GRM lobbying?

I know we all have some gripe about lobbyists judging by a lot of the posts here, but what about a GRM lobby? I live in the District, get all my free meals at work anyway, and I know there are a bunch of guys on here familiar with the Washington area as well. My first govt. rule change would be to allow the easy importation of cars over 15yrs, not the current 25yr limit, simply to fix my euro-hatch fix. What would be your govt. rule change? Real, achievable ideas, if such things are possible for the little guys anymore, please.

Cars under 2000 pounds have to meet minimal crash-safety standards. It's for the fuel economy, of course.

Tim Baxter wrote: Cars under 2000 pounds have to meet minimal crash-safety standards. It's for the fuel economy, of course.

Hmm... classify motor vehicles weighing under 2000# as motorcycles, regardless of number of wheels?

Or some new category.. "light vehicular transport"

hell, cap it to 150 horsepower, I don't care, just bring back some lightweight cars.

Even if US safety standards are rolled back, most manufacturers would still try to meet European safety standards which are actually even higher in some areas.

However this could result in awesome USDM cars (Imagine a Cobalt SS or Solstice with late 80s/early 90s weight and dimensions), which would make USDM cars the most desirable cars currently in production.

Also if drunk driving carried harsher penalties (this is a global problem, in Canada it actually carries lighter penalties than speeding now) then accidents would go way down and maybe people wouldn't be so terrorized that they feel the need to drive a tank around. These days with ABS, ECT, ESC, and EBD you have to be drunk, extremely distracted or unbeleivably retarded to crash a car on anything but the most iced over roads. Also I propose a device that will annoy the driver like a berkeleying jack russel terrier if the tires are underinflated. A blinking light and incessant tone (like a door ajar warning on a modern car) should do the trick.

BTW IIRC the NHRA has a lobbying group, but they pretty much focus on delaying the progress of environmental regulations and keeping wild engine mods street legal to keep old American drag cars streetable.

Gameboy, currently there's a ton of small cars in Japan and Europe that can't be legalized here. This would neatly sidestep that. And remember, it's for the fuel economy.

Tim Baxter wrote: Or some new category.. "light vehicular transport" hell, cap it to 150 horsepower, I don't care, just bring back some lightweight cars.

Ooh! An on-road equivalent to "ultralight aircraft". Use a template from another type of vehicle. Put limitations on weight and horsepower and/or displacement.

Perhaps, a "Light Automotive Transportation Vehicle" is a street-legal vehicle with 4 or more wheels, weighing no more than 1899lbs curb weight, with a single four-stroke engine displacing no more than 1999cc and producing no more than 149hp, as measured at the crank.

If they meet these requirements, they can be subject to different crash safety standards (equivalent to a motorcycle), and would be subject to registration standards equivalent to a motorcycle.

Hmm... I kind of want to research this and draft up some basic language. My grandfather still has a number of connections on the hill...

Salanis: Put a roll cage in a Classic Beetle and a Subaru motor in the back and sha-bam there it is!

I'm liking the lightweight car idea but I am curious how cars like the Elise do in safety tests? I can't imagine it would do too well so how does it sidestep the safety regs?

thatsnowinnebago wrote: I'm liking the lightweight car idea but I am curious how cars like the Elise do in safety tests? I can't imagine it would do too well so how does it sidestep the safety regs?

It has a space frame so it passes with flying colors.

I think braking distance should be included in safety tests. All cars have to be able to stop from 70 mph in a minimum distance. That would spur some pretty interesting development and make cars safer in a good way. I'd rather have kick-ass brakes than airbags in my pedals. Remember, the easiest crash to survive is the one you aren't in.

And the lightweights will fare much better here, so it'll encourage light (and fun) car design!

Every Monday a random congressperson is put in a cannon and shot into the ocean.

Wally wrote: Every Monday a random congressperson is put in a cannon and shot into the ocean.

Better yet, random drug tests. I think they're all on crack.

Wally wrote: Every Monday a random congressperson is put in a cannon and shot into the ocean.

Why dirty up the ocean? The fish didn't do anything to deserve that. I say fire them into low Earth orbit and then use them for target practice.

Add me to the 'lightweight vehicle with an integral true roll cage' chorus.

Make an exemption for the integral roll cage if it's already in production. I'm trying to open the door to all the japanese and euro stuff we don't currently get.

The thing I'd change is to appoint me to King of all Earth. All the rest is easy after that.

Wally wrote: Every Monday a random congressperson is put in a cannon and shot into the ocean.

that would emit harmful emissions, i think a very large trebuchet would be more eco friendly, shot into the reflecting pond stocked full of piranhas. for every "scandal" we could have a fish feeding.

as for a grm lobby? heres what i want:

1. a national "left lane cruiser" law, enforcing Minimum speeds on the hammer lane on highways (for safety reasons of course.) it could be enforced on the local level, here in Florida, that could probably cover the state debt in itself, give the fed 10% of the revenue.. and probably reduce highway crashes by 20% or more.

2. a bill eliminating the standards on the types of emission control equipment (ie: you must have a catalytic converter) and base the emissions output on the results of the tests. no smog pump? who cares, so long as you can pass the test... my 78 924 burns so clean it can pass a standard smog test with no emissions equipment at all, but it would fail due to the lack of physical presence of the equipment, which is ridiculous. it has also failed because it ran "too clean" which is also ridiculous. this was long ago and i no longer have to deal with testing, but these steps would allow manufactures to be more creative and effective with emissions solutions.

3. do we really need 16 airbags in our cars? what ever happened to crash deflection? instead we invite the impact and cocoon ourselves in a bubble, there has to be a better way, i dont know what it is, but im sure some one does...

4. given #2 and #3 above, import restrictions could be relaxed based upon that.

All this talk is making me want an ariel atom.

And say NO to HP caps! There's no point. If we want light cars and the gov't wants them to be slow, put speed limiters on them. We can turn them off for track use. Otherwise, there's no need to faster than 155 on public roads anyway.

924guy wrote:

Wally wrote:

there has to be a better way, i dont know what it is, but im sure some one does...

How about making driver's education serious. If we actually trained our populace to drive, and made the test difficult, we would save far more lives than any airbag, or active stability system could. The fact that driver's ed in the US is such a horrible joke makes me think they don't want to fix the problem at all.

What was that about jettisoning politicians? I've got a list....

Tim Baxter wrote: Make an exemption for the integral roll cage if it's already in production. I'm trying to open the door to all the japanese and euro stuff we don't currently get.

But if we do that all the safety Nazis will want to fill the damn things with airbags in every nook and cranny, bringing us full circle. I still think with modern hydroforming techniques it couldn't be THAT hard to add a hidden cage to an existing body structure.

I'd like to see more done on the drivers than the cars.

I would not have any heartburn over a national law banning texting while driving. Or banning hand held cell phone use for that matter.

I could support a reaction time test for drivers licences as well. In fact I could pretty well go with a more aeronatical approach to drivers licences, on a national basis.

Increase the gasoline tax. Spend the proceeds on needed infrastructure improvements (bridges, etc).

This gets us the needed highway improvements and pushes consumers towards smaller vehicles.

Remove corn/ethanol subsidies.

open the floodgates to cool japanese and euro stuff from way back..

I need a diesel toyota landcruiser..

1. For emissions testing, no visual inspection unless the car produces more emissions allowed for that year. The way the law currently is in california, you could take say a 1976 camaro, and put an LS1 in it, and produce 1/10 of the emissions it did with its old engine, but unless you use the ls1 fuel tank, gauge cluster, etc its illegal. The currently solution is to turn it in to be crushed and buy a new car, but we all know how stupid that is.

2. Reasonable max height requirements for new (stock) vehicles. Im really tired of almost getting run over by idiots swerving all over the freeway in their big pickup trucks that are so high they cant see the cars next to them (and still only have less than a foot of ground clearance).

3. Some combination of raising CAFE standards and lowring crash test requirements for smaller vehicles to hopefully allow more small euro cars to be imported.

4. No more mandatory ABS and traction cntrol on new vehicles. Sure, if every vehcile is made with ABS fine, but allow people to order one without if they would rather not have it.

5. Accept the fact that to completly stop using oil for transportation would require a complete reorganization of everything in our society, and instead put the same amout of effort into using oil more efficiently (which does not include legislating cars into being so heavy they get half the milage cars did in the early 90s) as developing all of the viable alternative fuels (biodiesel, hydrogen, electric, etc).

Raising CAFE isn't as effective as increasing the gas tax. Increase the gas tax and you increase the demand for small "euro" cars AND make money for road improvements (or however you want to earmark the proceeds).