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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
Visiting southern US for the holidays. There was a truck idling to warm it up yesterday, it was 47F out. We saw the driver walking up as we passed so proceeded to have a conversation about big strong manly men in their big strong manly trucks being able to handle "a bit of a chill".
If one of those big trucks runs you over then sue the manufacturer. I'm sure if someone dug deep enough they'd find the old vehicle size standards document out there somewhere.
The duality of mankind on full displaym
Pun intended?
I wish I could repossess and crush any trucks like this that aren't being driven through a swamp every day.
Monster trucks are street legal there?
If it's anything like the small town I live in, you can't legally have tires that extend further than your fenders, but it's entirely unenforced.
Folks love their lift kits and oversized tires
Bumpers are supposed to be at a certain height for impact with other vehicles, but nobody enforces that either
When I see something like this, I agree with my country 72% taxation on gas. If they had to pay $8 per gallon like us, they wouldn't buy those monsters
In California they often reach over 5$ a gallon, and will drive them.
They still buy them and then bitch constantly about how expensive gas is.
Those tires and lift kits cost them 20-30% more fuel, but engineering is for lefties.
No, they'll bitch about gas prices being high because of Biden.
Thanks Obummer
Google says California gas and sales tax together are only about 71¢/gallon.
While we understand gas is expensive in California, relative to the rest of the us, it’s not expensing globally and 71¢/gallon is not much tax globally. The tax really needs to be much higher, for the cost of the roads and other costs to society. Google also claims this tax covers 80% of California road maintenance, so I’d argue it needs to be 25% higher. But that’s only maintenance, not new construction, and doesn’t at all cover the harm done, so really ought to be much higher
California has the highest state gas taxes in the us so the rest of us are much worse.
Gas taxes that don’t even cover road maintenance are too low.
Gas taxes that don’t cover the externalised cost of emissions are also too low. But I don’t think any jurisdiction taxes that way.
My bigger objection are people using this argument to try to add unfairly high EV taxes
No, EV taxes don’t need to cover road maintenance if gas taxes don’t, and no, EV taxes don’t need to be extra high because of a weight penalty, when ice pickups weigh more and the difference is a rounding error relative to big trucks
But I do believe in vice taxes as a way to guide consumer choices. The most fair choice is to tax all road vehicles by miles and weight, without regard to technology, plus a vice taxes on gasoline (like we do with alcohol) to account for the damage it does to society and to discourage use.
Why does a van need wheels that big?
To grab pedestrians and cyclists and drag them under. This is illegal in most states except West Virgina and Alabama, but elsewhere the police do not enforce the law.
In rain, the bro wheels throw up spray making visibility dangerous for other vehicles. But fuck them, because MURICAH.
In WV this would fail inspection. The rule is water cannot pass off fender wells onto the tire. People do just swap out before inspections though. There are no good reasons to need wide rims and tires as far as I know.
Wide tires spread the weight over a larger distance so they are helpful over softer terrain, like a grassy field...but that truck never leaves pavement. They are only helping him have higher rolling resistance and burn more gas.
In use cases duallies are for towing and weight distribution. They help with steering a bit, but for the most part that's for handling very heavy things.
In this case big truck look more manly go BRRRRRRR
The guy that owns that truck would panic if he had to change lanes with a trailer.
Dualies at least have widened fender wells and jist in back. They are nice if you actually haul 2tons+ (F150s say they can haul 2tons, but I'd never risk that much, 250s were created for a reason)
This appears to be a 250 or 350 with some bewildering off road modifications. No serious trail guy would take duallies off road. But he's got off road tires and a trail light system on the front bumper. Unless he's taking a full size camper up the mountain this guy is just an idiot. Actually that's true in either case.
So you don't see the guts of pedestrians/cyclists/kids being run over.
This is fake the bmw isn't double parked and the truck isn't parked at a 45°
Tyres protruding that far outside the body are seriously dangerous and would be illegal here in Australia.
They are illegal in the States as well, but you'd need someone to actually enforce it.
Slashing tyres is probably moral in this situation.
Just don't get caught.
That's a relief. I do wonder sometimes about the US's safety standards considering some of the pics I've seen. But yeah, how he doesn't get pulled over immediately every time he leaves the house is baffling.
I don’t know if it’s actually policy but unless they cause accidents, modifications aren’t enforced by police. In theory they’re bought at annual inspections but many states don’t even have those and the ones that do are easy to circumvent.
This is the same issue with headlights. At least some of the issues with excessive glare are caused by aftermarket LED headlight bulbs clearly labeled “not for headlights” in the wrong reflector housing but legally sold if they can be used for other purposes. In theory caught by inspection. If the state has them. If someone looks. If the person doesn’t just swap them for legal bulbs to pass
While the police can do it here, we also have dedicated Transport Inspectors in the Department of Transport that specifically look out for that sort of thing. You don't have something similar?
Our process is annual inspections but it’s per state. Each state is different and many don’t even. There are clear accident stat differences showing which states don’t.
In the states I’ve lived in, it is a service offered by a garage. They get licensed to give out inspection stickers. For each inspection they hook it up to a machine that logs emissions and go through a checklist of safety items to verify. In my experience they’re good at catching worn tires and brakes but never seem to check things like headlight alignment or window tinting. And my state is one of the stricter ones
Actually legal in WVa and Alabama, no suprise.
That isn't surprising. They won't pass inspection in the semi civilized states I've lived in, but things get sketchy really fast once you get out of the northeast.