This might sound funny, but if you're a car person, pay attention.
The Carolina Squat has become somewhat of an Infamous name within the automotive industry for many reasons. You could list safety stats and handling concerns off all day long but at the end of the day we all know what it comes down to. Basically people just don't like how these trucks look and as such find anything and everything wrong with them to attack. The same thing is done to anyone with a lift or a lowered car though there is significantly less of a case for outright banning those modifications. Some things that people have pointed to include the reduced visibility, sort of an obvious one, or reduced handling effectiveness. As far as that second point goes, you get the exact same thing from a lift. With that in mind a new bill has surfaced in North Carolina legalizing any vehicle whose front end is higher than 4 in comparison to the rear. Seems harmless enough, right?
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Well actually, it might be a little bit more complicated than it sounds because it opens the door for a lot of really bad possibilities for car people. One of the best things about being a car enthusiast in America is the fact that we are one of the very few countries whose regulations surrounding modifying your own vehicle are pretty relaxed. This is why you see a lot of lifted, lowered, and borderline race cars driving around on the street. As mentioned above, the safety concerns surrounding squatting are not entirely unfounded. especially when you consider the visibility aspect of things, it can seem like a very tricky thing to navigate the road properly. However, the same reasoning could be applied to lifted trucks which have high risk of rollovers due to the higher center of gravity.
Following the same logic, vehicles with a lot more horsepower than came in the car from the factory could be argued against or labeled unsafe because of their increased instability or potential for high-speed accidents. What's even more concerning is the punishment which far outweighs the crime in this scenario. Rather than a simple fix-it-ticket that most illegal mods get, you can have your license suspended for up to a year for this offense. All of this appeal to safety could be made for almost any modification that you do to your vehicle which seems like a nice little loophole for those politicians who might not want car people modifying their vehicles in favor of just buying a new one every time they want a tiny upgrade in performance. Call it what you will but it just looks like the government putting unnecessary restrictions on a niche sub-genre of Automotive culture with reasoning based off of a meme and nefarious intentions, promoted by automotive industry lobbyists, ahead.
