I think the real use-case for these is for use on a large campus: University, Corporate, or otherwise. We have a half-dozen at work for getting between buildings, and the key advantage is that you can park almost anywhere for a short time without blocking traffic. We also have rideshare bikes, and sidewalks, but sometime you need to get a heavy box to the factory quickly, and these are perfect.
How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania
231–240 of 409 posts
Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
True. Which is why I would like to make it the law that all motor vehicle occupants should wear helmets. This will mean saving billions of life years lost through traumatic brain injuries.
What if the helmets were giant (unlike bike helmets, the rider doesn't have to carry the entire weight or air resistance). Then, instead of filling the helmets with hard styrofoam, we could fill them with something even softer, maybe a compressible gas. People could obviously store them in the vehicle. It might be annoying to wear them all the time, so we could mandate that cars detect when you are about to be in a c…
You're kind of making their point for them.
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?
Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania
#233I went back and forth on the idea of sharing such a negative take here, but... here goes. > 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…
I don't understand the anger and disdain from people about others potentially hurting themselves. The only thing I can think of is they are jealous of someone who doesn't have these sort of intrusive thoughts about safety all the time and how they get to do something cool like the OP every now and then.
Potentially hurting themselves only is okay: ride some extreme mountain bike, lift extreme weights, ski on risky slopes, consume strange substances, etc.
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.
Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. If safety was a primary concern for U.S. regulators, large consumer…
I think it might be a little more nuanced than that. I have a friend who's still alive today because he was driving a Lexus SUV when a Honda Accord blew through a red light and collided with him at speed. Should he downgrade his car so he's more vulnerable next time?
With respect, this is a textbook example of anecdotal thinking.
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.
Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
You the sort of person who will tie down a bag of dog food or bag of soup cans when you load them into a vehicle without a trunk?
Absolutely. 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.
BTW I wonder why space behind a pedal is still a thing. If I were building a car, I would make it impossible to put anything under pedals, much like you cannot jam anything below a piano key.
Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania
#236n.b - you can't do this in california due to emissions regulations without an expensive emissions retrofit
Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
US restrictions on vehicle imports seem very odd from a British perspective. 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 shoul…
A quick Google shows that only 15 states have vehicle inspections. The concept seems completely foreign (and a waste of time?) to me.
Unfortunately - that's the only way to force some drivers to get their car brakes fixed.
Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only reason given is that they are not manufactured for US highways. Which may be a roundabout way of saying they aren't capable of going highway speeds.
They’re not really manufactured for Japanese highways either. 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.
The whole point of the kei form factor is different parking rules in dense, sometimes cramped Japanese cities. Due to the small footprint, they are allowed to park in more places.
These are urban vehicles, not intended for highways, except in a pinch.
Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically it's a drain on society's safety nets. If people hurt themselves it requires investments of health care workers and tax dollars. Now this isn't a really strong argument in the US, since we don't have socialized healthcare, but it's not nonexistent either. 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-intere…
> Technically it's a drain on society's safety nets. 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…
> 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.
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
Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but the point is that the vast majority of people buying full sized pickup trucks aren't actually using them for practical purposes, and it turns out that when something becomes a status symbol like that for so long the capabilities diverge from what people that aren't just buying it as a status symbol want.
> Yeah but the point is that the vast majority of people buying full sized pickup trucks aren't actually using them for practical purposes, 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 p…
>If they are using it for practical purpose, you can’t replace it with a Kei
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.