[throwaway2037]

    > American buyers who want Japanese kei trucks.

It is crazy when I hear people say they want to drive a kei truck on American roads. American SUVs and trucks are enormous in both height and weight. The kei truck does not offer the necessary crash protection.

[CalRobert]

But... I'm allowed to walk, bike, or ride a motorcycle on American streets...

[throwawaypath]

It is crazy when I hear people say they want to walk, bike, or ride a motorcycle on American roads. American SUVs and trucks are enormous in both height and weight. Walking, biking, or riding a motorcycle does not offer the necessary crash protection.

[xnx]

People already ride motorcycles so why not let them drive in much safer kei trucks?

[JumpCrisscross]

> The kei truck does not offer the necessary crash protection

Eh, if you aren’t doing a lot of highway driving, I think this could be fine? Especially in a city where collisions should be low speed.

Put another way—and this is a genuine question—is the person who wants a Kei truck better off spending tens of thousands of dollars more for safety rather than investing that in their health, happiness or education?

[throwaway2037]

You raise some interesting points. A different way to look at safety: Why do car companies bother at all? Why isn't it a race to the bottom for car crash safety? "Oh, it's expensive to have cars with crash safety. Let's reduce our materials cost."

[JumpCrisscross]

> Why do car companies bother at all? Why isn't it a race to the bottom for car crash safety?

More safety, always, is usually a feel-good measure. If people aren’t trading in their old cars for the newer, safer ones, because the latter are too expensive, it’s not actually helping people. Same if the cheapest car someone can get for their commute is bankrupting them.

[throwaway2037]

I did more research on this matter and found a this PDF: https://dor.georgia.gov/document/document/policy-bulletin-mv...

    > Kei Vehicles are not compliant with U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). Therefore, they are not “street legal.” Kei Vehicles are barred from titling and registration.

I found other sources on Google saying you can cheat this rule by finding a state that does not strictly enforce FMVSS rules for titling and registration. Then, you can (illegally) drive the kei truck in another state. To be clear: This is illegal, but you need to be caught. Also, it looks like there are auto body shops that will modify a kei truck/car to make it street legal. I have a seen a bunch of YouTubers driving kei trucks/cars with California license plates. Thus, I assume the work was done to make them street legal.

Thus, we can conclude that FMVSS prevents a race-to-the-bottom in vehicular safety for cars in the US. Honestly, I expect all highly developed nations to have similar rules. Why? For the safety of children, more than anything. Even if a parent wants to drive an unsafe car, most societies will prioritise the safety of child passengers over the "liberty" of the parent/owner/driver.

[greedo]

Sorry, but this is a crock.

1. Seat belts - pretty sound investment. 2. Air Bags - excellent investment. 3. Crumple zones - outstanding investment. 4. ABS - outstanding investment. 5. Backup cameras - not worth the money if you don't value the lives of small kids. 6. Lane sensors - pretty handy, especially as your reflexes start to slow with age.

Why aren't performance improvements scrutinized the same way? How often are huge trucks given a pass despite never having anything in their truckbeds?

[cucumber3732842]

(Not) sorry (in the slightest), but this is a crook.

Stop getting your technical info from ideologues in the reddit comments. Each of those investments is an order of magnitude less valuable than the first.

Wear your seatbelt. That's 90% of the battle.

Crumple zones in particular punch below their weight class and are grossly misunderstood on the internet. Their primary purpose is to let the front of the car hit something before the cabin starts decelerating to buy time for airbag deployment. Force absorption is a secondary nice to have. They only make a meaningful difference to the forces in the cabin at a narrow range of speed.

Side curtain airbags punch above their weight class though because there's not much else to help you in that direction of movement.

ABS is pretty meh. It only really beats the operator by enough to matter in specific situations.

If your reflexes are so bad that the lane keeping is what's keeping you in the lane there's other problems.

I'm not gonna pick apart every one of these improvements and they do add value. But they do not add the amount of value you are acting like they do.

>Why aren't performance improvements scrutinized the same way? How often are huge trucks given a pass

Because you're simping vehicular safety theater. So where the dollars and cents actually matter, commercial trucks bought by commercial interests who can push back, what gets adopted is actually based on what's real vs emotion driven screeching. Like for example semi trailers got ABS real early. It's extra valuable in applications where weight changes a lot.

>despite never having anything in their truckbeds?

Because the 2nd row of your car gets so much ass?

[ChiperSoft]

They did before consumer safety regulations went into affect

[greedo]

I know it's anecdata, but the number of high-speed crashes in my college-town are amazing. You have a 45mph zone, people routinely speed 5-10 over that and boom, dramatic crashes.

[vondur]

For driving around town to do stuff, I'd say they are fine and would love to have one. I doubt they would be able to safely drive on our freeways here though.

[yellowapple]

> American SUVs and trucks are enormous in both height and weight.

That has nothing to do with actual consumer preference and everything to do with regulatory capture.