Get Your Wide Load Off My Street
Guess what, you massive SUV-driving, environment-hogging vulgarians? You're breaking the law by driving your monstrosity on my street.
Yes, if you drive one of the numerous U.S.S. Nimitz-sized overcompensations-on-wheels like the Escalade, Range Rover, Suburban, certain Mercedes M Class, the Land Cruiser, the Sequoia (oh, there's a telling name for a small penis subsitute if I ever heard one), and the Dodge Ram 1500, you're banned from my residential southern California neighborhood...and a lot of other So-Cal neighborhoods, too. So reports clever Andy Bowers in Slate:
Cities throughout Californiaóthe nation's largest car marketóprohibit 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). The signs clearly prohibit vehicles over 6,000 pounds.
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? So I did some research, and I hit the mother lode.
It turns out every big SUV and pickup is too heavy for my street.
And mine, too. But, why? Andy writes:
It's no accident the automakers churn out so many SUVs that break the 6K barrier. By doing so, these "trucks" (and that's how they're classified by the U.S. Department of Transportation) qualify for a huge federal tax break. If you claim you use a 3-ton truck exclusively for work, you can write it off immediately. All of it. Up to $100,000 (in fact, Congress raised the limit from $25,000 just last year). Heavy SUVs qualify for similar state tax breaks in California (up to $25,000) and elsewhere. These vehicles are also exempt from the federal "gas guzzler tax" because they're trucks. (And you probably know that many SUVs are exempt from the tougher gas mileage and safety standards of cars because they're classified as trucks, but that's another story.)Tax advisers actually warn their clients to make sure they buy vehicles that are heavy enough to qualify for the tax breaks. Some offer helpful lists of which SUVs will tip the IRS's scales.
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 stateóincluding San Francisco, Los Angeles, Pasadena, and Santa Monicaóuse 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.
This isn't an arbitrary weight limit. 6,000 pounds has long been a recognized dividing line between light and heavy trucks. (For example, the Clean Air Act defines "heavy duty vehicle" as a truck with a gross vehicle weight "in excess of six thousand pounds.")
Clean Air Act? Oh, that silly thing for those stupid granola types who care more about their need to breathe than SUV afficionados' need to look cool?
On a related note: I could never understand the disconnect between bible-thumpers' professed love of god's planet, all god's creations, blah, blah, blah, and their, well, their enthusiasm, for fouling the air and the water, among other things.
Then, somebody told me about "The Rapture" -- the fundamentalist notion that the world will end with Armageddon, and all the "believers" will fly up out of their pajamas to heaven, and everybody else will meet some terrible fate. You know what? I think these flagrantly anti-environmental types think the (ridiculous fairy tale) end is near, and that's why they don't care about chewing up the planet. Why else would it be?
I truly live for the day when you have kids and enjoy the "awakening". No one with kids has time for this silly crap.
Try paying your mortgage alone, paying for child care and gas to work 25 miles from home because the pay is good, managing time for your child to have an "activity" and, God Forbid, a relationship that might enfluence them to be a good person...oh by the way, there is homework...all before the small angel goes to bed at 8:30 p.m.
Grandma is 100 miles away and demands monthly visits...where is the $ for that?
Focus! Very different for all...
Don't cry to me...I love my truck!
Spoiled single chick...cry me a river!!!
D
D at August 6, 2004 8:37 PM
Funny thing....I have three young kids, all boys, including a pair of toddler twins. Somehow, we manage just fine without an SUV. This is in Minnesota, even, where 4-wheel drive is useful about four months of the year.
Shivering Timbers at August 6, 2004 8:45 PM
"Try paying your mortgage alone, paying for child care and gas to work 25 miles from home because the pay is good, managing time for your child to have an "activity" and, God Forbid, a relationship that might enfluence them to be a good person...oh by the way, there is homework."
You're not too much of a whiner now, are you? Of course, none of the misery you describe has anything at all to do with choices you willfully made.
If you're so painfully put-upon by your life circumstances, why even stop to blog about it? Please, go drag your cross elsewhere.
Lena, the Barren and Childless Transvestite at August 6, 2004 9:40 PM
"No one with kids has time for this silly crap.
Try paying your mortgage alone, paying for child care and gas to work 25 miles from home because the pay is good, managing time for your child to have an "activity" and, God Forbid, a relationship that might enfluence them to be a good person...oh by the way, there is homework...all before the small angel goes to bed at 8:30 p.m.
Grandma is 100 miles away and demands monthly visits...where is the $ for that?"
Shoulda thought about all that before you got knocked up, huh?
PS The head insurance adjuster for AAA of Southern California told me when I interviewed him that the safest car on the road for a parent with kids is a Volvo station wagon. Next in line is a mini-van; most of which get good gas mileage and have a very low wheel base so they won't tip.
Amy Alkon, Barren! (and loving it) at August 7, 2004 6:42 AM
Driving your kids in a truck - high wheel-base, prone to rollover...whoooo were you intimating was selfish!?
Amy Alkon, Barren! (and loving it) at August 7, 2004 6:44 AM
D, I don't get your comments at all. Maybe you're a troll. You just said it costs money to get to work and to Grandma's...um, how exactly does an SUV or truck help with gas costs? And everyone knows how unstable and tippable suvs are. Would an accident take up any more of your precious time? I noticed you didn't say how many kids you have - sounds like a onesie to me, with so little time on your hands you troll blogs.
Did you know that the majority of people hate you, every time you're on the road, or hogging parking spaces, or blocking access everywhere? Every single person who doesn't selfishly drive one hates you, yup. Comforting thought on the road.
anonanon at August 7, 2004 2:53 PM
Even though I spent 8 years of my life caged up in a Catholic elementary school (and you wonder where my penchant for cock & ball torture comes from?) I'd never heard of "the rapture" until last year, on a really BAD blind dinner date. Given the shameless idiocy of fundamentalists, it comes as no surprise that there are actually bumper stickers out there about the rapture -- something idiotic like "this car will be un-manned when the rapture happens." Someone should do a little study to look at the association of car size and superstitious stupidity on bumper stickers.
smaller penis --> bigger car
bigger car --> stupider bumper sticker
Lena The Joyfully Barren Sodomite at August 8, 2004 10:31 AM