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Hee, hee--maybe when they got close, they got to thinkin' they were out-gunned!
Pulling a trailer in Nebraska, you better stop with your pickup or they may run you down, they did me. When they found out it was camping gear, they let me go with a warning citation. Their signs also read pickups with trailers must stop. Glen
I know in California, if you have a std. pickup box you don't have to stop. If you drive an F350 with a non pickup box (say a custom) and pulling a 10,001 lb trailer you are supposed to stop. If say, you were using an F450 with the std. pickup box and towing a 20,000 lb trailer for non-commercial purposes you don't have to stop. Kinda strange, but that's the way it is.
1) How the friggin h*ll do you manage to get a Pete 379 (nice trucks, would love to have one) declassified as a "pick-up"? If you would extend the sleeper to beyond the rear wheels, it would become a sedan or mini-van?
Your questioning confusion is fully understandable and "we share your pain."OK. Enough is enough. Time for one or all of you to enlighten a cold logical thinking European about some, shall I say "weirdness" in American law and in behavior?
1) How the friggin h*ll do you manage to get a Pete 379 (nice trucks, would love to have one) declassified as a "pick-up"? If you would extend the sleeper to beyond the rear wheels, it would become a sedan or mini-van?
2) Or more general: what is the legal definition of a pick-up?
There are no permanent weigh stations in continental Europe as far as I know. With the traffic density and the prices of real estate, weigh stations would be too expensive to built and creating too much chaos on the roads. We do have very strict weight and dimension laws, but they are checked and enforced by spot-checks.
Most European countries now also have country-wide toll-roads. For trucks its very simple. You need to have a pre-paid and activated electronic pass before entering a highway. Hundreds or thousands of portals across the highway electronically check all trucks when passing, no stopping needed, and I think its quite hard to circumvent. In the USA, since December 2010 the Dallas North Tollway is an example of how this works.
For the rest -think I mentioned this earlier - in Europe vehicles are divided in person car and trucks. Personal is everything with three or more wheels weighing not more than a GVTW of 7700 Lbs. This goes on a normal driving license. EVERYTHING above 7700 LBS and you need a truck drivers license. If you want to drive professionally, you need additional schooling and tests. Motor cycle is separate as "motorized vehicle with two or three wheels".
There is no understanding our laws. They just......are. Of course you guys over there have some real strange laws that I have a hard time comprehending, and that I would not be able to live with.
The following is how the California Vehicle Code defines a pickup truck.............
And therefore, because my Peterbilt Pickup was over 13,000 pounds "unladen" when the DMV went to change the title at my request to "Pickup", their computer system would not let them, because it was over 8,001 pounds. So they actually ended up going ahead and changing the title from 3 axles, to 2, but changed it from saying "Dump Truck" to "VA" which they told me was the code for "Other Commercial". So I still am not entirely clear if I was right in believing that I could drive right by open weigh stations when the signs said "No Pickups". Because as far as the legal definition, even though it had a pickup bed on it that was less than 9 feet in length, because of it's weight, it did not fall under the vehicle codes definition of a "Pickup". But as far as equipment, and intended use, it very much was a pickup, and had only 2 axles, so therefore did not require a commercial drivers license.
Sir,
