- 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)
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- Oh $440, that is a ton of money.
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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.
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(Nolan laughing)
Be kind, wear your seatbelt.
I'll see you next time.