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Comment by LAC-Tech | Hacker News Reader

I feel like heavier cars being a separate license or an endorsement on your existing car license is a sensible idea. They have very different handling characteristics, and it's pretty noticeable a lot of their drivers lack the skill required to operate them safely.

I mean the idea that you can sit your license test in a subcompact and then go out and drive a 4 door high displacement ute/pickup truck is pretty absurd on the face of it.

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This has been fixed in Europe by making any vehicle over 3500kg a heavy vehicle with a C/D-license (compared to normal B). Commercial usage or not does not matter. You can go over the 3500 a bit with an E license which is a towing license but that also requires training.

This is one of the reasons the original hummer didn't sell well in Europe as you needed a truck license instead of a standard car one. People loving impractical cars had to wait for the second version.

I can first hand provide feedback on this and completely agree! I grew up in India, drove smaller sized vehicles and even in US until I found myself working for an automotive company in the lightduty/heavy duty truck team. Those things were difficult to maneuver and it took me sometime getting used to them. I find it very amusing that any random person is allowed to go buy a light duty truck without further skills upgrade(i would categorize the escalade/tahoe/navigator/wagoneer as trucks) im not surprised to see these folks not staying in their lane, can't get out of a grocery store parking lot without a near miss event.

Even for the smallest car the requirements go drive are too minimal. And once you meet those we never make you update your training.

Requirements to drive in a car dependent region have to be minimal. Lots of people shouldn’t be on the road, but there’s not exactly room for them in Manhattan, SF, or the handful of other areas where you can live without a car.

I don't know how to get there, but most people live in an area with enough density to support most people living without a car (leaving only those who need a car - plumbers for example). However it only takes a few to use a car anyway and there isn't enough demand to support the transit needed for everyone to live without a car. These areas mostly don't have traffic, so there is no real negative to using a car in those areas unless you are very poor (at which point the expense isn't choose which luxury to spend money on)

Agreed, there should be a 5 year refresher. There are similar refreshers for other life-affecting licenses (medical / first aid licenses for one).

All the time I’m on narrow, curvy 2-lane highways and these guys are flying by, inches from my car, in their monster pickup trucks that barely fit on the road with their tires right on the double yellow line.

LOL and then later on a professional driving a tractor-trailer unit who is able to hold the line perfectly. The skill gap is enormous.

Since the well to do are those who drive large cars, likely nothing will be done to them in the US essentially.

How about sub compact EVs? I can feel the extra heft compared to the ICE I was driving just last week.

In the UK the limit for a car licence used to be 7.5 tonnes (like my licence) but in the mid-90s they changed that to 3.5 tonnes. This means that now you can drive all but the largest Ford Transit-type vans on a car licence. You also used to have to do a separate licence to pull a trailer, but I think they've rolled that back.

It's okay for me and my friends to drive 7.5 tonners on car licences, because until we got our car licences we ran around in tractors. Someone who grew up in a city and learned to drive in a Fiesta, not so much.

agreed, and also for cars over XXX hp (not sure of specific limit but still)

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