There are about 30 kei cars registered in Rhode Island, according to DMV records, and lawmakers want to take them all off the road. State officials have started asking kei car owners to turn in their registration, which would make the vehicles illegal to drive on a public road.
Rhode Island policymakers first floated the idea of banning kei cars in 2021, and they launched a second offensive earlier in 2024. DMV administrator Walter Craddock argued that kei cars should be banned from driving on the Ocean State’s roads because they “were never manufactured in compliance with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.” Federal law allows any vehicle that’s at least 25 years old to be legally imported to the United States, but each…
