Not an expert on Oregonian law, but my theory is that Oregon's motor vehicle law references the federal NHTSA regulations, and Kei vehicles laughably don't meet them (exterior lighting, crash performance, theft resistance, emissions, and so on).
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.
NHTSA has a 25-year rule that allows a car old than 25 years to be imported without those considerations. You can definitely import them legally in Texas. I find it funny that we disallow these new smaller trucks, but we allow folks to jack up the suspension on an already large American truck 24 inches, install a grille guard, and it's still considered legal.
They are also huge offenders! At least in Los Angeles.
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.
...or when my local inspection station, and the cops, don't even blink at a Ford 350 with a huge-ass lift kit, mud tires that don't grip for shit and extend inches (or more) past the fenders which is insanely dangerous, a front bumper that has been replaced with a thick sheetmetal version, and the rear plate is covered by a tinted, a glossy plate cover that makes the plate virtually impossible to read, and the cherry on the pie: a "DPF delete" which means the guy is belching diesel particulate everywhere he goes.
It's funny you mention that. The other day I was out on mine on a coastal highway here, waving at a bunch of other people doing the same thing, and thinking "If someone invented these today there's no way they'd let them on the road."
I'll play devil's advocate on this one -- most motorcycles sold today will do 125mph and the Kei trucks I'm familiar with cruise at around 55mph reliably (some may technically go up to 65mph if you sit there redlining). I'd guess some concern comes from holding up single-lane traffic. And this is coming from someone who loves the Kei trucks in rural New Hampshire, but I have been stuck behind them before too.
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.
A single lane road with a speed limit above 55 but no passing zones is a strange beast indeed. Don't think I've ever seen one. Also plenty of construction and farm equipment is street legal despite some of them not being able to break 25mph.
As always, it's a speed limit, not a speed target. Overtaking lanes exist for a reason. As long as someone isn't going unreasonably below the speed limit (which is also unsafe), then it's completely fine.
Dark take with just enough data to make it a talking point: motorcycles allow the rider to fly off and die from a traumatic brain injury, while preserving their organs.
If you’re crushed in a Kei car they probably won’t be able to salvage much.
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.
This seems like a weird way of US states attempting to enforce their own local interpretation of federal laws and not laws that actually exist as state code. Anything that's over 25 years old is specifically exempt from federal FMVSS. If it's under 25 years old you can't legally import it anyways for use on US roads (with title, etc).
People do import <25 year old kei type vehicles for use exclusively on private property on large ranches and such.
States are not required to register cars just because the federal government allows them to be imported or sold. They can add requirements consistent with their own laws, as California infamously does causing 49-state cars and parts.
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.
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 per-state family leave laws for employees, employment law, landlord tenant law as well.
> 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.
“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”
Don't forget alcohol! Widely different regulations, sometimes county to county. Some states only allow liquor stores to sell spirits, some only allow hard alcohol sales on Sunday mornings, some counties allow no alcohol sales before noon on Sundays, other counties outright ban the sale of alcohol, others enable drive through liquor pickup, on and on.
> 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,
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.
I think it's clear that I meant different interpretations (politically) at a state level of what law should be written and implemented on certain things or activities.
Canada has one unified criminal code nation wide. For instance a province can't make weed legal or enact laws banning certain guns that are ok in others. The weird regional variations in Canada are like, ICBC as monopoly car registration + vehicle liability insurance in BC. Quebec language laws are another weird regional thing.
Road legal is entirely a state thing. The federal law is all about what is legal to import or offer for sale.
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.
It's bonkers how many laws there are against perfectly ordinary and normal things like importing cars in the Land of the "Free".
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.
That's one reason why the UK is considered DIY vehicle heaven. And also why it is very much a pity that it dropped out of the EU because that gave a neat little loophole for a while.
There's a lot of reasons it's a pity it dropped out of the EU, but one upside is that it gives us room to rejoin as a proper member, using the Euro, in Schengen, etc.
Or, maybe just Scotland and NI, and Wales and England can become independent.
> There's a lot of reasons it's a pity it dropped out of the EU
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.
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.
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.
Who needs a cigar when one could read Wikipedia first?
> 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.
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.