Legal fights over kei trucks in the U.S. | Hacker News Reader

Legal fights over kei trucks in the U.S.

wsj.com

50 pointsimpish920845 comments

Anyone who thinks that kei trucks shouldn't be on roads and highways and motorcycles should ought to have their head examined.

For the record I support both, with the exception of 3 wheel delta configuration motorcycles such as Harley's 3 wheeler. Riding one is a death wish; selling one should be a crime.

What's so bad about these? Without any experience in riding motorcycles I would expect 2 in the back, in the front to be more stable, like riding a trike.

From what I understand they are less stable than two in the front and one in the back.

iirc they tip over a lot more easier

Motorcycles lean to turn at speed, the trikes generally can't and are prone to tipping or flipping.

I've only ever seen them in low speed parades though.

Not sure how the slingshots with two wheels in front and one in back are at speed, i generally only see those at low speeds in cities blasting music instead of trying to get anywhere.

CanAm's tadpole trikes have a tilt/camber mechanism on the front wheels and can lean; it's not at all the same thing as a 2 wheeler but it's a light year better than the delta configuration.

First, the delta configuration is inherently unstable. If the trike gets any kind of side force at speed it becomes very difficult and unnatural to control and recover. In almost all cases when a delta trike loses control at speed it will flip and roll. You may be aware that 3 wheel ATVs have been illegal to sell since the 80's for this same reason.

Also, delta trikes (at least the ones on the market currently) cant lean, so the rider has no control over center of gravity, which is generally pretty disastrous in any kind of emergency control scenario on a motorcycle.

What is particularly egregious is that they are specifically marketed and sold to older people who no longer have the strength or dexterity to control a regular motorcycle. They also usually have a lifetime of muscle memory from 2 wheel bikes that does not apply and often actively hurts their ability to control a trike.

The only way to buy insurance on them is through a specific carrier that is essentially underwritten by Harley Davidson. Death benefits are capped at like $30k.

Tadpole trikes like Can Am makes are fantastically safer, especially since the forward wheels camber and the trike can lean; however the comment about old people who have no business continuing to ride a motorcycle still stands as this is still the market segment they target.

Why draw the line? The way I see it if it has the right lights and can keep up with traffic it's fair game.

Something like this could surely be useful in climates without much inclement weather.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806303665822.html

Good to see this getting more attention. It's hard to make sense of a system that allows motorcycles but not kei trucks.

4 months ago on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41180154

I'd like to see some investigative reporting on who or what organization is trying to get these banned via various state mvcs all around the same time, theres definitely a concerted effort.

The owners groups are battling the mvcs publicly, but nothing from the other side.

Gift link: https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/pickup-truck-drivers-kei-...

It would be nice if cars got more of a bonus to their safety rating based on how they won't pulp other people in an accident.

It would be nice if non-cars, like SUVs and pickups, paid more for insurance (but they pay less, because being tanks they protect their occupants even as they lay waste to everything else - unfortunately insurers care more about the former than the latter).

Insurance on my 1999 Chevy pickup costs more than my 2001 Olds Intrigue.

Or at least it did a few years ago when the car was insured and on the road.

Sounds incorrect. I think the insurance rate is based on the value of the vehicle and SUVs and trucks are much more expensive than compacts and sedans.

The part of your insurance that pays the medical bills for a person you smush (third party liability) is entirely separate from the part that rebuilds your car if it gets wrecked (collision/comprehensive damage). They should be priced separately on your binder, but you can call up your insurer to price compare relatively easily.

Insurance doesn't cover legal expenses and their civil liability is capped pretty low. They'd rather you kill the pedestrian.

In NY it's $50000 mandatory for medical expenses before any liability comes into play. I've burned through the entire pile with costs from a driver induced injury.

Nice idea but killing someone is very cheap. It's injury that requires permanent care that's very expensive. At some point they came up with "moral hazard" for this kind of thing but the lesson was forgotten.

"On average, SUVs are less expensive to insure than other vehicles, especially sedans or trucks."[1]

1: https://www.caranddriver.com/car-insurance/a36331753/are-suv...

Pedestrian and cyclist protection, emergency braking, etc. have been in the criteria for Euro NCAP for a while. American regulations are probably under siege by the auto industry.

s/under seige by/on the payroll of/

AFAICT, automatic emergency braking has only been required for all new vehicles in Europe as of 2024, although 2022 for new car models. In the U.S. 90% of new vehicles already include this feature, though it won't be legally mandatory until 2029.

The U.S. NHTSA takes a more cooperative approach with industry. Safety features are a critical driver of the model upgrade cycle, so it's in the industry's interest to roll these out. The NHTSA negotiates with the industry on timelines for when mandatory requirements begin, but these hard deadlines lag years behind when these features become ubiquitous voluntarily. Timelines for voluntary rollout are part of the negotiating process, so just because the legal deadline is 2029 doesn't mean NHTSA didn't negotiate for features to be included earlier. This results in less acrimony so industry is less inclined to complain to Congress.

I guess the EC doesn't have to worry about the MEPs being able to do much of anything since they don't have much of a say.

Meanwhile, the actual people affected (drivers/pedestrians) don't exactly have much of a say in the US either.

coughs in bicyclist ...

I'm waiting to see one with Montana plates, which for those not in the know is generally used as a tax dodge for luxury vehicles. Montana will let non-residents register a vehicle that isn't present in the state under an LLC. Once a plate is issued, the other 49 states have to recognize it. Considering the ridiculous pricing of road legal SxS UTVs it should still be cheaper to go through that process on a kei truck.

Or Delaware

They'll probably screw Montana via back room political wrangling like everyone thinks happened with Vermont.

Did the Vermont plating loophole get closed?

> “ Let’s be honest, most people aren’t using these big trucks to the best of their capabilities,” Odom said.

understatement of the year. Many folks in tech, finance buy these trucks as some status icon to fulfill some insecurity.

The amount of tech junk filled in these monstrosities is almost mind blowing. If even one of these systems goes to shit (ie, front camera system) then they are effectively blind.

These vehicles need to be reclassified as requiring a CDL and renewed and drivers tested on a yearly basis.

Next, do Chinese EVs, right? Or, am I wrong?

The part that drives me up the wall is how much the group of people who complain about the safety impact of people over-provisioning their personal vehicles (massive pickups and whatnot) overlaps with the group who complains about any automobile design that trades away safety in pursuit of another engineering goal.

I can understand drawing a line on a subjective issue but at least be ideologically about it if you want me to respect you in the slightest.

I’m firmly in the former group and follow a lot of like-minded people on social media. I can’t think of any time anyone in that group complained about motorcycles or kei trucks. I’m not sure there’s that much overlap between the two groups.

Yeah I'm in some of those circles. If you say "should we ban kei trucks?" they will say no but if you frame it as "isn't Kia f-ing evil for cutting corner X?" they will agree. And you can wash rinse repeat that dozens of times before someone pipes up and says "hey, this is kind of how we got this stupid situation where only big cars are highly profitable to build". So basically they support the status quo unless you frame it like that.

Yeah. No problem to drive a tank sized child killer with a hood so long that it's close to driving blind, but these small trucks are a risk... You're allowed to risks others lives, but when you're willing to risks your own the nanny state is on high alert.

Go, go! Land of the free!

I totally want to get a Kei truck to scoot around town in.

Issues seem to be they run $x,xxx-$xx,xxx to get an automatic one in the US and my state wont allow it on highways/some roads.

The principal reason why I can’t see myself daily-driving a kei truck: I’d have to get extremely good at reversing through drive-through establishments. Everything in the U.S. is built for left-hand drive.

They are small enough that you can reach through the passenger side easily while sitting in the driver's side. Source: I own one.

I've rambled about this on here before, but I'm pretty bothered that the media coverage of these always mentions the 25-year import law, but also always frames it simply as a matter of exemption from safety and emissions standards, never deigning to mention that the law originated in the first place as a protectionist measure.

In the late 80s, Mercedes in North America was getting its lunch eaten by grey-market importers who were bringing European models over and undercutting the American dealers on price. So they blew millions lobbying the government to crack down on these imports, and found a not-wholly-unsubstantiated justification in safety concerns around modifications not complying with American safety standards. So the US just enacted a sweeping ban of any new imports; you can bring in dodgy old cars from the 1990s unmodified, but you can't bring in a 2024 European Mercedes or Japanese kei truck, because they're "unsafe". The new cars can't be titled, and if the feds find out you got one in anyway, they'll literally confiscate it and throw it in the crusher.

Seeing Whistlindiesel in the article makes me realize that there could be a bipartisan coalition here of "government should let me do what I want" conservatives and libertarians, and urban-design lefties who resent having to drive everywhere and would love to buy the minimum amount of car possible to meet their needs if such a thing were possible. My conspiracy theory is that burying the lede on this is intentional because people buying $12,000 Japanese imports wouldn't be buying $60,000 F-150s.

> My conspiracy theory is that burying the lede on this is intentional because people buying $12,000 Japanese imports wouldn't be buying $60,000 F-150s.

I imagine they're buying the cheaper Toyotas, or Kias instead?

Ban the victims not the perpetrators (cybertruck)

Cybertruck is the same size as the F-150.

Pointier corners though. Nearly 30 years after the Miata gave up its pop up headlights because pedestrian safety was something we cared about at the time, instead of only the vehicle occupants’ safety and their desire to look cool.

Weight wise it’s not

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