel taxes per annum Vs road program costs per annum.
Car tax and fuel tax?
But put that to the side for a moment. Even if you had a country that collected a significant amount of revenue from driver licensing, and you inadvisably wanted to continue to collect that amount of money from that population (note: this is a regressive tax anywhere that most people drive cars), why would you need driver licensing for that instead of adding the same amount to the car tax?
But yes, truck used to haul building materials for a building site is the vehicle fulfilling its purpose and any replacement for that purpose being suboptimal.
Truck bought to haul 2 bags of groceries is not. Tax the second one.
How do you do this without taxing the first one?
If someone buys a truck to haul building materials to a building site, they are understandably not going to buy a separate vehicle just to haul 2 bags of groceries. But then how do you know what anybody is using it for the rest of the time? The list of legitimate purposes is unlimited. You're a homeowner who is into gardening and always bringing home mulch and saplings and renting landscaping equipment for projects. You're a retrocomputing enthusiast whose hobby requires you to be constantly transporting old mainframes. You're a parent who has to transport an entire junior varsity soccer team to practice every night.
How do you propose to distinguish any of these from someone who only buys a tank to carry home groceries?
Given the chance of the story being fabricated close to 100% catering for it is unreasonable.
Meanwhile, there is a general necessity defense to violating all traffic laws for your motorcycle example. We don't list every possible emergency or every possible rule we would allow an exception to.
They argued against mandating helmets in cars. Your point was that we could do something better than helmets and less inconvenient, namely airbags. But that is an argument for not mandating helmets. And the same argument generalizes to any specific technology. What happens when someone comes up with something better than an airbag but then it doesn't satisfy the rule "is an airbag" and is therefore prohibited?
> Meanwhile, there is a general necessity defense to violating all traffic laws for your motorcycle example.
In practice this kind of general exception either consumes the rule or isn't available when it legitimately applies. If you can say you lost your helmet and would have been stranded then everyone says this and you can't enforce the law. But if you can't claim that when it's true then the necessity defense isn't meaningful.
And for the same reason the exceptions are typically excessively narrow. Suppose you lose your helmet while camping, so you have plenty of food and water and can make the 3-day walk back to civilization. There is no risk of death. But then you have a three day walk for what would have been a two hour ride, which is going to make you late for work on Monday. Is not being late for work a necessity? And yet, is it reasonable to punish someone who makes that choice?
Also the person that ties down loads with multiple ropes | straps truckies hitches and stoppers. Not to mention stopping every few hundred miles to check tensions and reset as required.
Loose loads are a pain in the arse and often dangerous.
A soup can rolling loose and jamming up under a brake or accelerator pedal is something that really happens .. and it's no fun when it does.
I care for a basic and selfish reason beyond the "human missile" one: if I'm in a car crash with you and there's only one bed available in the ER, I don't want your lack of a seatbelt to be the source of a hard choice by the doctors operating on us.
Also, you know who dies in much greater numbers than pedestrians due to vehicle crashes? The pedestrians walking by the bicyclists.
So should pedestrians be forced to wear massive armors of steel when they walk around?
Oh wait, that’s how so many awful American cities are designed. With absolutely no space for pedestrians who have to drive everywhere.
In reality there’s only 1 source of danger on streets. Massive 2 ton vehicles that endanger their own occupants and everyone around them. Take away the 2 tons of metal usually carrying 1 person and everyone is safe.
But yeah, without cars motorcycles and scooters suddenly become much safer way of transport
Also, the other argument goes that "people don't know how to actually get what they want for themselves, and will act against their own true self-interests". Which is definitely true to an extend but the devil is in how far you're willing to stretch that.
The solution to this is to replace safety nets with transfer payments. Don't provide people with healthcare, provide them with money with which they can buy healthcare or insurance. This also stops the subsidy from ratcheting up the cost of the thing, because if you can drive 30 minutes out of your way to save a thousand dollars you do it, but if the government is paying either way then you don't.
And then if people want to buy less safe cars, insurance carriers will charge them higher premiums.
> Also, the other argument goes that "people don't know how to actually get what they want for themselves, and will act against their own true self-interests".
This is nothing more than paternalism and has proved wrong time and again. It turns out that on average people understand their own situation better than far away generalist policymakers, even before you add in lobbyist influence.
Which isn't to say that an individual will never make a mistake. But legislators make mistakes at scale. Whereas if you want to get individuals to change their behavior in a way that genuinely benefits them, all you have to do is tell them about it, not punish them if they hear you out and still want to do something else.
If the government is paying, why would it be cheaper 30 minutes away? One of the main features of single payer systems is that the single payer can impose a price list, and control any “ratcheting of prices” as you put it
If they set the price too low, you get shortages or long queues or sacrifice quality and no one can do better because that would require charging more, which isn't allowed.
If they set the price too high they're overpaying, which is what happens in any system where the providers have political influence, as is manifestly the case in the US. Then new competitors can't lower the price because it's set by corrupt politicians and more efficient providers aren't allowed to return the difference to patients who choose them.
And you can screw up in both directions at once. The list price is too low for a high cost of living area so you can't have a provider in a convenient location for people willing to pay more, but is too high for a provider in a less expensive area who then has no incentive to pass on their lower costs to price sensitive consumers. If the government tries to pay them each a different amount then patients have no reason to avoid the higher cost one which increases healthcare spending.
We're talking about a single purchaser using its power to impose prices on suppliers. It's hardly unique - how do you think Walmart keeps its prices as low as possible? By leveraging their power.
And all your aguments seem a bit moot when you look at countries with single-payer systems - they just work, at a per-person cost that is far lower than the US
Walmart is subject to competitive pressure. If they squeeze suppliers too hard and quality suffers or some suppliers refuse to meet their demands, consumers can go buy products from a different retailer.
In cases where you actually do have a private monopolist, is is terrible.
> And all your aguments seem a bit moot when you look at countries with single-payer systems - they just work, at a per-person cost that is far lower than the US
In the US the medical providers have significant political influence which results in a regulatory environment that favors high prices and there is no reason to expect a single payer system in the same environment to change that.
In some systems the providers have less political influence, but many of those systems have long queues or refuse care on the basis of cost or have other deficiencies with no recourse.
It's also entirely possible to have a socialized system which is more efficient than the status quo in the US but less efficient than a system that actually exposed providers to competitive pressure. The cost efficiency of the existing US healthcare system is a bar level with the ground.
But on a road people don't just hurt themselves by reckless conduct. A collision usually has a second participation vehicle, and sometimes many more if a pile-up occurs on a busy road. The other participants did not sign up for hurting themselves, and can be hurt more than the original reckless driver.
So you should be cheering for people to get them as if they crash into you, you're safer
They also put huge amounts of effort into maintaining them, learn new skills and keep themselves busy.
So while vintage cars and the culture around them do obviously cause deaths due to accidents, I'd suspect they also perform a huge amount of social good in terms of reducing social isolation, depression/despair, Alzheimer's and a whole lot of other subtle things I didn't even consider.
If safety was a primary concern for U.S. regulators, large consumer SUVs and trucks would not exist in their current form. As of ~2019 (the last such study I know of) trucks killed occupants of other vehicles at 2.5x the rate of cars and "SUVs" (an increasingly useless category as it includes everything from small unibody crossovers to enormous body-on-frame Canyonero-style monstrosities). I am not aware of any comparable headline figure for how pedestrians fare against them but I would put money on their pedestrian safety performance also being atrocious.
They are quite literally an atrocity against the American people, a public health hazard of the first order, and our regulators evidently do not give one single shit.
Through that lens the opinion you've expressed here—that people should not be allowed to drive cars that make them more unsafe—is extremely ironic, because the semiliterate chuds who support the unrestrained escalation of larger and deadlier and larger and deadlier vehicles on public roads make the exact opposite "argument" as a justification of why they should be allowed: freedom, personal responsibility, etcetera. I elide the details because it's mad-libs anyway, not any kind of coherent position unless one discards the notion of a social contract entirely.
I'm not suggesting you yourself hold an opinion like that, but it seems a uniquely American dichotomy that one is not allowed to drive a car that makes oneself more likely to die, but there is absolutely no problem with driving a car that's several times more likely to kill somebody else.
(I don’t actually drive a gtk boxer but it’s the logical conclusion of this dumb trend).
Open source in IT area is one of the possible exist. Carbon tax is also market solution. …
How about producing one using e in USA. Or …
Regulation meant what and how … it may be necessary. It may need to over-regulate. And who regulate the regulator. Abd how about agency problem.
Mix solution … if it is an easy situation you may not know there is a problem usually.
Where the 2023 Honda Accord has a rating of "good"* from IIHS on the updated side impact test, and NHTSA's rating for the 2022 model for side crash is 5 stars** (2023 data not yet available), it seems entirely likely that your friend would also still be alive today if they were also in a Honda Accord. The arms race for bigger and bigger vehicles is just that - an arms race. I don't want to walk or drive in the world of Mad Max, where everyone drives semi-trucks and have spikes all over them to protect the inhabitants of a vehicle.
It should also be noted that bigger isn't automatically better. For the 2022 side impact test by IIHS, the Honda Passport, Honda Pilot, Hyundai Palisade, Jeep Wrangler 4-door, Kia Telluride and Nissan Murano SUVs all received "marginal" ratings***.
Prior to 2011, SUVs weren't even tested for side impact ratings.
* https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/honda/accord-4-door-sed...
** https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle/2022/HONDA/ACCORD/4%252520DR/F...
*** https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/most-midsize-suvs-perform-w...
IIHS says:
“Frontal crash test results can't be used to compare vehicle performance across weight classes.… Given equivalent frontal ratings, the heavier of two vehicles usually offers better protection in real-world crashes.”
Bigger cars are safer, for better or worse. Those Ford F-350s will, in general, survive crashes and protect the occupants better than something like a Toyota Camry.
IOW, it's a market failure (externality).
If you hit a bridge pillar or drive off a cliff, it doesn't matter how heavy your vehicle is.
I'd for these types of crashes it's much better to have a small, nimble vehicle that is more stable and doesn't crash in the first place rather than a huge truck with poor grip that tips over if you corner too fast.
I've seen the aftermath of a Renault Megane hitting a Ford Explorer, and it wasn't pretty. The Megane was a writeoff, with significant intrusion into the passenger area. The Explorer looked like it had been de-orbited rather than centre-punched by a small hatchback, with the bodywork in four pieces and parts scattered for about 100m. The occupants did not fare well, and indeed none of the small pieces of the occupants spread around fared well either.
The most important safety feature in a vehicle is performance, and SUVs (especially mid and full size) are outright worse, regardless of what your average American thinks.
Do you have a source for this? I'm honestly curious. In every near-miss I've had in traffic, the only performance that would have helped is braking performance. And I drive a Kei car as a sole family car. On long highway road trips.
Good handling is also very important for safety. SUVs before stability control are a perfect example of this.
What if your friend was still alive today because he was driving his lifted Dodge Ram 2500 when he ran a red light twelve beers deep and T-boned an Accord, his aftermarket steel bumper severing the B-pillar and decapitating all four occupants (mother, father, two daughters)? Would you still imply that his choice of vehicle was defensible because it increased his chances of surviving that collision?
Ideally humans would simply not drive, but that's not feasible in the world we currently live in, so everybody should be on a level playing field designed not only to evenly distribute risk but also to minimize it. Like I said in my original post, consumer pickups as they exist in America today are measurably incompatible with the public good.
USA is world no1 at killing pedestrians. Most pedestrian deaths per mile driven of any country. 7000 pedestrians die in traffic collisions annually.
Freakonomics just started a 3-part series on this.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-the-u-s-so-good-at-k...
Edit: look good at the deaths per mile driven, most countries with horrible numbers in other columns don't have any data in that column which is why the USA ends up as 4th. Look at any other statistic and you'll see the USA is far from the worst.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic...
> Most pedestrian deaths per mile driven of any country
You said
> If I look at the numbers [1] I highly doubt the US is even in the top 50
The table in the link [1] you shared, when sorted by deaths per mile driven, ranks the USA (2021 data) 5th in the world, with Mexico (2013 data) being 1st.
Also the fact US statistic per mile are so high, despise it being a big country where I'd imagine most miles were highway ones probably hides even higher rate of accidents in cities.
However, re: "crumple zones":
The streets of the USA are basically an arms race. Bigger and bigger and bigger because "it's safer". Safer for you, maybe. This is how we ended up with pickup trucks that have hoods as high as your shoulders.
Kei trucks and cars are great, and in Japan they're quite safe (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24499113/) but the context is completely different. Cars weigh half as much, the drivers are twice as careful and traveling at half the speed.
Kei cars are popular because they’re cheap to run and small, but they are a tin can on wheels.
How about the giant trucks with huge blindspots known to roll over kids in driveways, where's the outrage there?
> But there's no good reason we need to allow people to import old, unsafe vehicles like this.
Sure there is, there's a gap in the market for small efficient light trucks/vans for around town and in urban environments, things that don't need to go on interstates. Light vehicles that don't mess up the roads like 6000lb+ vehicles. But we aren't allowed to have nice things like this due to the tariff situation, so the 25yr loophole is currently the only way.
"we should ban participating in traffic without the safety features of a new car." No we shouldn't for the same reason we don't ban bicycles, motorbikes, scooters,... which are at least as dangerous to drive as an old tiny car.
Riding a motorcycle without helmets, kids on their laps, cars without seatbelts, makeshift trucks with cargo randomly stacked and not strapped down.
They are completely oblivious to the safety risks. But you know what? 99% of the time it doesn't matter. They live long and healthy lives.
I get the sense the West has progressively improved safety to the point that even small incremental improvements are viewed as "you'll be dead without them".
Like I said, in the West, people are so concerned about safety they loose all sense of relativeness. Saying that "wow, your car doesn't have airbags, you're as good as dead" is a ridiculous statement.
A million to one? Less?
It's not that airbags aren't more safe, it's that they protect you from a risk with a very low probability.
Yet people act like you're reckless for driving a vehicle without them. It's a lack of understanding of probabilities. Humans routinely focus on a small risk while ignoring larger risks.
>But there's no good reason we need to allow people to import old, unsafe vehicles like this.
If this is your argument, motorcycles seems like a much better target.
Motorcycles are much less safe when compared to this truck. Would you also ban them, or do they receive an arbitrary exception?
https://electrek.co/2021/10/25/i-actually-bought-a-cheap-ele...
I had to look it up myself, not being sure, but "the Navi isn’t freeway-legal in many states" [0]
So probably allowing them on city streets but not highways is what I would propose, to answer your question. I don't think banning them altogether is right (for the Kei truck or Navi) since micromobility has all sorts of benefits where it fits.
[0] https://ultimatemotorcycling.com/2022/07/28/2022-honda-navi-...
They could care less about the 25-year-old cars-- it's the new ones, the ones that probably meet or exceed the spirit of US safety standards but have some marginal differences from US norms or lack a formal certification, that they're after.
They probably offered the 25 year carveout to make sure they could get the restriction on the important commercial market without creating a dispute with a niche community (the vintage-car enthusiasts) that could derail the whole regulatory process.
To me, the equally weird part is the car-of-Thesus situation. We have a regulatory environment that says basically "here's a block of rust that was demolished in an accident and sat for 25 years in the rain in a scrapyard, but because it has the VIN plate from an ancient Mustang/Defender/Porsche/etc. on it, you can build basically an entirely new car around it and not have to honour modern rules about safety or emissions." There isn't an obvious way to incentivize the classic-car people to think in terms of those standards when they retrofit.
A 30mph collision in the average American SUV will kill all the occupants too, because they have absolutely no safety features.
"Look at how strong this truck is, it survived an accident with barely a scratch!" just means it transferred all the energy to the wet squashy piles of mixed meat inside.
In each of the PDFs, you can find the occupant data summary on page 6 and the photos starting around page 42.
[1] https://nrd-static.nhtsa.dot.gov/reports/vehdb/v10000/v11300...
[2] https://nrd-static.nhtsa.dot.gov/reports/vehdb/v10000/v11000...
[3] https://nrd-static.nhtsa.dot.gov/reports/vehdb/v10000/v10600...
I'm not getting one because of reasons you mentioned (litte kei tipper would be perfect size vehicle for my needs) but I don't see why other people should be stopped from.
If you want safety ban anything bigger than 2 ton for non-commercial use first, the SUVs and trucks sizing gonna kill more people than some random buying a kei truck for themselves.
Unfortunately this isn’t Japan and you’ll be driving on stroads designed for high speed driving with too many conflict points, sharing the road with drunk drivers in their RAM 1500 who barely needed to have a pulse to qualify for a license.
Alternatives:
- Vans, commercial or just an old minivan, like OP’s dad bought. They don’t have the popularity tax of trucks. I also think that the closed cabin of a van is better than a truck bed 90% of the time.
- If you can handle the shorter bed, the Ford Maverick is priced very well with a high mpg hybrid powertrain, and you can use it as a comfortable daily family vehicle.
- Big box home improvement store rentals. These often beat U-Haul prices and convenience in my experience.
- Suck it up and buy a truck. While they cost a lot they’re also designed to be do-all family vehicles with good amenities, ride quality, and comfort.
- Haul less stuff. Do you need to haul things? If your job is hauling stuff you can probably justify the truck investment and deduct it from your taxes. If not then maybe you don’t need to haul things.
- Instacart? I’m pretty sure people with trucks will do Home Depot runs for you.
In my opinion, judging by OP’s other blog post about finance and debt, he’s letting an excessively frugal mentality get in the way of getting the right tool for the job. OP quipped that old trucks still have insanely high values, and that goes both ways: if he buys a $30k truck and sells it in 10 years it’s probably still going to be worth $15k. Spending $15k in 10 years is the same cost as a bus pass.
I am only slightly exaggerating.
https://electricimportmotors.com/collections/trucks/products...
Here in California I used to work for San Jose State University when I was attending. I worked an oncampus job where I was expected to drive a golf cart to and from campus (the job office itself was located off campus, about a mile away, during my tenure there). So I drove up to 25mph with that electric cart max on the street, and then also drove it all over campus on sidewalks. Very usable and pretty roughly equivalent to a kei car.
In Japan there are usually a couple of "Kei-only" parking spots which are usually on some corner or side where a normal car wouldn't fit. A great use of space!
https://www.motortrend.com/news/telo-electric-mini-truck-fir...
At that point, the issue is safety and crumple zones, which, again, should be vastly easier when you don't need an engine.
We just need someone to attach a small tipper truck bed to a Yaris...
My friend imports KEI trucks and Vans for the mid Atlantic region and always has inventory: https://ohkei-imports.com
As it turns out a bunch of people want these things and he's been importing and shipping all over the US.
So, where's the website that shows their actual inventory?
Even better is a 80’s/90’s full size 2 door pickup. Same size as a modern Tacoma/Ranger, but with payloads comparable to todays F250’s. Throw in working AC, airbags, and a wealth of cheap replacement parts and it’s a no-brainer
This kind of thing is just obviously not allowed in the US, right? I mean, where's the luxury? What happens to all that social status that comes from needing a small ladder to climb into the cockpit of your rigg?
I was also mildly entertained by "damn metric system" 8-) Yea...
I have to say though, it's encouraging to see news of someone in the US coming to grips with the advantages of such a vehicle.
I've always liked the 1/2 tilting 3 wheelers like the Honda Canopy: https://wonderfulengineering.com/honda-has-introduced-a-new-...
You need to remember just how different the Japanese domestic market is when it comes to roads and vehicles. It's a tiny island nation with low speed limits (37 mph everywhere but divided highways, which are 62mph) and a lot of people. The US is 26 times larger with 1/10th the population density, and lots of high-speed highways.
https://www.olx.pl/d/oferta/piaggio-porter-2009r-1-3-16v-pfa...
I think you've missed a major component of Kei Truck popularity. You can literally get 10x Kei Trucks for that cost.
Ditch the crew cab and lower the height of the bed and you’re starting to enter the same territory.
Also most kei trucks the side of the truck bed folds down giving you more of a flat bed which for some things is super super handy.
This guy's youtube channel name implies he does this for a living, you can get more info from him, I guess:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ufkBRrQoSA
here is another guy who modified his, and put a small solar panel, and now his charging requirements have been reduced.
If such products were made in the country, or if a streamlined process existed for import, the cost could be reduced significantly.
For just moving stuff around the farm my neighbors have basically electric golf carts.
Not quite. The US government cares about the date of manufacture, which doesn't always align with model years. Today you could legally import a vehicle manufactured in June of 1998, even if it is a 1999 model year.
Just passed one of these and thought to myself, huh, that's pretty neat, only to come home to see this post.
* Kei trucks are the coolest. Big gubment is making it so we can’t register them due to protectionism!
* Chicken tax chicken tax chicken tax
* Big trucks cause more crashes because reasons!
* Trucks are just lifestyle vehicles and nobody actually needs or uses them
Over and over and over again
These make me chuckle. Those people have never done home improvement projects or just projects that require picking up 8ft sheets of plywood or 20 bags of mulch.
Different strokes for different folks. It's going to depend a lot on what you routinely haul.
Just about the only thing it doesn't do well is fuel economy and driving in downtown urban areas. A large number of people rank those issues low on the list.
But pick up the overwhelm majority of items in the Celica, a two door hatch.
Anyways, suppliers deliver.
If you'd have told me 15 years ago that people would be buying pickup trucks brand new for $60k with regularity I wouldn't have believed you but here we are...
> I could rent this truck every weekend for 30 years for the same price as a giant truck.
That assumes the price never increases for 30 years.
> That assumes the price never increases for 30 years.
While the average truck owner is paying interest, I'll be earning interest, so let's call it even.
I grew up in south central Pennsylvania, and while we still have a fair amount of farmers in that region, most people buy trucks because they're marketed to, not because they're the right vehicle to own.
I clicked through here because I've seen a couple of Kei trucks in Philadelphia lately.
Have been thinking about a roof rack for sheet goods. Can't see why it wouldn't work.
The real solution for moving larger things is a trailer. UHaul rents trailers for the occasional use ~$20/day, no mileage charge. I say occasional use because it takes effort to go and get it, and UHaul builds them like brick shithouses. So you can get a lighter one that's nicer to tow if you buy one for a few kilobucks.
I inherited a light crossover SUV that's more than capable of towing a 5x10 trailer with a modest amount of weight around town. It does highways too, but keeping ~65 rather than ~80. If I were still limited to the Civic and needed to move stuff on the regular, I'd buy an even lighter trailer.
And a trailer has very little maintenance compared to getting another motor vehicle. I've started bringing a pallet or two and putting them down under whatever I get so I can just fork stuff off at home (and then in the case of stuff from big box stores, fork the rejects right back on to get returned).
These Kei trucks look neat, but I don't think they would actually solve many problems I have. A dump bed would be fantastic, but if I really needed that I could just bite the supply shortage bullet and get a dump trailer.
Maybe you can help break the cycle by looking at the huge used truck market we already have
I don't care about "truck people." I thought the article was nice and, as a non-driver, I find the Kei trucks much more interesting to look at (and ride in).
One thing that I try to remind people of is that pickup trucks are the best selling vehicles in the US because the approximate definition of 'Truck People' is everyone.
There are much smaller pickups than an F150, for sure. Like a Maverick, to use an easy example. And it's a popular choice, too, though it's probably not going to unseat the F150 anytime soon.
90s trucks still had poor mileage and were less safe overall than new vehicles, they aren't gonna be many people's top choice.
My current pet theory is that an equally big problem to the "aggressive bro styling super high front grill" issues is an overall decline in relative income/living standards. Less space + money to have a family car + a utility truck, so your truck ALSO has to have a huge cabin, and do everything else the family car should do too, so it gets huge overall even if the bed is no bigger or more useful.
Nobody says truck people bad, you're strawmanning all over this thread. I've owned two trucks, a full sized and a compact, I'm a republican and I believe that if I want to drive a 90s Kei truck and take the risk of dying in a car accident I should have the ability to assume that risk for myself. Same as driving a car from the 60s.
Washington State legislature was going to reduce the number of DUIs before prison from FIVE to FOUR (not 1 like it should be), but they chose not to because it'd be "too expensive". Yup, keep feeding us into the orphan killing machine.
I have an F250, which I drive about 2000 miles a year, almost 100% of the time it has a >30ft trailer behind it. But that one time that the stars align and I need it for a grocery trip, a bunch of people are thinking "see, that guy doesn't need a truck" and it reinforces whatever internal monologue they have going.
Meanwhile, approximately everyone here routinely drives alone in a vehicle capable of carrying 5-7 people. (and right about now, someone is about to reply with 'ride a bike, cars suck!')
Isn't the F250 a huge vehicle and that trailer seems huge, is it a boat?
The F150's towing capacity appears to be 5,000 to 14,000 pounds (random source: https://veteransfordtampa.com/ford-f-150-towing-capacity). You could tow a 1,300 pounds trailer with a regular car, e.g. the 2023 Ioniq 5 has 2,300 pounds of towing capacity.
Which is a big fucking trailer at 10% tongue weight.
In Europe Volkswagen Passat, which is a regular sedan, can tow up to 2000kg braked (I think that's 4400 pounds) and 750 kg unbraked (1600 pounds):
https://www.carsguide.com.au/volkswagen/passat/towing-capaci...
Unless these sites use different measurement systems for towing (could be, I have no idea about these things), wouldn't a much smaller but more powerful car do?
In Europe people regularly tow RV trailers with Volvo V60 wagons...
Although this is (slightly) on the more extreme side, "fifth-wheels"[2] are also common to see on the road. These certainly require larger vehicles to pull.
[0]https://autoline24.uk/-/auction/caravan-trailers/Bailey/Pega... [1]https://rv.campingworld.com/rvdetails/used-travel-trailer-rv... [2]https://rv.campingworld.com/rvdetails/used-fifth-wheel-rvs/2...
Hmmm... interesting.
It does make sense, though. Everything is bigger in the US: cars, roads, parking lots, nature reserves, people :-p
> https://rv.campingworld.com/rvdetails/used-fifth-wheel-rvs/2...
This is basically a house on wheels at this point :-)
I won't deny the silly bro-dozers exist, they definitely do. But at least in my area they are just a fraction of the total trucks on the road.
You think that the problem is those "bro-dozers", and everyone else just needs a truck. The reality is that most people don't need a truck, and by driving one everyone else's life gets worse.
Naah, I wouldn’t do a thing that. I’ve lived in low-bike suburbs — hated it, but I know the score. :)
I mean, yeah. Ride a bike, cars suck.
I don't think that counters the fact that many do people drive gigantic vehicles they will never need, though.
> Meanwhile, approximately everyone here routinely drives alone in a vehicle capable of carrying 5-7 people. (and right about now, someone is about to reply with 'ride a bike, cars suck!')
You've managed to lump everyone who disagrees with you into either the "hypocrite" or "fanatic" boxes.
I drive a Mini Cooper, not that that's worth bragging about. How will you dismiss my opinion?
Not intentionally. Just the ones who loudly proclaim that most people driving a pickup don't actually need it. To everyone else who is just driving the car they feel best suits their needs, more power to them. This also includes the vast majority of pickup owners.
Except it is about having a tiny penis (or more accurately, a big ego):
https://theweek.com/articles/929196/case-against-american-tr...
"Furthermore, the specific design trend of the massive hood sticking way out in front of the driver, with a cliff-face front grille obstructing the view several feet out in front of the wheels, is entirely a marketing gimmick. The explicit point is to create an angry, aggressive face that will intimidate others, especially pedestrians. Don't take it from me, take it from the guy who designed the latest GM Sierra HD: "The front end was always the focal point... we spent a lot of time making sure that when you stand in front of this thing it looks like it's going to come get you. It's got that pissed-off feel," he told Muscle Cars & Trucks. "The face of these trucks is where the action is," marketing expert Mark Schirmer told the Wall Street Journal's Dan Neil, "a Ford has to say Ford from head on, a Chevy must shout Chevy. Every pickup has become a rolling brand billboard and the billboards are big." And as Neil discovered when he was nearly run down in a Costco parking lot, that massive grille creates a massive blind spot."
it just makes me laugh.
It’s just physics. If you need it, fine, but seeing how much they are selling of those, a lot of us are starting to doubt how much of it is need vs want.
Here's an article covering how pickups are becoming more deadly to others in crashes, becoming more common on the road, and being purposefully styled to look aggressive:
https://theweek.com/articles/929196/case-against-american-tr...
"Furthermore, the specific design trend of the massive hood sticking way out in front of the driver, with a cliff-face front grille obstructing the view several feet out in front of the wheels, is entirely a marketing gimmick. The explicit point is to create an angry, aggressive face that will intimidate others, especially pedestrians. Don't take it from me, take it from the guy who designed the latest GM Sierra HD: "The front end was always the focal point... we spent a lot of time making sure that when you stand in front of this thing it looks like it's going to come get you. It's got that pissed-off feel," he told Muscle Cars & Trucks. "The face of these trucks is where the action is," marketing expert Mark Schirmer told the Wall Street Journal's Dan Neil, "a Ford has to say Ford from head on, a Chevy must shout Chevy. Every pickup has become a rolling brand billboard and the billboards are big." And as Neil discovered when he was nearly run down in a Costco parking lot, that massive grille creates a massive blind spot."
The article continues, discussing how actual commercial work vehicles (sprinter vans and cab-over box trucks for example) don't show the same styling trends.
I feel like there'd be a titanic shift in US pickup market if they could get a Hilux.