I’m sorry, why the fuck aren’t these street legal in more than half of the states? The article says something about safety, but these are street legal all over Europe where we have stronger safety regulations.

Also there’s something I can’t put my finger on about the journalist choosing a hero image of the van losing its cargo.

They’re not really safe. They are generally front heavy, so there is a risk of rolling forward, no crumple zone safety stuff, more often than not the front suspension is under the seat and if that breaks it would shoot up into the cabin, and on top of everything they are pretty slow. They have more in common with an off road Polaris than a traditional truck, which is to be expected because they were mostly designed to be farm trucks. I’d much be in an older s10 than a kei truck in the event of a crash (and s10’s aren’t very safe). I think I lot of why they are so popular these days is because there aren’t really any light trucks anymore, and these are an alternative.

We should take a step back: why do we need all those safety standards in the first place? The reason is that we have such gigantic vehicles in the first place, and smaller ones simply cannot be safe on the same road. Level that all down and suddenly Kei cars are as safe as they need to be.