Can we please relax the automotive regulations?

Being in the biz and seeing it from the (sorta) inside, things that are now mandated such as TPMS and the aforementioned rear view camera are the direct result of a combination of people who don't give a rip about their car's workings as long as it looks cool combined with media hysteria over accidents.

The TPMS reg is a direct result of the Explorer/Firestone rollover thing which was shown to be at least partially caused by people who just couldn't be bothered to have their tire pressures checked. I get ballers every day with those huge rimz who want us to disable the flashing TPMS light, I get to tell them no we cannot disable a safety or emissions system. We cannot even help a customer remove or install child seats. Don't take my word for it, look it up.

The rear view cameras are a result of several well publicized incidents of people backing over children because they couldn't see behind their huge (insert whatever fancy vehicle here) because they couldn't be bothered to get the hell out and go make sure there were no kids around. In at least two cases that I have heard of, the drivers sued the manufacturer over this 'defect' and the 2017 regulation is in response to this: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/parents-who-backed-over-own-children-plan-federal-lawsuit

As a parent myself I feel for the parents who have endured this nightmare, I really do. My point: it takes maybe 5 seconds to do a quick walk to the rear of the car before getting in. But nooooo, gotta have the camera etc to save those few steps. OBTW: on every vehicle I have ever seen with a backup camera, there is an option in the radio to turn it off. WTF? If it's so essential, why do that at all?

Sometimes the media will deliberately try to stir stuff up; a few years back there were articles about objects in the back of vans and SUV's flying around and striking the occupants in accidents. I'm talking cans of veggies etc. The articles I saw each ended with a plea to the NHTSA to address this problem. Thankfully that appears to have withered on the vine.

I've already expounded on the subject of airbags and their illusion of safety that are now used to peddle vehicles. Ads now trumpet the number of airbags and cupholders. TRUE safety comes from proper passenger cabin design (something Subaru has taken an initiative with on their own) combined with crumple zones and driver training/awareness. The last is the most important but just like tire pressures and 'checking six' most people consider it beneath them.

How about a compromise.

Any vehicles imported in quantities under 1000 don't need to meet federal safety standards and emission standards will be X amount of pollution per liter on a dyno.

There are some exemptions already, Hungary Bill covered a lot of that in his thread about bringing his cars back with him. Problem is, the exemptions are pretty much restricted to either off road only vehicles or private imports.

The0retical wrote: I've never understood why the US insists on have different safety standards than the rest of the world. It seems like something lobbyists would be all over to try to lower the cost of production since many of their benefactors are multinational companies.

Simple, if we didn't people at the NHTSA and EPA would lose jobs, and since they're the ones making the standards and dictating whats acceptable, that's never happening.

Curmudgeon wrote: There are some exemptions already, Hungary Bill covered a lot of that in his thread about bringing his cars back with him. Problem is, the exemptions are pretty much restricted to either off road only vehicles or private imports.

And we all know how easy, cheap and worry free that was.

Like Kenny said, bureaucrats justifying their jobs.

Toyman01 wrote: The first picture is a UAZ Commercial. Link It's powered by a 2.7L engine that probably gets 20+mpg and cost under $15K USD new.

Where are you getting this "probably 20+mpg figure?" The website you linked to says that the UAZ Commercial gets 15-17.5mpg at a constant 55mph depending on the version you get. If you put it through an actual fuel economy test that requires changes in speed that number will drop, alot. It also only has a 112hp, 153lb-ft engine moving a 4200lb vehicle, giving it a top speed of 78mph.

It's not sold here because it's a hopelessly outdated relic from the 70s. If they put in a decent, modern 4-cylinder diesel, sure it would get better fuel economy and perform much better, but it would also have to be completely re-engineered to deal with the upgraded engine.

I'd hate to see what happens to this thing in a crash test.

Toyman01 wrote: In reply to Keith Tanner: Priced a Defender lately? Not to mention it'll get 15mpg if you push it off a cliff. It looses on fuel economy alone. Sportmobiles are mostly based on full size vans. That will put the fuel economy in the 10-15mpg range. They also cost stupid money.

Sorry, I must have lost my copy of the rules. I thought this was about regulations keeping cars out, not fuel economy.

And the Defender was simply an example of how splitting hairs between AWD and 4WD is awfully difficult.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D827IxEJVS4

By comparison, a Lada actually did pretty well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR_tbQ1LzEc

Headline on CNN.com this morning: "Kids are dying in hot cars: Who should step in?" Umm...how about the parents?!?!?!

I can see regulations now where cars must be able to detect someone in it and run the A/C at all times someone is detected. I feel bad for the kids, but mainly because their parents were too dumb to have common sense of not leaving them in a hot car.

It's like my dad used to say: 'common sense is anything but common'. So to the so called news media now it's time to drag the Nanny State into everything.

In reply to Schmidlap:

15.4 L/100kl = 18.3 mpg. I missed it by a little.

The fact of the matter is, due to regulations, there are many vehicles and other products that aren't available in the USA and never will be. The US has decided that the population is too stupid to make their own decisions, so they are making them for you. Don't want air bags, tough. Don't want traction control, tough. Don't want TPMS, tough. They will keep making cars more and more complicated. I don't agree with many of the regulations or the policy. Unfortunately we have forever lost the option to choose otherwise. Yes, I know, I'm in the minority here.

Curmudgeon, I'm pretty sure the bus crash is a VW, not Chinese. There was 2000+ pounds of concrete in the back and it was crashed at 100kph, as a barrier test, in a testing facility. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uykStESm3vw

Have you heard of the Lotus Elise? Regulations are not keeping us from getting lightweight, stripper vehicles. I agree that TPMS and backup cameras, etc add expense and are a waste of time to be required on new cars, but that is not keeping us from getting bare bones vehicles. They don't sell in enough quantities for manufacturers to bother.

Most SUV's and pickups are about the look. How many Wranglers, Land Cruisers, Land Rovers, etc. never even traverse a gravel road? Here in Texas I get to drive amongst giant dually diesel crew cab pickups that are driven from the apartment to the cubicle. Few people care about capability because they don't NEED capability.

The Elise existed overseas for several years before coming here. To get it to pass over here, Lotus had to crash test them and modify as needed, add air bags, then swap the original Rover 1.9 for the Toyota motor so it would pass US emissions. That's doable for an OE, they sold approximately 6000 here (real sales figures are hard to come by, it seems to have been ~2000 in 2005, then about 1000-1200 a year after that) and that means there were enough sold out there to spread the cost. When you start talking under a thousand a year, the cost per vehicle starts to ramp up dramatically and when you add in the costs of a dealer network, transporting the cars etc it becomes less and less attractive. Lotus at least had a US dealer network already, even though it wasn't exactly huge.

Ninja edit: it looks like approximately 6000 Elises graced our shores, not 9000. I think the numbers don't include the Exige or the privately imported Rover powered cars.

Curmudgeon wrote: The Elise existed overseas for several years before coming here. To get it to pass over here, Lotus had to crash test them and modify as needed, add air bags, then swap the original Rover 1.9 for the Toyota motor so it would pass US emissions. That's doable for an OE, they sold approximately 9000 here (real sales figures are hard to come by, it seems to have been ~2000 in 2005, then about 1000-1200 a year after that) and that means there were enough sold out there to spread the cost. When you start talking under a thousand a year, the cost per vehicle starts to ramp up dramatically and when you add in the costs of a dealer network, transporting the cars etc it becomes less and less attractive. Lotus at least had a US dealer network already, even though it wasn't exactly huge.

Exactly my point. If the demand was there a manufacturer could do it. The Aussies get low-range in their Subaru Foresters. It's not regulations that keep that from happening here.

Hang on! In just a few years we'll be saying we wish we could buy new cars with steering wheels instead of a fancy GPS/camera driver!

Look at that from Subaru's POV: will they get any extra sales here from a low range? Answer: no. US Subaru customers (and I was a Subaru service advisor) don't offroad them. Ergo, not enough demand to make it worthwhile. Aussie market, I have no experience but I'm going to guess yes they do offroad them.

Keep in mind the point of this part of this discussion is to bring a complete low production vehicle here. Using Lotus again: they waited from 1996 till 2005, or nine years, to bring them here. Lotus is as cash hungry as any other company out there and they gauged the market carefully before committing resources, they planned for limited production specifically for this market. That's how they stay alive as a specialty manufacturer. They aren't, say, Chrysler who can afford to lose their ass on halo cars like Vipers because they sell a metric E36 M3 ton of Caravans.

That little van that Toyman posted a pic of: it's cool as hell but realistically how many would they sell? Answer: nowhere near enough to pay for the modifications necessary to make it pass US standards. Remove those standards, now maybe something might happen. So yeah US regulations most assuredly do pinch off interesting low number vehicles.

Another case in point: those dinky little Daihatsu Hijet cab forward pickups.

You can buy them here (in fact I have seen a couple that belong to the US Coast Guard) but you can't currently license them for street use. There are a few that snuck in way back in the early 90's and were tagged, but no more. They don't pass US crash standards. Obviously, even though there is definitely a market for them, Daihatsu doesn't see enough money to Federalize them. There's that regulatory barrier again.

Have you wrote your letters? We do live in a representative government. If you bitch and get sema or the like on board you may make some headway. Suprisingly companies like factory 5 Saleen and local motors have managed to build whatever they feel like in the us. I'm pretty sure you could make a side by side type thing street legal as a manufacture with an emissions legal motor. The big challenge is it just plain costs a lot of money to build stuff today. Look at how much motorcycles and 4wheelers are. They aren't exactly cheap unless built in high volume. Im just not sure how cheap you could build a legal car for when an emissions legal crate drivetrains is 4-5k.

Increased regulations is supposed to make cars safer. Traffic deaths have dropped significantly for the last 7 or so years, maybe even more. That's why we can buy old cars; so we can have our performance without extra "fluff" the regular consumer wants.

I had a really relevant reply typed up. I figured I would save y'all the reading.

Hey, I thought this was GRM, where we modify vehicles to make them the way we want.

My Transit Connect has the TPMS light on because I switched wheels. I didn't even use Irish44's tape mod; I just ignore it. My Focus has a light that flashes to tell me when to upshift to get better fuel mileage and emissions. I quickly learned to ignore that one also. The solution to a lot of this stuff can be found in the part of the vehicle called the fusebox.

Regarding the 4WD stuff, I have seen actual vehicles and pictures of vehicles on this forum with any type of body you can think of set on a 4WD frame and suspension.

Yes, for the reasons some of you have stated the government will keep adding extraneous crap to the vehicles. Our job as GRMer's and car people in general is to find ways to work around it or get rid of it.

It's all about choice. Passing crash and emissions isn't nearly that hard, just engineering and work. Plenty of examples how to pass out there.

Most of the safety work out there is to meet iihs numbers, not nhtsa.

Hal wrote: Hey, I thought this was GRM, where we modify vehicles to make them the way we want. My Transit Connect has the TPMS light on because I switched wheels. I didn't even use Irish44's tape mod; I just ignore it. My Focus has a light that flashes to tell me when to upshift to get better fuel mileage and emissions. I quickly learned to ignore that one also. The solution to a lot of this stuff can be found in the part of the vehicle called the fusebox. Regarding the 4WD stuff, I have seen actual vehicles and pictures of vehicles on this forum with any type of body you can think of set on a 4WD frame and suspension. Yes, for the reasons some of you have stated the government will keep adding extraneous crap to the vehicles. Our job as GRMer's and car people in general is to find ways to work around it or get rid of it.

You do have a point. My son and I have been discussing a 4WD S10 Chassis and a Venture could be married into a pretty decent off road van. Fuel economy would still be marginal and that would be a major undertaking. Maybe a Transit Connect, a Samurai and a TDI engine...

I suspect the reason the Elise was mentioned earlier is because they were given a waiver to come in to the US. They were exempted from some bumper and light regulations for the first three years.

Keith Tanner wrote: I suspect the reason the Elise was mentioned earlier is because they were given a waiver to come in to the US. They were exempted from some bumper and light regulations for the first three years.

I wonder how many bureaucrats/legislators you have to blow/buy off, I mean wine and dine, to get that deal? Lotus must have had some well paid lobbyists.

The paperwork is a matter of public record if you're actually interested in the process.