- When I was about 13 years old, you had to either get skinny
jeans that all the skaters wore or get baggy ones you could sag. Seeing as how I was 180 pounds, I couldn't exactly pull
off the skinny look. So I went with baggy
and we were on our way. The next morning I'm heading out the door. All of a sudden, my dad stops me. "Hey kid, what's going on with your pants? You look ridiculous. No son of mine is going out like that." My mom comes in, "Oh, Nolan,
you're going to trip and fall. You're going to tear them up. It's not safe." Another attempt to look
cool halted by the powers that be parents just don't understand. But what if your parents
were the North Carolina state legislature and your
jeans were your truck? What if you wanted to sag your truck, lowering it in the rear and
lifting it in the front. And what if your parents said no? Well, that's exactly what's happening. North Carolina is passing a bill that will ban squatted trucks for good. They say it's dangerous, but
I have a lot of questions. Is this really about public
safety or something else going on behind the scenes? Get your belt. 'Cause it's time to do some squats. (sighs) Stupid. (bright music) - Big thanks to insurance
comparison site, The Zebra for sponsoring today's video. Summer's in full swing
and we needed a break. We're totally worn out for
making so many automotive educational, fun videos for you guys. But you know who's not
worn out, The Zebra. They're ready for you
right now to help you find the best insurance policy for your needs. Ain't that right Nolan? - That's right James. The Zebra is the nation's
leading car insurance comparison site with one
goal to simplify insurance. But it's not just about
finding the cheapest coverage. It's about finding the best coverage. The average Zebra user saves $440 a year. - Jobe, it's your line. - Oh $440, that is a ton of money. - That's right Jobe. And not only that, The
Zebra can help you answer all those hard hitting insurance questions that keep you up at night, like, would having an engine swab in my Mustang changed my coverage and
better yet The Zebra doesn't confuse you with
any sort of techie jargon or overwhelming with spam calls. And just a few short
minutes after entering some basic information,
you'll be comparing a hundred providers side by side. So go to TheZebra.com/Wheelhouse and get your best policy today. Back to the show. (James groans) (bright music) - The squatted truck trend
has a few different names depending on where you're at yet. You got Carolina's Squat, Cali Lean, and the Tennessee Tilt. It seems to me, if you're in
one of those three regions, you're probably not going to
use the name of where you live because nobody wants to be
associated with this look. It's kind of like how
no one wants to claim the turkey for their country. In French it's the chicken from India, in Greece it's called the French bird. In Egypt it's called the Greek bird. And that's something you should know before we go any further. Squatting is controversial
to say the least. The comment sections on any
sort of squat truck content are going to be filled with people saying some pretty nasty things about these trucks and their owners. People are haters. Right now there's a change.org
petition to ban squatting. And it has over 70,000 signatures. 70,000, why do people hate it so much? And it's not just comments
from anonymous strangers. There's a real world backlash as well. In late April of this year,
House Bill 692 was submitted to the North Carolina
house of representatives. Then next week it passed
with an overwhelming 107 to five vote in the house and moved to North Carolina's Senate. I guess there's five
hot boys in the house. If passed by the Senate
and signed by the governor, House Bill 692 will outlaw squatted trucks in the Tar Heel state. The motivating force
behind this bill is perhaps unsurprisingly public safety. You know, I can't imagine it's very easy to see over the hood. And those headlights are
pretty freaking bright. Get them off the road. But according to a report by
local news station, WCTI ABC 12 in New Bern, North Carolina and North Carolina State
Highway Patrol, quote, "doesn't track the number of incidents with Carolina's squats" and quote. "Haven't seen anything that
stands out when it comes to the number of accidents. This doesn't make very much sense, right? If you're making a decision
without looking at hard data, how can you know you're
making the right decision? I couldn't accept that. So I actually called a few
agencies in North Carolina to find any data I could. There had to be something. (phone ringing) So, I don't know anything about that. - Yes, squatted trucks. - I know squatters are,
let me just transfer you. - [Call Instructor] I'm
unable to take your call, please leave a message. - Hey, how are you doing Sergeant? I'm doing a video on squatted trucks. I just had some questions
about safety data and all that. And they said that you
guys gave a presentation on a squatted truck safety
and I just wanted to know if that was available anywhere. I'll give your email a shot as well. Thank you very much. - I hope the highway
patrol gets back to me. While we wait to see if we
can get any data at all, let's look at where this trend came from. Since squatting isn't
exactly a topic people have written books on, the
origins of the squat trend are a little hard to pin down. People have been lifting and lowering their trucks for decades. Drivers in rural areas wanted
more room for bigger tires, making easier to drive over rough terrain. And the best way to make space
in the truck's wheel well is to lift the truck up
on longer suspension. Bigger tires usually means
better performance off-road, but it also looks pretty cool. So in the late 70s and early 80s, a lot of people started
installing lifts on their trucks. Even if they weren't going
to take them off road. Lifted trucks found their
way into the mainstream through pop culture, whether
it was a mild example, like the Toyota from back to
the future two or big foot, the monster truck, not the monster. Lifted trucks we're here
to stay and it's hard to overstate how ingrained they
become in American culture. There aren't many symbols for
rural life that are better. And I lifted pickup
truck with knobby tires, but the squat is a more
recent development. And there are a few theories
as to where it came from. The explanation you usually
hear is that desert racers and Baja, California raised the noses on their trophy trucks. So when they go over jumps, the truck doesn't
immediately take a nose dive as it travels through the air. Now, this is like half right I think. There are a lot of reasons
the trophy trucks squats. It's not just because the nosedive thing, they've got really fancy
suspension in the rear. It's kind of soft to make long
desert drives more bearable and they want a certain type of handling. So the reasoning goes that
people wanted the trophy truck look without spending a
bunch on fancy suspension. So they just lifted the front
and there you go, squat. But I don't really know buy this, maybe that was the case very early on, but on squatted trucks
today, you don't see a lot of desert influence kind of thing of it. I don't think I've seen a
squatted truck here in LA, but we do have our share desert trucks like Raptors and Prerunners. And those things look like
they can go off road for sure. Squatted trucks, not so much. So what I think is more
likely is that one day someone who was in the middle
of lifting their truck, they got the front done
and then they were like, dang, I'm hungry, let's go get lunch. Then drove to Hardee's or Culver's or whatever you southerners
have out there and realize it, dang, this looks kind of sick. Other people thought so too
and then it just spread. That's just my take. It could have happened differently. But what matters right now
is that the trend is popular. And North Carolina wants
to put an end to it. So how are they going
to go about doing that? The proposal legislation
actually modifies an existing law that prohibited vehicles from being lifted more than six inches from factory specs. Now the new law states
quote, "a private passenger automobile shall not be
modified or altered by one, elevating the automobile
more than three inches from the manufacturer
specified height in the front and two lowering the
automobile more than two inches from the manufactured
specified height in the rear." Ironically, I think you could
get some pretty tasteful squat with those guidelines. I feel like I'm forgetting something. Oh, the State Highway Patrol
got me back and this is crazy. Or at least I think so. The office of representative
Brennan Jones told me that the NCSHP had given a presentation to the North Carolina general assembly about squatted truck
safety to help them decide on how to vote for the bill. I reached out to the highway patrol to see if I can get a copy of this presentation or any data they had on the subject. Surprisingly, the NCSHP
could not provide me with any info from that presentation. I actually have the email right
here and they said, quote, "unfortunately, the members
that attended the hearing relied on their crash reconstruction knowledge and did not rely on records,
you know, PowerPoint, documents, et cetera, to provide insight. So forgive me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like there's no hard data. And that's amazing to me. That's big, right? You've probably heard of anecdotal versus empirical evidence. Anecdotal evidence is based
on personal experiences and stories to prove a point. Empirical evidence relies
on recorded data collected from observations or experimentation. So for example, if someone says that they don't wear a seatbelt because their uncle
got a crash without one and he survived, that's anecdotal. But reminding them that of
the 22,215 passenger vehicle occupants killed in 2019, 47%
we're not wearing seat belts. That's empirical. I can't be alone in this, right? I'll tell you what. It's time for a ride
on our newest segment, the experiment express. (bright music) This is a 2004 Toyota Tacoma
that I borrowed from a buddy, totally stocked, but I wanted to see what modifying the front
end does for visibility. This is about public safety after all. So to do that, I've set up a
course with a bunch of cones at, 25 50 and 100 feet
away from the truck. We've also got a life-size Zach
Jobe cardboard cut out there to represent your pedestrians. And I've also parked the
money pit Miata in front of the Tacoma to simulate
stop and go traffic. That's about how close I
tailgate in Los Angeles. So I think it's pretty accurate. Okay, hopping into the truck stock height. Can very easily sees Zach
Jobe at 25 feet away. Can easily see the cone all
the way at a hundred feet. And the Miata, even though it's super low, it's pretty obvious that it's there. It'd be hard to miss it. Stock ride height, no surprise there. Great visibility. But now I want to lift it to the maximum that North Carolina law
allowed before this new bill and that's six inches front and back. Obviously I'm not going
to mod my buddy's truck without their permission. So I've just got some jacks and we're just going to do it that way. (bright music) All right, so we've lifted
the Tacoma six inches. It doesn't really look like
it because there's no load on the front wheels. So it looks closer to the ground. So I'll hop in and we'll
see what it looks like. Oh, oh, that's definitely six. That's what he said. So six inch level lift. You can see Zach Jobe perfectly fine. You could still see the cone way down there at a hundred feet. And surprisingly, you can still see the Miata parked just
in front, not a hazard. I'm actually kinda surprised. Let's squat this thing. - Let's squat this thing. This is a great video Nolan. - Thank you Jobe, much appreciated. (bright music) Oh, I see a problem already. All right, six inch squat in the front. Okay, with just a six
inch lift in the front nothing done in the rear. Can definitely see
everything our entire course. Zach Jobe is perfectly safe. The Miata is a little less visible, but I can see everything. I do feel kind of cool though. Like, I'm like, yeah, I'm
leaning back chilling. This isn't bad. We've lifted the truck
six inches in the front and it's just not producing results. And that's because people
don't just lift the front, they also squat the rear. So we can't lower the
rear on Jack's obviously, but we can get some boys. (gentle music) Looking up for boys, where the boys at? (bright music) Oh, we got a lot of boys. Boys, I need all of you in
the bed of the Tacoma please. Oh, here we go. This is what I'm talking about right now. (bright music) We lowered the rear end five
inches with all the boys. Three, oh, wow. Six inches, six in the
front, six in the back, just with dudes in the back. Let's see what the visibility is. All right, don't do that. Don't do that! Don't do that! All right, (laughs) oh,
cannot see the Miata. Top of the Miata you can barely see the top of the windshield right there, but I can still see Jobe off
in the distance right there and the cone way over there. So visibility with a six
inch lift in the front, six inch drop in the
back, visibility is okay. I'm surprised, man. This is not the result I was expecting. Now can we go 12 inches in the front? All right, everybody out for safety. (bright music) We lifted the truck 12
inches in the front. Let's see what it looks like. Can't even see the Miata, but
I can see Jobe at 25 feet, can still see that 50 foot cone and can still see the 100 foot cone. All right, so the testing is over. So we didn't start seeing extreme results until we started doing
extreme things to the truck, which is to be expected. I don't really know what
to make of these results. With that being said, back
to Nolan in the studio. Despite the lack of hard
data from North Carolina, I do get where the squat
ban law is coming from. Some of these squatted
trucks just take it too far. Whistlin Diesel has a
video where he bought one of these trucks and it looked
legitimately dangerous. It's not hard to imagine how he could get in a serious accident
with a squatted truck. But on the other hand, that's precisely the
problem in my opinion. I'm imagining a bad outcome
and making a decision to prevent it without
relying on solid evidence, proving it's actually necessary. Now I'm not saying that the
North Carolina legislature and State Highway Patrol are
making a bad decision here. The office of Brennan Jones,
one of HB 692 sponsors told me that constituents have
complained about squatted trucks. The NCSHP sees these things every day. And I've probably seen a lot
more accidents involving them than have been officially recorded. I do believe that the North
Carolina government is seeing a potential problem and reacting
with public safety in mind. I'm all about safety so
I can respect that truly. But on the other hand, I feel bad for all the squatted truck people. I really do. I haven't seen this much
hate towards the trend since the stance days and to my knowledge, no laws were ever made over stretch tires or too much camber or slammed suspension. It almost feels like
people's knee jerk reaction to these trucks was,
"Ooh, that looks stupid. That looks dangerous. I hate it, let's get rid of it." And it's probably going to work. The good news is if you
have a squatted truck in North Carolina, you
have until December 1st to level it up. If you don't fix your truck, you could risk losing a license. You'd have to get convicted
of driving a vehicle that breaks this law three
times, but it could happen. At the time of this recording, the bill still hasn't been made law. It passed the house, but that's it. It'll probably become lawsuit. Whether you love or squatted trucks, there's a bigger lesson
to be learned here. And that is, you can just
call your state government, ask them how they work. Do it, call them up. Hey, do you got going on over there? How's that work? I'm sure they'd love to hear it from you. That's the episode for this week. If you want more truck
content in the future, subscribe to Donut, you'll get it. If you're a Donut super
freak and you want behind the scenes content and just
a lot of exclusive stuff, click that join button down below, check out the Donut underground. That might be right for you. We'd love to have you there. Follow me @nolanjsykes,
follow Donut @donutmedia. We post a lot of memes now,
it's kind of interesting. (Nolan laughing) Be kind, wear your seatbelt. I'll see you next time.
I don't think squatted trucks look as cool as modders think they do. Looks dumb as shit.
They really switched up NC and VA huh
Ban it along with insanely loud after market exhausts which are already illegal in this state. Require mechanics to fail inspections for either, and if they don't follow the law slap them with massive fines and invest that money into infrastructure.
I grew up with lots of Motocross bros driving trucks like this and we thought it was stupid but didn't really think of it as being a safety issue. I still didn't until I saw this video, actually. He's pretty nonchalant about straight up not being able to see a small car right in front of the truck when there's the 6" lift in front, and most of the mod trends he cites as not having gotten their own legislation don't actually affect your ability to see what's going on around you on the road so there's some straw man fallacy there. The 6" lift in front and 6" drop in the rear is about in line with many of them I've seen on the road and knowing a shorter driver of one of these trucks might not be able to see little convertibles or cyclists right in front of them is actually a bit scary to me.
The law itself is probably going to be super difficult to be draw a line for, though, since hood length and shape factors in to this as well so this will lead to a lot of arbitrary determinations on whether it's okay that might be fine with most traffic officers but give an easy reason to hassle people for a few who just like having excuses to do that.
That awkward moment when Virginia is labeled as NC.
You can still squat you just can’t go nuts with it now. 3” lift in the front and a 2” squat in the back is still legal.
I read it is illegal for few weeks now. So how does it work for removing them from the streets? We have a year from now because they are legal now because they have valid inspection and won't pass next one? So if Police pulls over a truck like that in a year, will they take away inspection license from a person who signed inspection? It is the same with exhaust. Loud is illegal but there are so many of them on the street. I see cars with plate sticker valid like 2010 or something.
In my opinion nothing will change. Rednecks are rednecks and nothing will change that.
Banned...no
Laughed at...for sure.
next thing you know those crooked nc legislature bastads are going to be telling us WHERE WE CAN GO TO THE BATHROOM!
i blame the non-populated areas of nc (like 20 miles north and south of I-40)