[sesvsesv]

You are correct that it probably won't be allowed. But your assumption that Sweden is restrictive isn't. I see that you live in Stockholm, so maybe you already know this, or you haven't spent much time outside the city in recent years. Almost every medium and small city in Sweden now features 16 to 17-year-olds driving old cars electronically or mechanically converted to only run at 30 kph (~20mph) without requiring a proper driver's license, adequate noise reduction, exhaust system and until recently not even winter tires or seatbelt. Making roads slow and dangerous, and the local environment much worse for everyone else.

Now I don't expect this to be well-received because of "cool hack" but it is truly a major issue. Other issues like the high housing costs, bad healthcare, lacking infrastructure, mediocre education and a short-sighted population are all hard to solve. But this issue is clearly a priority. Swedish voters and politicians are prioritizing this over providing a good quality of life at a decent cost to enable education, research and knowledge based businesses.

The result as a whole is that almost anyone who can is moving from these cities to bigger cities that don't have these problems, but are also so expensive that engaging in activates with high growth potential isn't viable. With grassroot hacking, small- and medium-sized business and major growth startup ending up being a fraction of what they have been and even more so should have been now.

[Tempest1981]

> features 16 to 17-year-olds driving old cars ... converted to only run at 30 kph

I had to search to see what you were referring to:

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230320-sweden-s-teen...

[sesvsesv]

As I understand it some of the cars are newer cars electrically modified (usually the previous family car, often a station wagon). Those are mostly wasteful by driving at slow speed with only two seats and no storage (which are also rules to be able to convert them). These can be converted back to a normal car when the driver turns 18 and gets a proper driver's license. But it is also possible to disable the electronic limits. Other cars are pemanantly converted much older cars and sold as such. These are the ones that are also bad cars without the regulation affecting a normal car.

Edit: Someone infamously converted and registered a heavy truck this way. Legal to drive as a 15-year-old with a moped license.

https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/eddie-15-har-en-lastbil-som...

[Tempest1981]

Any chance the law will be changed before things get further out of hand?

Seems like the original target was mopeds? But somehow cars and trucks were included?

[hashmush]

There are constant debates about them in Sweden. Especially after fatal accidents or incidents involving teens driving at speeds above 100 kph. [1][2]

The original law considered tractors and other farm equipment, AIUI. You can drive these so called A-traktor with only a moped or tractor license when you're 15.

[1] Swedish article from 2022 with some examples (there are many more since then): https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/ungdomar-manipulerar-a-tr...

[2] Example police chase: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CqcEqhXWiYE

[DrRobinson]

This comment seems out of place to me. It brings up (claimed) political issues irrelevant to the topic at hand.

The account is recently created and this is the first and only comment/post they've made on this site.

[sakjur]

The political issues are all somewhat valid, but like most political issues rather more complicated (and also more debated) than described.

I’m not sure whether the commenter speaks Swedish or not, their username seems to suggest they do (sv_SE is the language code for the Swedish [country] dialect of Swedish [lang]) but their comment reflects a phenomenon I’ve both experienced and witnessed:

Swedes are more likely to discuss policy issues in Swedish (and all of these issues are debated back and forth with varying degrees of success). Our grasp of English is mostly contextual since it’s a secondary and utilitarian language for us. I think it’s easy and natural for an English-speaker to mistake hitting language barriers as ignorance. That can extend into the ESL-speaker [English as a Secondary Language] feeling belittled, and eventually you get this effect of people just avoiding English because you associate it with feeling stupid. We get the French-waiter-that-clearly-speaks-English-but-refuses-to trope.

On the other side of that fence we have ESLs butting in on domestic affairs in English-speaking countries because we happen to speak the language. That makes us appear elitist and judgmental, too.

Apologies for deviating further from the topic.

Going back to the legality of the car: It’s complicated. The police claims it’s illegal to use autopilot on their website, but there’s a blurry line between adaptive cruise control/lane assist and autopilot. The competition requires cars to be insured, hopefully that insurance company is aware of the modifications and can advise the owners on what they can and cannot do. https://polisen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/ost/2024/mars/autopilot/ [swedish]

More practically, if they use country roads and drive somewhat near the speed limits, they’re not likely to run afoul of the law unless they’re in an accident.

If the author is here, I’d urge them to remember that a moose is practically designed to bypass a car’s safety features and kill you. There are a quarter of a million of them in Sweden. Invest in good tires and headlights, drive carefully, and avoid hitting wildlife or reindeer.

[sesvsesv]

Car regulation is relevant to the topic, and so is car regulation of modified cars in Sweden which they are planning to drive through and a statement was made on. I have thought about this. It is something that is discussed a lot in Sweden. But not available outside it as those discussions are in Swedish, and also not held by everyone.

I'm interested in quality of life because I spend a lot of time working, organizing thing and doing projects. This is also on topic. But as such I don't have that much time. Or at least not enough to end up getting stuck here instead of doing something more important. I've found that the best to manage that is not to hold a regular account. My first account is however many years older than yours.

Sometimes I do have some time or find the motivation to post, because sharing information about something you know about to others who might not know about it but have thought about something I haven't is something that is harder to do anywhere else than on the Internet. In this case how the freedom to tinker with a car can affect the long time viability of creating bigger things.

Unfortunately your comment doesn't seems out of place. It's very much part of why I'm not around a lot. It simply isn't worth posting anything when I have something better to do. (Which isn't really now since I'm on a train to Stockholm with little else to do considering the holidays).

[cess11]

Those aren't cars, they're tractors.

[CalRobert]

How does it make the roads more dangerous?

[sesvsesv]

Disregarding just being teenagers (using their phones, doing burnouts), not having a proper driver's license (usually a 20+ lesson affair in Sweden) and driving old cars without safety systems; driving at less than half the speed of regular traffic in a smaller city or a more rural area means a lot of dangerous overtaking as the standard road is one lane in each direction (especially where the terrain doesn't allow for much more) and these cars are not allowed on highways. Since you are allowed to choose high school in Sweden, some choose one further away and driving. Making such roads congested.

[CalRobert]

I was thinking it’d be similar to tractors, which I’m guessing are already legal (but maybe I’m wrong!)

[sesvsesv]

It's normal cars regulated as tractors, because at some point it was considered useful to use cars as tractors. But as you can now convert them electronically, they are used at scale for convenience. So it like driving behind a tractor, but there are many tractors going back and forth to school, the supermarket and friends in rush hour and on weekend. All day, every day. And the drivers are very overrepresented in not behaving well on the road.

Here are some examples.

https://youtu.be/EprqvxTF5vI?t=92

https://youtu.be/RfhIPGVDQ2Q?t=461

https://youtu.be/wTkM5Cknobc?t=509

[sakjur]

They tend to lead to more unsafe overtakings since getting stuck behind one is stressful, they’re driven by young people who have a license to drive a moped and haven’t gone through the ice-driving classes a regular Swedish driver’s license includes, and the cars are often older inherently unsafer car models lacking proper maintenance.

And a chunk of people driving them violate the framework and drive extra passengers, bypass the speed limiter, and drink and drive.

[cess11]

Adults that hate kids tend to do dangerous overtakings because they just can't chill for a bit at 30 km/h and so on. It's not the kids and their tractors making the roads more dangerous.

[potato3732842]

As someone who has spent a lot of time in a literal tractor at comparable speeds I dislike drivers like you more than I dislike drives like them because once a few of you stack up behind me the situation becomes far less straight forward for drivers who want to pass and doing so becomes far more dangerous for them, which endangers me.

Just pass the damn tractor. You're not doing anybody any favors by being "patient".

[cess11]

I'm not going to risk my life or that of my kids, I'll wait until I can do a safe overtaking.

I've grew up in the countryside and worked on a farm as an adult and don't agree with you despite many hours in tractors, with and without trailers, on public roads.

[potato3732842]

>I'm not going to risk my life or that of my kids, I'll wait until I can do a safe overtaking.

What I hear when you say that is:

"I will follow you for several miles ignoring whaat other people would consider fine passing opportunities (and me waving my arm out the window at you trying to get you to go around) until a bunch of pissed off traffic stacks up until some guy with a Dodge Charger (or whatever, you get the stereotype) comes along and decides to pass us all at once in a sketchy way, to everyone's detriment"

And from there it goes one of two ways. Either you get the message and pass me at the next decent (to the average person, not you) opportunity or you squander that opportunity and the second guy in line passes you both of us at a reasonable time and that repeats.

Now, obviously when someone who gives off those sorts of vibes shows up I'll pull over at the first available opportunity to force them to pass but when you're talking a 2-lane with no shoulder and ditches and a combination too long to use a driveway as a pull off it could be awhile.

Listen, I get it, not everyone can pass, some people have higher standards than others for . There's people towing trailers, there's heavy trucks, student drivers, old people, shitboxes running on three cylinders, etc, etc. But that doesn't make the situation safer and for a normal person in a normal car in normal conditions to subject themselves to that is just, ugh.... misguided

[cess11]

If you want to make things up, maybe don't send it to other people unless they asked for it?

[gambiting]

It's the same crowd who blame cyclists for making the roads more dangerous because drivers "have to" overtake them in dangerous ways.

[diggan]

> because they just can't chill for a bit at 30 km/h and so on.

Driving 30 km/h instead of 70-80 km/h would drive anyone insane, it would effectively double your travel time.