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Heavy Traffic

A surprising number of SUVs violate weight limits for local streets.

Unbeknownst to soccer moms and football dads in places all over the country, they are flouting the law every time they pile their children, grocery bags and dry cleaning into their large sport utility vehicles and drive on their local roadways. That's because many jurisdictions limit the weight of vehicles on residential streets and certain highways to 6,000 pounds. Some models of SUVs and passenger pickup trucks can weigh more than twice that amount.

This comes as a surprise to many law enforcement officers and municipal and state officials, who didn't realize how heavy the larger SUVs really are. For the most part, they are not doing much to enforce the weight-limit rules their jurisdictions have on the books. Some view the laws as something rather quaint, like laws that prohibit adultery, that have not yet been expunged from statute but are never enforced.

Others, such as Kenosha, Wisconsin, never intended for passenger vehicles to get caught up in their ordinances and are trying to rewrite their laws so that SUVs technically become legal again. Matthew Knight, assistant city attorney, set to work on a new ordinance to raise the vehicle limit on residential streets to 10,000 pounds. Before it was passed, the city did some research and discovered that some pickup trucks weigh as much as 12,000 pounds. In fact, a new 5-passenger pickup being produced by International Truck and Engine Corp. weighs 14,500 pounds, is 9 feet tall, 8 feet wide, 21.5 feet long and gets about 7 miles per gallon.

Even many "smaller" SUVs still weigh in excess of 6,000 pounds. Kenosha now is attempting to change the ordinance on road restrictions to be based on commercial versus non-commercial vehicles rather than strictly weight. The city is taking action because residents complained that large boxy trucks were parking in their neighborhoods. As far as Knight knows, people weren't calling their alderman seeking a ban on their next-door neighbor's Toyota Land Cruiser.

But there is at least one lawmaker who is taking aim specifically at SUVs--commercial, passenger or otherwise. Ivan Lafayette introduced legislation in New York State last year to ban SUVs with a gross weight of at least 6,000 pounds from traveling on any of the state's parkways.

The roads can handle the weight. That's not the major issue. The problem is that the highways and parkways in the Empire State were mostly built in the 1930s and are narrow and winding. They were designed for smaller passenger cars and are not safe for monster-sized vehicles. Many parkways don't have any shoulders. When cars are going around curves behind SUVs, sight lines are blocked. If drivers can't see the road ahead, their reaction times can be delayed.

Lafayette's bill not only would prohibit the heavier vehicles on certain roads, it would require them to be registered as commercial vehicles. "SUVs are high, heavy and they don't have a low center of balance," says Lafayette. "I believe that causes great discomfort for those who have to drive in back of and alongside them. The myth is that larger vehicles are safer. They're not."

The federal government classifies SUVs as "light trucks," which means they're not required to meet the same safety and fuel-economy standards as private passenger vehicles. Lafayette also contends that SUVs, which aren't as fuel-efficient as most cars, are adding to air- quality problems in the state.

Some city and county ordinances clearly state that weight limits apply only to trucks or commercial vehicles, not personal vehicles. Minneapolis, for example, makes a distinction in enforcement between SUVs weighing more than 6,000 pounds and similarly heavy commercial vehicles, despite the federal government's classification of large SUVs as light trucks.

Beverly Hills' heavy-vehicles ordinance, however, simply says, "No person shall operate any vehicle having a gross weight, including the vehicle and its load, of three (3) tons or more on any street in the city." Some streets are exempt from the ordinance.

But officials there appear to be unaware of just how heavy Hummers, Lincoln Navigators and Range Rovers are. When informed they all exceed the limit, traffic investigator Jay Kim asks, "You're sure about that? Three tons is 6,000 pounds." Assured that the vehicles are, indeed, overweight for the roads, he says, "We may have to do something about that."

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