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Comment by riversflow | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps the light truck exemption should stay, but all exempt vehicles pay a punitive mileage tax. My feeling here is that pickups as _actual_ tool/utility vehicles is valid, but we should punish the use of such dangerous vehicles when they don’t serve a purpose. A tradesmen owning a truck that he uses to transport materials and tools is one thing. The dude who works in sales at a software company and has used the bed once since he bought the truck to go camping is another.

I’m not sure though, the overarching problem is that the US is vast, and what is good in one place is bad in the other.

A large 4x4 truck is a menace in a dense city, but a car is crap in places with poor roads and snow. Both are common.

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> A large 4x4 truck is a menace in a dense city, but a car is crap in places with poor roads and snow. Both are common.

As someone who grew up in Colorado and now lives in Canada, a large 4x4 truck is a menace on poor roads and snow as well.

Trucks are heavy, with poorly distributed weight, and are harder to control in snow if they have a true (locked center diff) 4x4 system. A Subaru with snow tires is the stereotypical mountain car for a reason. If I have to drive an hour through a blizzard I'll take the car if given the choice

If you need a truck, you need a truck, but there should be much stronger limits on what is CAFE exempt, and what you can use a CAFE exempt vehicle for. Perhaps since the exemption is intended to avoid hurting commercial interests, CAFE exempt vehicles should require a commercial license and insurance.

You just need to make them look like Iveco Daily, VW Transporter or other similar european dropside trucks, which make more sense for businesses and no one will buy them for their attractiveness.

> but a car is crap in places with poor roads and snow.

That's a false dichotomy. 4x4 cars often do better on poor roads and snow, lower center of gravity is better if you don't need ground clearance, and weight distribution of a pickup isn't great for snow etc. unloaded. Of course this assuming actual roads, not off-road.

The whole 4x4 truck things is even more complicated - good off-road performance and good freeway performance are in many ways at cross purposes.

The real intrinsic value of a pickup is open air bed space (easier access than a van, but less protected), I don't mean they don't do other things well, just that is what the form factor gets you. The way the market developed they have also turned into the vehicle of choice for towing, but that's not intrinsic, just useful. Outside of 5th wheels, I suppose, where you need the platform. That isn't most towing in that size.

The % of light pickups is more a regulatory incentive and marketing phenomena than a reflection of real utility.

Why should any vehicles be treated differently? Surely all should be expected to be safe.

> A large 4x4 truck is a menace in a dense city, but a car is crap in places with poor roads and snow. Both are common.

Then forbid trucks where the roads are good and where there is no snow.

California already treats every vehicle with a bed as commercial (& thus weight fee), very rare exceptions. Although there are subgroups within that rightfully based on vehicle weight.

> car is crap in places with poor roads and snow

My FWD Volvo Station wagon would like a word with you

There are (or were) plenty of small cars that did great off road that are no longer sold in the US, if I was looking for a new car and could buy one in the US I'd consider something like the Sizuki IGNIS where it's got 4WD and can hold people comfortably.

Old Fiat Panda 4x4 is amazing cheap car.

This won't work because the people with the greatest need also have the least ability to pay. It would only make sense if you include a measure of how urban the area is.

In the usa we live in a largely lawless society I don't know who is gonna enforce something like that when we barely go after armed teen carjackers.

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