[andrepd]

It's disgusting that they were ever allowed in the first place. Cars have extremely high externalities, the bare minimum is that people pay for them.

An EU directive implementing vehicle tax proportional to weight is urgent. Heavier cars pollute more, damage the road more, are much more dangerous for pedestrians and bicycles.

[downrightmike]

US: Makes personal city trucks larger to skirt US regulations

EU: Bans those trucks because they were created skirting regulations to the extreme

[linksnapzz]

The trucks are fully conformant w/ EPA & FMVSS regs.

That you don't like how those have been implemented isn't the fault of a manufacturer.

[digitalPhonix]

The loophole is to classify them as “light” commercial vehicles.

I’m fine with that if US regulation was consistent with that commercial classification and they required a CDL to drive (and all the associated annual medical checks and zero BAC etc.)

If that consistency was there every manufacturer would immediately drop the commercial classification and figure out how to make their trucks satisfy the passenger classification in FMVSS.

[linksnapzz]

>The loophole is to classify them as “light” commercial vehicles.

Not a loophole. There are (broadly) eight different FMCSA classifications; and a CDL is usually required only when the GVWR is at or over ...26,000lbs. Everything below that is medium or light duty. Heavy-duty is the upper end of class 6 (think school busses), class 7 ( garbage trucks & cement mixers ) and class 8 (18-wheel semis).

[digitalPhonix]

I know all that (I have a class A). That’s why I am calling out the inconsistency as a loophole.

One part of the regulatory/legislative system allows a vehicle to be classified as commercial (to get the benefits of looser regulation) but another part does not consider it a commercial vehicle (and it benefits from the looser regulations of a passenger vehicle).

[linksnapzz]

Ah, I see.

Yes, there's too much ambiguity in the adjective 'commercial' used in multiple contexts in legislation.

[cbeach]

If we cared about reducing road casualties, then objectively speaking, we should ban bikes. Roads are designed for cars (people in protective metal boxes with hundreds of sophisticated safety features).

Roads were never intended for people on flimsy two wheeled contraptions with nothing more than a polystyrene cap to protect them.

[digitalPhonix]

Seems about 5x as many pedestrians die on the roads than cyclists, so by that logic pedestrians are banned from roads too? No more pedestrian accessible roadside shops?

https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-pedestrians-and-cycli...