Hmm, these huge trucks are killing pedestrians, causing worse crashes due to crash incompatibility, destroying the climate, and now smashing through guard rails and flying off cliffs. We’d better change our entire country’s infrastructure to accommodate them.
It’s the good Christian thing to do
Amen
Isn’t this just the road trying to solve the problem for us? I say we should have more ditches and guardrail barriers!
Lol you apparently didn’t read the article… it’s calling out EVs because they’re usually heavier than the ICE counterparts. Small sedans are pushing 5k pounds now being EVs. Batteries are very very heavy.
It’s worth highlighting that this study isn’t really about the merits of EVs. After all, you can buy an EV that weighs less than 5,000 pounds. You just can’t electrify your favorite already-large car—or even buy a hulking gas-powered car—and expect guardrails to work as intended. “Weight is a universal problem; it is not unique to electric vehicles,” Stolle said. “We have similar concerns about the compatibility of the biggest gas-powered cars with our guardrail system.” The 6,700-pound Chevrolet Silverado 1500 already weighs too much, based on the result from this research, and the 8,500-pound Silverado EV weighs even more.
Yes but you called out trucks like they’re the only issue. An electric leaf is almost 5k pounds…a leaf…
A leaf is 3500-3900 lbs, not almost 5k lbs
Well if you
squint at thatround to the nearest 5k ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯Curb weight on them is 4,900, yes it’s not 5k that’s why I said nearly 5k…and the point I am making is that a tiny car like that weighing that much shows that batteries are not light.
You added an extra 1000 lbs to the heaviest version, then rounded up. The whole entire point of standard weights is so numbskulls don’t just make up numbers for how much things weigh, like you are. The leaf is 350-3900 lbs, not 4900 lbs, not 5000 lbs. Please go back to elementary school.
https://www.autoblog.com/buy/2022-Nissan-LEAF-S__4dr_Hatchback/specs/
Should have clarified that I meant gross weight.
I’m not the other guy.
It doesn’t help that the first EVs most manufacturers are focusing on are their large SUVs and trucks. The Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3 both certainly aren’t small cars in a general sense, but in the land of EVs they are. Both weigh under 4000 pounds which is less than the best selling vehicle in North America, the F150.
Totally agree, but to act like it’s only trucks pushing this weight is silly. The electric leaf is nearly 5k lbs and it’s a very small EV.
The 2024 leaf is 3509lbs according to the Nissan USA website.
3500-3900 depends on what you get for options. Add in people and their shit and you’re pushing 5k (curb weight is 4,900bs)
You keep misusing the term curb weight.
From teh googs: Curb weight is the weight of the vehicle including a full tank of fuel and all standard equipment. It does not include the weight of any passengers, cargo, or optional equipment.
If that’s the fact then it absolutely is 4k+
There’s a big difference between pushing the limit and significantly exceeding the limit though.
One gets you across the bridge. One gets you a nice dip in the river.
Tax the heavy cars much more, they cause more dammage in crashes and way more wear and tear in general.
At least here in Cali we do. My HD truck gets an extra $500~ a year tax on top of the Gas guzzler tax I paid when new. Plus the fuel costs/taxes for that. Compared to my other cars I pay about $600 more for newal on it. The Average car is like $245 a year but the truck is like $840.
Definitely fine with paying the extra taxes though. I use more infrastructure and I also require additional strengthening of crash systems and cause road damage so I’m not opposed.
Meanwhile in Wisconsin I have to pay an extra $100/yr for registration because I drive a hybrid.
Why?
Because, I shit you not, driving a hybrid apparently costs the state too much money, because we have to fuel up less, and so they get less tax.
What the fuck.
Beats my state which passed a DC fast charge tax of nearly $3 per kwh while suspending gas taxes.
$120 in taxes per charge for a fairly normal EV. Yay.
Lol what state is doing this? That should basically kill EV sales there while simultaneously bringing their gas tax revenue to literally zero. Terrible financial choice.
Almost like it’s an ideological thing and not based on any kind of evidence or fiscal policy.
I kindaaaa get it from the states side. The problem they’re suffering from is just shitty taxes though. Rather than taxing gas they should be taxing based on vehicles and potential infrastructure usage. Given PHEV/BEVs don’t use gas they don’t pay as much into the system for roads. Since most roads are funded through fuel taxes. Which is clearly not going to work. I’d love a system rework of registration and gas taxes to solve this as we go into an electric future.
That said, here in Cali no one is also having a conversation about smog check stations that are state mandated on gas vehicles, but soon they could be a thing of the past and I worry about the economics of keeping smog stations alive when most cars don’t “pollute” the same way anymore.
Oooor. We already pay taxes for the roads, why is there a fuel tax at all. It’s like airline fees. They charge you up front for the flight, then have fees for all sorts of things. Only with taxes, each tax cost a significant amount to collect. One central tax for everything would save a lot of money. But of course somewhere there is a director of fuel taxes bringing home a couple hundred k a year…
We don’t properly pay taxes for roads. Like at all. We have a shit load of roads in the US and the maintenance is insane on them. Me paying my measly $900 a year in registration for my truck isn’t enough for the cost of roads, vehicle certifications, bridges, gas subsidies, tunnels, cleaning, water purification due to run-off, and thousands of other things that cars cause. Americans (me included) have the real cost of a driving centric country hidden from us and we act like taxing it appropriately is insane rather than realizing we chose the most inefficient method of transportation. A central tax doesn’t make sense because a lot of people in New York (as an example) don’t drive. Why should they pay for additional upkeep on roads they don’t actively use? They need bike lanes, walk ways, and subway infrastructure. Taxing vehicles at registration makes more sense. The idea behind the gas tax was that for people who drive more, and therefore use more infrastructure, they would pay more. It was designed to be fair and spread the cost evenly, but that’s clearly becoming a problem. Now we’re learning what that cost actually feels like and it sucks because we’re stuck with the bad decisions of our parents and grandparents.
How do you define makes more sense. Less types of tax mean less overhead. So the people get more for thier dollar. Who uses what doesn’t matter. I don’t use welfare, so should I not have to pay for it? I may not use the roads much, but the people who do are usually doing it for work, and one way or another that benefits me. So we should all just pay for everything that makes society work, and stop wasting so much on overhead.
If only everyone was as reasonable as you!
Rather than tax them a bit more, which won’t actually improve safety if people just opt to pay the tax and drive them anyway, why not just straight up legislate weight limits for private vehicles, with commercial licensing as done with cargo trucks expanded to fit more conventional vehicles driven for commercial purposes that have to be large and heavy? Car companies will start making smaller cars again real quick if they’re not allowed to sell them otherwise
The point is to use the tax to pay for upgrading the infrastucture. Also attempting to regulate car sizes like that would be political suicide in most states.
Why not make it a two peonged attack against heavy vehicles?
Tax heavy cars severely, and bring the smaller cars we have in Europe to the US, getting the VW Transporter and MB Sprinter would offer smaller, lighter and cheaper utility vehicles with more useful features to the US.
Or just ban them from certain roads.
The current version of MGS was developed to withstand cars weighing a maximum of 5,000 pounds
Seems like yet another case of a flawed study or a flawed article based on a misunderstanding of the study.
Statements like the quote above make no sense as “withstanding a 5,000lb vehicle” makes no sense. A 5k lb vehicle traveling at 70MPH is carrying several orders of magnitude more energy than a 5k lb vehicle traveling at 5MPH. Likewise a direct, perpendicular hit will impart more energy than a glancing parallel blow, so what are they really rated for?
In any case, these guardrails are used in places where 100k lb semis are traveling at highway speeds, and there have never been any other doom and gloom articles written about that. I don’t think we need to completely rebuild our highway system simply because heavier cars exist.
And they’re not meant to stop cars but rather redirect them
It would be 5k lb at high speed. I would say higher than the speed limit just to be safe. There would also be specs for height, etc.
Maybe heavier cars and vehicles should have a lower speed limit then.
That could have an adverse effect. There are processes in place for this.
The transportation administration in your area determines speed limits using several factors. Before I moved, the city I was in adjusted speed limits for several roads over a year long period. They reduced crashes by raising the limit on a handful of roads. They needed less policing for enforcement and traffic flow improved. After the study was completed, it stayed. Another example is a road they lowered the speed limit on resulted in higher crashes. So they put it back to what it was originally. And interestingly, in a construction zone where they had to lower the speed limit for the crew, they found that the lower speed limit overall, even when the crew went home, resulted in reduced crashes. For that area they just decided to keep that limit after construction was complete.
Maybe we should make car accidents a felony crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Maybe car sales taxes should scale by vehicle weight.
If you consume more of the road, you pay more
In the Netherlands you pay a road tax every 3 months. The amount is based on weight (because a heavier car does more damage to a road) but also on eco label. So an electric car that has the best eco label can have less tax than an old (but much lighter) diesel car.
Should the same approach be taken for the obese?
An extra 30-60 lbs is only like +1% to the weight of the whole vehicle though. You could get a larger swing by just filling up the tank in a gas/diesel car.
I’m not sure that person meant that the obese should be made to pay more in automobile taxes specifically, but rather in health insurance premiums, or some other kind of
fatexcise tax.I’m of the opinion that, assuming that a licensed medical provider has performed an appropriate evaluation that excludes the diagnosis of an underlying metabolic disorder that specifically causes one to be obese, there should be remuneration made to the health system for the consequences rendered by their behavioral decisions.
Theres already precedent for this with tobacco use.
I do agree with the spirit behind that on some level, but it seems impossible in practice. Obesity, specifically the modern “obesity epidemic” is a complex systemic issue that involves government as well as industry.
If they weigh enough to change a car’s impact on the road then…maybe?
They fundamentally do through taxes on emissions and fuel efficiency, plus fuel consumption taxes.
It’s just written as explicitly as it being a weight tax
we obviously need to take money from Amtrak and public transport grants to rebuild the interstate system. Guardrails upgraded everywhere, new lanes would be added to reduce congestion
New lanes don’t reduce congestion. When you add new lanes, drivers who had previously avoided those routes suddenly think “oh more lanes, it’ll be less congested” and it just fills back up to capacity. Except it’s worse because there’s even more cars now in the extra lanes you just built. Adding lanes makes congestion worse, not better.
What we need to do is get people off the roads and onto public transportation. That’s how you reduce congestion - get people off the roads. Unfortunately that means actually investing in public transportation, so that’ll never happen in the US.
I agree with you but also woosh because OP also agrees with you.
OP should have mentioned that railings will be upgraded with anti tank obstacles that way irony would have been more apparent 😅
!(for real though, I was reading your comment first and even so almost missed OP’s sarcasm)!<
The use of “obviously” followed exclusively by bad or disproven ideas is what made it obvious to me. There is an art to making a caricature of people who are pretty much already caricatures themselves.
It’s called induced demand
The guard rails are pretty good enough as is. When you hear of something like this it’s very often caused by lack of maintenance/poor installation/assembly. There is a guy on youtube that has videos of a whole bunch of guardrails that are simply unsafe because they are missing bolts or were assembled incorrectly.
And remember - guard rails are meant to slow you down enough to try and prevent a worse situation rather than always turning you back into the roadway to create a larger accident with other traffic or stop you completely.
I know America has an obesity epidemic, but did it really have to be extended to our cars?
fuel eff requirements tied to weight
just another oil company + car company scam
The car companies (like basically all other corporations) successfully passed their externalities onto the Government and the Government has done nothing to try to recoup those costs.
They should regulate the weight of cars. There’s no reason passenger vehicles should be as heavy as they are. For EVs they honestly shouldn’t have as much range as they do. 150 miles and improved charging infrastructure, make charging easier for folks who park on the street, is a better way to go. Folks who need to drive more than that a day should have a hybrid or ICE vehicle. Ideally a small fuel efficient one. Folks who need pickups for work should be able to buy the small European versions or work vans.
150miles is no where close to enough range for people who travel regularly. In a 3 hour trip I can do 150 miles. Depending on weather, battery degrading, and elevation that trip now requires charging multiple times which just isn’t acceptable. Let alone if you were trying to do a real road trip where you drive 1000+ miles, the amount of charge time is insane. And I want an EV for those road trips, extremely convenient for car camping.
250mi is a good number. Enough to do a lot of errands and medium trips in a day and charge overnight.
Bolt EV/EUV has that and it’s a compact.
Better to charge higher registration fees by weight.
The whole highway infrastructure tax structure will need revision as electric vehicles not paying gas taxes become more popular. Or we could just built more public transportation.
Folks who need a pickup truck for work should be required to file a permit request for pirchase of said truck.
Written by someone who owns a truck
Trucks haven’t always been the fucking obnoxious beasts that they are now.
I’d love a truck… The size of a '93 ford ranger. I don’t need or want a goddamn castle on wheels. I want a low vehicle, doesn’t need two full rows of luxurious seats, with a box, with a footprint SMALLER than a fucking Nissan Altima. Yes, that is the '93 ford ranger.
The crime was artificially creating the false dichotomy.
93 97 Ranger Splash with the side steps in yellow was my childhood dream to own. I have no problems with 1/4 ton trucks specially that size, but there is honestly no need for a 1/2 ton or larger truck, specially as big as they have them now.
Edit: there was no yellow ranger in '93
I don’t know if I have an explicit issue with larger trucks for merely existing, and I don’t mean to be the judge and jury for who does and doesn’t need what amount of towing power for whatever they might need them for.
They’re just obscene as a daily driver, though. Two luxurious rows of seats, massive box, giant towing capacity. Pick TWO.
If consumers had a viable option where they could get any 2 without needing all 3, I think they’d take it. Lack of diversity where automakers try and find manufacturing efficiency by limiting offerings such that trucks are everything for everyone is why they’re designed for excess.
“Designed for excess” is the American way.
I regularly haul 800 lbs of wood heating pellets in the back of my Subaru Baja. That’ll get me through somewhere between a week and half to almost three weeks of heating, depending on how cold the weather is. Wash, rinse, repeat all winter long.
Then there’s DYI work I’m doing on the house. I usually use my girlfriend’s Tacoma for that. Plywood, lumber, gravel, and cement mix. All of it needs to be hauled, and delivery is prohibitively expensive.
None of that is required for my desk job work.
I could give up hauling the 19’ sailboat, if need be, since that’s a luxury. It’ll make me an angry man come summer, though.
What’s your plan on addressing my needs, or are you happy to let me hang?
Are you intentionally defending lifted trucks that never hop a curb, or is that just an accidental consequence of your flex?
Neither. Not flexing, either. Hell, if I was, I wouldn’t be driving around a Baja. That model is the red-headed bastard child of the automotive world, catching grief from everyone.
Nah… just simple statements: I need to be able to get shit done outside of work, as reliably and inexpensively as I can. Find a way to sort out those folk who glam up their mall crawlers for whatever prestige is running through their empty heads and inflated egos, without hindering my ability to do what I need to do, and you’ll have the support of me and folk like me.
This.
Basically, if you need a half or full ton truck for work? Cool, ask for the permit. Oh, is it just to drive to your office desk job? Get a smaller vehicle or ride the bus
How is that permit process going to allow me a permit to get the stuff done that I need to do, while weeding out all the folk driving around pavement princesses?
The plan is file for a permit.
If you get denied there’s pickup trucks at the Uhaul store.
So you have no plan to differentiate on who gets a permit, and who doesn’t? That leads to one of three situations:
- Nobody gets a permit.
- Everyone gets a permit.
- Nobody gets a permit, except the friends and family of whoever’s in charge of handing out permits.
Good luck with that.
I’m not the guy who made the original comment but my plan would be, show me your business license. And as I said before anyone in need of hauling without a business can go down to Uhaul. As far as towing goes, that’s an engine/torque/frame issue. It doesn’t need to be a huge vehicle. There are minivans and crossovers with a 7,500 lb towing capacity.
To add, if you’re setup for towing then you can just use a trailer.
Brakes. You left out the important bit. My Baja will tow a lot more than it’ll stop.
Your plan would have me up the creek without a truck, especially if the Baja gets lumped into the truck category on account of it having a bed. Judging from the blank “apply for a permit” plan, it probably would.
I’ve gone down that “Just rent a truck from UHaul.” It stops being realistic when the local UHaul lot can’t handle current demand, much less whatever happens after y’all have taken trucks out of everyone else’s hands.
Take away my ability to keep my house heated, much less in good repair, and you’ll take away my ability to house myself, my family, my pets. They’re everything to me. Take everything away from a man, and see what happens. Then multiply that by every upstate, rural, blue collar man trying to get by… And see what happens to society. It ain’t gonna be pretty.
Your truck is not “everything”. You could easily haul that stuff with a trailer. And yes in a vehicle with competent brakes for it’s rated towing capacity. It’s not the government’s fault if you’re towing over capacity.
Also I highly doubt your home needs weekly DIY trips for years on end to remain functional. In fact, if that’s true you may want to look at hiring a general contractor instead of doing diy.
Edit to add - as an example a Subaru outback with trailer would work just as well as your truck depending on how heavy your boat and trailer are. But also there’s no reason a towing vehicle needs to be that large. Once the size is restricted you’ll be able to get 5,000 lb towing in cars, as it’s already a thing in Europe.
Yeah, I love my truck but i don’t need it and it is selfish for me to keep using it imo.
I am hoping to get away with not having a car when it eventually dies but I’ll be buying an EV or a Hybrid sedan if I really need a car then.deleted by creator
I can think of no better way to kill EV adoption than to intentionally make their usage less appealing than the alternative.
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250mi is around the right target. This pops out when you do some math on reasonable travel distances, battery charge times, and padding for cold weather.
You don’t want to use the first 20% or the last 20% of the battery, so you get down to 60% right there. This improves battery lifetime and also charges faster.
Lop off another 20% for cold weather.
That brings us to 120mi between stops, which is about 2 hours of highway driving between charges. You should be able to charge that in about 20 minutes, which is about right for using the bathroom, stretching your legs, and getting something to eat. If you want to go three hours, then 375mi is the right maximum.
None of this requires changes in battery tech or charging speed.
In short, there’s not much need for cars over 400mi range. Use any further advancement in battery tech for chopping off weight, not making them go further.
It is my understanding that you don’t fully charge your EV battery typically either. You charge it to 80% of it’s capacity and that is your “100% charged” state, for battery longevity. So you are down to %40 of your theoretical range before cold weather and the batteries wearing out over time anyhow.
Right, that’s accounted for above.
Gotcha, I misunderstood that part I guess!
Not to mention you need to account for battery degradation over time. A 10 year old EV isn’t going to maintain the same discharge rate as a brand new EV of the same model and spec.
So far not much deg on any temperature controlled pack. More like 20+ years of good use.
The old Leafs degraded, but they weren’t controlled.
The current version of MGS was developed to withstand cars weighing a maximum of 5,000 pounds, but many of today’s SUVs and trucks exceed that threshold.
MGS being what I’ve known as W beam guardrail.
Fun fact: In Spanish it’s called ‘quitamiedos’, which literally means ‘fear remover’. It’s not supposed to stop you, just let you drive closer to the edge :)
But he noted that in the real world, a guardrail is much more likely to be placed next to a steep [drop-off] than a concrete barrier.
Thankfully it was a test, but there’s probably already instances where an over-weight vehicle has smashed through safety devices.
There’s a guard rail guy on YouTube who investigates how the guard rails have been fitted. They often have bolts and the tension wire incorrectly installed so much so that they don’t even effectively stop small vehicles. That guy lost a family member to this type of accident and so is on a crusade kinda.
My kinda superhero
https://m.youtube.com/@TheGuardrailGuy
It’s sad because you can hear the frustration in his voice that for the sake of better training lives could be saved.
I am contracted to a utility and I get to see just how much time they spend on teaching people about safety. We still see deaths and serious injuries because some people are so lazy they don’t give a fuck if they kill someone.
I’m willing to bet the super tall pickups and SUVs are more likely to hop over those steel guardrails, too. Related: Those sloped concrete dividers that have a slightly shallower slope at their wider bottom? Those are super effective, because that bottom slope deflects the vehicle’s front wheel, causing it to turn slightly away from the barrier instead of continuing to smash through it.
It’s called a Jersey barrier.
They have other issues though. They cost more to produce, cost more to install and cost more to maintain. They also accumulate snow, which would otherwise blow through an open W guard rail.
A third option are wire guards. They’re cheaper on all accounts, don’t get tagged with graffiti and statistically save more lifes. They work best on long straight stretches, but because of the flexibility, they are not ideal for inner city streets where it’s best to avoid any lane breaches at all.
Wire guards are wildly unsafe for motorcyclists though.
Everything is wildly unsafe for motorcycles though.
That’s a myth. It may look like a “cheese grater” but statistics show that they have saved more motorcycle lifes than any other barriers, and there are no records of anyone actually getting grated.
I hate to be the “sources” guy, but the last time I looked at what few studies there where on the topic they weren’t positive. Could you direct me to where you found that info?
Those are called jersey barriers
Guardrails, much like the crumple zones of cars, are designed to give way to dissipate energy. This is a safety feature which saves lives. There isn’t going to be a one-size-fits-all-traffic guardrail. It’s about statistically improving outcomes, but unfortunately they aren’t going to help in all cases. Maybe they need to be updated, but it’s going to take time to adjust to changing average vehicle weights.
Velomobiles weight 35kg (77 pounds) and offer very good protection compared to normal bicycles. Theoretically you could design single seat cars not much heavier. Of course for higher speeds you’d want more protection and a little bit wider.
I imagine the ideal self driving car or robo-taxi to be two seats that face each other, so when you get one alone you have plenty of space to stretch your feet or put your groceries. It could be totally luxurious, simple to call and use and fast too. And the embodied energy would be very small and the “mpg” would be insane.
It’s just sad how badly we are tackling climate change by just letting the free market run wild.
I wouldn’t say that it’s a free market when there are so many mega corporations and their lobbies in government, but I agree with the rest
There is no “free market”. It’s only an ideology, one that is actively being used to justify creating the conditions of megacorps and legal bribes.
I’d be afraid of a world where brides were illegal.
(Just a joke mate, reread the end of your comment - you clearly meant bribes, but wrote brides.)
Lol, yes, thank you
Yeah. For example everyone thinks patents are great because they reward the little inventor for having the great idea. But they become commodities that can be acquired with capital and create hindrances to the free market. Effectively they protect large capital investments to prevent disruptions to change the market too quickly. Anything new takes 20 years at least to be fully utilized.
With climate change that basically means every single improvement to turn our thousands of industrial process towards sustainability or circular economy is being min-maxed for profit.
In a better world roads would be closed for cars which exceed the capacity of those guard rails. Just put up a sign, do some enforcement and people will start buying smaller cars when they can’t use them.
Vehicles that weigh more than 4 tons make up a significant amount of road traffic right now.
Literally everything you purchase in a store, your food, your toiletries, your clothes, any consumer good you have every purchased traveled on a road at some point in a vehicle that far exceeds 8 tons. Ambulances weigh more than 8 tons, fire trucks weigh more than 8 tons, mail is transported in vehicles that weigh more than 8 tons.
7,000lbs is an extremely low failure point for a guard rail given the number of vehicles that exceed that weight on the road today.Require a CDL for the big vehicles. Maintain stringent requirements for the CDL.
Do you still want that electric Ram?
Commercial driver’s license? I AM TRAVELLING AND NOT ENGAGED IN COMMERCE
I DEMAND TO BE ABLE TO DRIVE MY 18 WHEELER WHEREVER I PLEASE, HEIGHT CLEARANCES ARE A DEEP STATE PLOT TO TAKE AWAY MY FREEDUMB
11’8" bridge cares not for your “freedoms”
Oh, that brings back some memories of Reddit
A good chunk of what’s mentioned in GP already requires a CDL. That’s not the issue.
I keep seeing “CDL” brought up as a magic solution, and it’s clear people haven’t looked into how it works and what it affects.
It failing against a semi or a firetruck is kind of understandable but…yeah. Ambulances and then the ‘smaller’ every day vehicles? this shit is unacceptable
In an even better world, policies wouldn’t be manipulative shitstains aimed at consumers and instead be regulation on those actually creating the thing that needs to change…
What would we do about semi trucks, delivery vans, busses, dump trucks, etc. etc. etc. Personally I’ve seen some pretty short busses but never a sport compact model.
Pretty much all of those vehicles require a CDL.
Seems like vehicles over a certain weight requiring a special license classification is a pretty straightforward and reasonable requirement.
But we can’t do it without simultaneously addressing mass transit, bikeped, and our general absolute psychological fixation around designing all of our society around cars first and people second.
Actually, you only need a CDL if you’re driving it commercially. I could walk out and buy a semi right now and drive it home. This is why you can rent Uhaul trucks and buy bus-sized RVs without a special license.
I did not know that, but it unfortunately makes sense. You should always be absolutely terrified for your life when you see a uhaul for a reason.
God, it truly is “for non-commercial use only”. I hear a chorus of sovcits cheering.
It varies somewhat by state, but that’s generally incorrect.
Because the type of vehicle, and not the driver, defines who needs a CDL, the following characteristics have been set forth to define what a commercial motor vehicle is. A CDL is required of any driver of:
- Any vehicle designed to carry 16 or more persons including the driver, such as our campuses’ mini buses.
- Any vehicle that weighs over 26,000 pounds (defined as the greater of manufacturer’s gross vehicle weight rating, manufacturer’s gross combination weight rating, actual weight, or registered weight).
- Any vehicle that carries hazardous materials that require placarding as found in Title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 397.
These requirements include volunteers and temporary renters of such vehicles who are driving commercial motor vehicles on University business.
Uhaul intentionally goes right below the cutoff. Their largest truck is 26’:
https://www.uhaul.com/Truck-Rentals/26ft-Moving-Truck/
Which has a GVWR of 25,999lbs. Very precise of them and totally real.
I appreciate the correction
Actually pretty much none of them require a CDL unless you’re operating commercially.
You can go buy a school bus right now and drive it around without a cdl. Only needed to carry passengers.
You don’t need a CDL to be a delivery van driver either at all.
The current GVWR limit before you need a CDL is 26,000lbs. No light duty vehicle on the road comes close to that. Even the biggest Ram 4500 caps out at 16,500lbs GVWR. The Hummer EV caps out at 10,550lbs.
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Eh, non-issue. Just slap a surgeon general warning that the car will go through guardrails if it is over 5k lbs. And put a big roadway improvement tax on pointless large SUVs, minivans, and massive trucks, which nobody actually needs. We’ve had smaller variants of vehicles for decades. Even kei vans can hold many grown ass adult men.
All this aside, we have ultra heavy truckers whose trucks already would and do go through guardrails. We should be de-emphasizing car and highway investment anyways, putting more funding towards rapid mass transit and rezoning metro areas to be walkable. Fuck $30 / hr street parking.
new vehicle weight tax to fund the new guardrails
EVs are extremely heavy too.
Yes, but they wouldn’t have to be, if not for people wanting a giant SUV with 400 miles of range. The weight goes up nonlinearly, because people aren’t willing to compromise on lifestyle for the benefit of those around them. And then they expect us not just to tolerate their lifestyle, but actually subsidize it.
Without them necessarily being SUVs, in North America, distances between cities or municipalities are pretty big. Such a trip would be 2 hours in Europe, but in North America it can easily go up to 5 hours or more.
Either we find a way to charge a car in 2 minutes, or find an alternative, otherwise we need big batteries and they will inevitably increase the weight of the car.
I regularly drive 6 hours to see family. I wish there were reliable chargers partway. I don’t think they’d have to be 2 minutes. 40-50 minutes and near restaurants would be fine for me. Most importantly, they have to have similar uptime to a gas station. Eg, the current out-of-order rate for Chargepoint, Blink and other non-Tesla charging networks is far too low in my experience to rely on for long distance drives. Too high a risk of being stranded.
I’m in Texas and will have to pay a $300 registration tax on my ev for it being “heavy and destructive and not paying fuel tax”. My ev is a 2018 Fiat 500e and weighs 2900lbs. I’m tired of this argument especially when plenty of trucks weigh anywhere from 4500lbs (for the smallest examples) to quite literally 80k. Raise the fuel tax and you’ll solve heavy vehicles virtually overnight.
Before anyone gets on my case I’m fully aware that not all evs are as light as mine, but plenty are lighter than an f150.
It’s an interesting problem. We want people to ideally just drive less, and use EVs when they do, but EVs are heavier for the same vehicle and don’t buy fuel that’s usually taxed to help cover vehicle infrastructure costs. So they can cause extra wear and don’t pay for it. I’m not sure how to solve that future problem other than tolls maybe?
Same way we can fund everything else: tax the rich, cut mitary spending.
That doesn’t solve the issue though… We want to tie driving more to paying more.
Right now, fuel taxes work decently well as heavier vehicles tend to burn more and the more you drive the more fuel you need too. EVs don’t operate the same way, and we don’t want electricity in general more expensive to cover roads as that doesn’t encourage people to drive less.
“We want to tie driving more to paying more.”
Why? Because it’s fair? I don’t really give a shit if it’s fair, we need functioning infrastructure and incentivizing people to pay less into that system is counterproductive.
Being expensive demonstrably does not reduce driving in any significant way. The near-total lack of functional alternatives needs to be addressed.
Yes, as mentioned in the article they can be 30% heavier for the same vehicle
Electric cars often weigh around 30 percent more than a gas-powered counterpart, because big vehicles require enormous batteries to propel them hundreds of miles between charges.
Yes but the sedans still come in under the guard rail safety limit.
Sure, so will bikes… The concern is that the infrastructure is unsafe for a good portion of current and future vehicles on the road. Say what you will about people buying vehicles that are too big for their needs, they still deserve safety never mind all of the people with legitimate needs for those vehicles.
They sure do deserve safety, So we should make sure the vehicles they can buy are safe. Upgrading the entire country’s safety infrastructure for the ego of pickup and full size SUV drivers is not acceptable.
And those who have legitimate needs for those vehicles deserve to die?
Not very many people have a legitimate need. And if you want to upgrade safety to the point it would stop a Semi/Box truck then you’re spending way too much money. That’s why those vehicles require a special license to operate. It would be more feasible to put in massive amounts of light rail freight if you’re that worried about safety. Also, work vans are a thing in 90% of the world.
Ok now you have to be trolling… Work vans are like 9000lbs
They won’t stay that way forever. Our battery tech is far from hitting theoretical limits of kwh per kg.
None of which will matter if all you can buy is big SUVs.
The sedans aren’t that heavy though. They’re under the 5,000lb limit
