UK Reg commenters are sore b/c they have to deal with the prospects of mass-manufacture in the UK. Which will soon experience the sort of renaissance one would expect from trying to run industry on windmills & solar panels.
The loophole is to classify them as “light” commercial vehicles.
I’m fine with that if US regulation was consistent with that commercial classification and they required a CDL to drive (and all the associated annual medical checks and zero BAC etc.)
If that consistency was there every manufacturer would immediately drop the commercial classification and figure out how to make their trucks satisfy the passenger classification in FMVSS.
>The loophole is to classify them as “light” commercial vehicles.
Not a loophole. There are (broadly) eight different FMCSA classifications; and a CDL is usually required only when the GVWR is at or over ...26,000lbs. Everything below that is medium or light duty. Heavy-duty is the upper end of class 6 (think school busses), class 7 ( garbage trucks & cement mixers ) and class 8 (18-wheel semis).
I know all that (I have a class A). That’s why I am calling out the inconsistency as a loophole.
One part of the regulatory/legislative system allows a vehicle to be classified as commercial (to get the benefits of looser regulation) but another part does not consider it a commercial vehicle (and it benefits from the looser regulations of a passenger vehicle).
I love the bathtubs in the Kalil house; one of the things I guess you can do w/ a slab foundation (that I've never seen in a more modern slab house) is to sink the bathtub so that the rim of the tub is even with the floor. I guess it made the last owner of the house (Dr. Kalil's brother) able to live in it until he was 101.
It'd be in litigation forever; which is why nobody with the means would try to build something like that today. Even if they could afford the construction, they can't afford the time in court.
Larry Ellison owns a replica Japanese daimyo mansion in Woodside, two mansions on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, and 98% of the island of Lanai...but none of those structures there are (AFAIK) atop a permanent watercourse.
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