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How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania

danwilkerson.com

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Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania

#271

Post by jdietrich »

Auracle wrote: post #182
jdietrich wrote: post #150

Earlier 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.

The UK has less than half as many road deaths than the US, even after factoring in the difference in miles driven per year. Annual inspection is one of the reasons for that.

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...

Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania

#272

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

randunel wrote: post #268
CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I look at the numbers [1] I highly doubt the US is even in the top 50. It's probably just the most pedestrian deaths per mile driven of any country that reports pedestrian deaths per mile driven. 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 U…

The comment you replied to claimed > 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.

Yes, but that's only because most countries with horrible numbers don't have any data in that column and end up at the bottom. If you sort by anything else the USA is far far from the worst country.

Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania

#273

Post by numpad0 »

nine_k wrote: post #238
Aeolun wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There’s no separate parking laws for Kei cars, just relaxed legal processes and taxes. You still can’t park overnight on streets.

Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania

#274

Post by defrost »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #270
defrost wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it telepathy that allows you to claim that you know what I'm thinking? 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 c…

> Is it telepathy that allows you to claim that you know what I'm thinking? 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 practic…

> It's the fact that the driver license fee is paid at renewal, which isn't yearly in any US state

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.

Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania

#275

Post by arethuza »

hprotagonist wrote: post #155
rootusrootus wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Different US states' very unique interpretation of laws on certain things is something I have seen that needs explanation 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.

https://nonasuch.tumblr.com/post/616921709864468480/do-non-a... “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”

"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"

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".

Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania

#276

Post by numpad0 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #186
p1necone wrote: post #125

Earlier 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…

Panel vans. Like those 1.2L 3cyl Golf faced delivery vans. People need those. But that’s not a socially acceptable private possession, and a Kei is nowhere as humiliating thanks to novelty, so Kei sells.

Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania

#277

Post by AnthonyMouse »

defrost wrote: post #274
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it telepathy that allows you to claim that you know what I'm thinking? 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 practic…

> It's the fact that the driver license fee is paid at renewal, which isn't yearly in any US state 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…

> That's your quibble?

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?

Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania

#279

Post by Dalewyn »

nine_k wrote: post #238
Aeolun wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Close but no cigar.

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.

Re: How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania

#280

Post by Dalewyn »

rootusrootus wrote: post #120
walrus01 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different US states' very unique interpretation of laws on certain things is something I have seen that needs explanation to foreign visitors and people who immigrate, from countries where there is one consistent legal code and regulation system of various products at the national level... Marijuana regulations and firearms (and limitations of different types of firearms) are two obvious examples. Other things like p…

> Different US states' very unique interpretation of laws on certain things is something I have seen that needs explanation 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.

>The states really are very powerful, even ~250 years into the experiment.

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.

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