this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
338 points (95.9% liked)
Fuck Cars
9596 readers
221 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
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:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
A lot of people who buy trucks these days just need something that can tow a travel trailer or a boat to their favorite camp site a few times a year. It's not that they need a truck on a day to day basis, but they might need the towing capability on occasion. That's why these trucks are a weird combination of luxury sedan (with their leather seats and high end interiors) and pickup truck. Most of the time they use it like a regular car, but sometimes they might need the towing capability.
If it’s a “few times a year” situation that really seems better suited to renting.
Rental companies, at least in America, have policies against using their vehicles to tow things.
In addition the truck in front has to be imported to the US and there's weird regulations about purchasing them so you can only buy used. As far as I know you can't import a new model. If a car is newer than 25 years old it can not be imported unless it meets the requirements of US Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/importing-vehicle/importation-and-certification-faqs
These all sound like regulatory, issues. Nothing that can't be fixed with a minimal amount of political goodwill.
I think it is regulatory. However getting US politicians to do what's right is never trivial. It would take the legislative branch to change the regulations, while likely ignoring lobbyists within the automotive industry. It's fixable but it won't be fixed.
Michigan is an important swing state, and the UAW is a major political player nationally. Ironically, that doesn't stop the US automakers from routinely screwing over auto workers and labor in general.