www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2104755&
Ford Excursion, I'll bet you've watched them thundering down quiet residential lanes and wondered to yourself: Why is that monster allowed on this little street? Cities throughout California--the nation's largest car market--prohibit the heaviest SUVs on many of their residential roads. The problem is, they don't seem to know they've done it. I discovered this secret ban after noticing the signs at both ends of my narrow Los Angeles-area street (a favorite cut-through route for drivers hoping to avoid tie-ups on bigger roads). Hidden in plain sight Hidden in plain sight I knew a 6K pound limit ruled out a lot of the larger trucks that routinely rumble by my house, unpursued by traffic cops. But then I got to thinking: Could some of those bigger SUVs exceed 3 tons? It turns out every big SUV and pickup is too heavy for my street.
Banned for good reason Banned for good reason Here's what few people seem to realize: By weighing in at more than 6,000 pounds, big SUVs are prohibited on thousands of miles of road in California. Cities across the state--including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Pasadena, and Santa Monica--use the 3-ton cutoff for many or nearly all of their residential streets.
State law gives them the ability to do this for very straightforward reasons: The heavier the vehicle, the more it chews up the roads, endangers pedestrians and smaller vehicles, and makes noise.
proposed that fines for breaking this law be hiked from $50 for a first offense and $100 for a second to $250 and $1,000, respectively. When I informed Hahn that all the big SUVs also break the 6K barrier, she seemed surprised. I asked if she thought the ban should be enforced against them. "I have my own issues with Hummers and SUVs, but this was not the intent of this ordinance." But that's because these weight limits generally predate the 1990s SUV craze that lured suburbanites out of their lighter sedans and minivans. These ordinances remain on the books and they're not obscure. They're clearly marked on signs in many California cities.
In fact, it's a contender for the least enforced traffic regulation in America. Since realizing the connection between weight limits and SUVs, I've noticed streets all over the LA area--including major ones like Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica and Sunset Boulevard in Brentwood--where the drivers of metal monsters thunder past clearly posted 6K limit signs without a glance. "I would be surprised if it's routinely enforced against SUVs," Santa Monica's transportation planning manager, Lucy Dyke, told me. And don't expect to see stickers on new SUVs with warnings like "CAUTION: This Vehicle May Be Illegal On Many California Roads." At a GM dealership in Santa Monica, I asked a salesman (who declined to give his name) whether he informs buyers that the Tahoes and Suburbans he's selling them are banned on most streets in the city. I suspect the biggest impediment to enforcing these bans is political will--SUVs are wildly popular, and it will take brave city and state officials to challenge the right of residents to use their own streets. Six-thousand pounds does the same damage to roads (not to mention pedestrians) that it did before the SUV craze. I don't know about your state, but California's ongoing budget crisis doesn't exactly leave cash to burn for road repair.
And frankly, a lot of these heavy SUVs are commercial vehicles by any fair definition. Remember that those owners who take the federal and state tax breaks are declaring they use their vehicles mostly or entirely for work. Often they're doctors, real estate agents, or small business owners. If California and the feds are willing to write off SUVs as work vehicles, why shouldn't the state also regulate them as work vehicles? As it stands now, big-SUV drivers have it both ways: They use their trucklike status when it benefits them, yet they ignore the more onerous restrictions that "real" truck drivers face. I think the Golden State has stumbled on a way to end this hypocrisy, and the rest of the country should take notice. Six-thousand pounds is a reasonable and established dividing line between passenger vehicles and trucks.
Make them stick to the truck routes, including truck lanes on highways. Just as most of us instinctively check our speed when we drive by a police car, these luxury truckers should think twice about cruising illegally down Wilshire past a Santa Monica cop. If a few Tahoe owners got slapped with tickets for driving while overweight, the rest of them might actually start learning where their vehicles are legal.
Their argument just highlights the ongoing hypocrisy that surrounds big SUV ownership. The GVWR is the manufacturer's estimate of the vehicle's curb weight, or unloaded weight, plus its maximum payload capacity including passengers and cargo. However, those who take the federal and state tax breaks for their heavy SUVs are happy to accept the GVWR as their vehicle's official weight. Yet now they're arguing that the actual weight of the vehicle as it rides along California streets may--may--be slightly under 6K. Since the weight at any given time could depend on how many bags of groceries are in the back, and very few residential streets have their own scales, we will never know. If owners of heavy SUVs prefer to use the lower curb weight, fine with me. I won't squawk about them cruising down streets with 6K limits, as long as the feds make them ineligible for 6K tax breaks. But if they want to hold onto their write-offs, and the ability to claim them using the GVWR, they shouldn't turn around and argue the GVWR doesn't apply in other governmental contexts as well. photograph of Lincoln Aviator on Slate's home page by Ho/Reuters.
READ MESSAGES Remarks from the Fray: Modern police are elite special forces who are far too expensive to employ writing tickets. Meter Maids, on the other hand, are minimum wage but can write tickets only against parked vehicles. So I can be passed by honking drivers (while driving 70+), dodge people in trucks who jump medians onto the interstate, avoid vehicles with pieces/cargo falling off onto the road, and never see a police car take a second glance. But I can pay $150 dollars for a permit that gives me a "chance" to find a parking spot on a college campus (after the lot has been oversold 50%) and if I dare use a space of the wrong color I will almost certainly find a $75 dollar citation on my windshield. A large portion of the population drives as it damn well pleases with little or no regard for the law. I'm in much more danger from cowboy wannabes with beers and road-rage mothers in SUVs than I ever will be from Arabs hijacking airplanes.
here) I have a small problem with the article on SUV's and weights on the highway. The vehicle weights in the article are the gross vehicle weight rating, (GVRW). The weights on the signage prohibiting weights are for the actual weights of the offending vehicle. Unless loaded over the 6000 lb limit, it would not be a violation. In order to enforce the limit the policing agency would have to set up scales to weigh the violator before a citation could be issued. Much as large trucks are weighed at scale houses on the interstate highways. Enforcement of the type the author is suggesting is not practical in a residential setting because most of the vehicle he cites may not be over the actual weight limit.
Jurisprudence: The Constitutional Right to Bear Vibrators A Sexual Bill of Rights Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld an Alabama ban on...
Everyday Economics: Racial Profiling for Fun and Profit The $100 Terrorist Insurance Plan If you've been on the Internet lately, you've probably run across Annie Jacobsen's article ...
|
http://csua.com/feed/