Yeah, I'd HAPPILY report every single truck rolling coal around me if there was a place to report that information.
Hell, I've seen a truck roll coal around cop cars and, obviously, nothing happened.
This is just gross privacy intrusion masquerading as "protecting the environment". We don't need 100% compliance to the law and simple prosecution/ticketing of obvious violations would go a long way towards solving the problem outright. Much like we didn't need our cars emailing prosecutors every time someone drove without a seat belt on. Cops giving out tickets for not wearing a seatbelt was enough.
I watched a pickup roll coal in the middle of freaking East Bay, literally within site of downtown San Francisco, on a bicyclist. I reported their license to the California Air Resources Board, and not longer after that I saw it up on jacks in a neighborhood auto shop. That made my day. Asshole.
California is rather strict on emissions. Other states don't care. I used to work for my state's version of the DMV and the only public facing page where one could report things was to report people who would not register their cars locally (many people who purchase very expensive cars chose to register them in Montana). There used to be a web page to report license plates that were worn and needed replacing (like the reflective coating wore off, or all the paint got scratched off).
Vehicle regulation in the US is piss poor. Here's the full list of states that require all passenger vehicles to be inspected for safety and emissions every year:
* New York
* Massachussets
* Vermont
Utah used to require safety inspections every year, but they eliminated them; there were no noticeable side effects [1].
"Safety Inspections" were generally just a grift for third-party repairshops to collect free money and I couldn't be happier that they are no longer a thing.
Be aware that "safety" and "emissions" are different. Emissions testing is still required biannually for newish vehicles and yearly for older ones.
[1] https://www.deseret.com/2017/3/9/20607904/lawmakers-remove-r...
I used to live in Massachusetts. I'm not sure it's a benchmark to look up to. If buy buy a brand new car from a dealer, your next stop must be an inspection station - a pointless waste of time and money. But if your car is older than 15 years? You're no longer required to have an annual emissions test. Pretty backwards.
I'm in Idaho, so not such resource exists. It would have to be a federal agency that does the enforcement because our cops/prosecutors/lawmakers won't ever make something like that happen.
You can take temporary comfort knowing that it’s costing them $7 per gallon for that little asshole stunt. It seems you have to he is especially insecure to intentionally want to burn smoke on someone else. Especially when Tesla’s have a BioWeapon air filtration setting.
Not an obvious google (for me), so here's the link:
https://air.arb.ca.gov/Forms/VehicleComplaint/SmokingVehicle
I had a neighbor with a car they clearly wouldn't fix that desperately needed a smog check. reported them also. they moved away shortly after though, so i'm not sure if CARB ever followed through.
I got a nastygram from CARB once for something like that. I think they follow up.
Here in Colorado we have a new anti coal rolling law, with a hotline you can call it in on.
You know what happens when you call it in? The government sends a letter to the registered address of the truck saying, basically "Hey! Your emissions are very wasteful, you should get that checked out!". Glad California seems to have some teeth to the emissions laws.
Seems about as effective as could be though. By the time you see them doing it, it's already cleared up by the time you pull out your phone to video it to use as evidence. So this is pretty much acknowledging that it would be ripe for abuse if it had any actual consequence.
I'm in Texas, and I get coal rolled multiple times a year while I'm riding my bike. One asshat actually hit my shoulder with his extended mirror. After that, I started using my GoPro as a dashcam since I wasn't able to get the asshat's license plate number.
Man I got hit so many times as a cyclist in TX and GA. It took me awhile to realize that in GA, it was sometimes intentional. I hadn't realized how much bicyclists were disliked.
If you want to do something about this, given that we have universal surveillance of license plates anyway:
Demand that your local government installs PM 2.5 / 10 monitors on each of their spy cams. They'll easily pick up out-of-spec emissions systems. Join the emissions spikes with the license plates. Take the cars that are two standard deviations above the norm for PM 2.5 / 10 increases after they're spotted by the camera, and have them come in for an aggressive smog check.
Completely eliminate all other smog check requirements for late model cars because modern tests are just "check the pollution control light on the dash", and "check for tampering". Those checks will only catch honest drivers, since coal-rollers limit themselves to reversible modifications anyway.
If we're going to give up our privacy for some amorphous benefits (which I think is a terrible tradeoff), at least let those benefits include annual paperwork. As a bonus, if the PM 2.5 / 10 data is made public, then we'd have much better air pollution monitoring. There's no way this plan costs more than the current system, where every ICE car driver pays ~ $100 to an inspection station every few years. PM sensors are under $100, and you need orders of magnitude fewer sensors than cars.
For those, like me, who aren't familiar with the term "rolling coal": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal
I think the wikipedia page downplays how often it's used to try to hurt or annoy cyclists, pedestrians, or anyone who looks liberal/foreign. It's not just anti environmentalists who do it, it's a general MAGA thing.
"Try" to hurt?
Half-burned diesel particulate is absolutely cancerous, it can enter the bloodstream and cross the blood-brain barrier and they're generating clouds of it, probably thousands of times more than what a modern 18 wheeler puts out in half an hour of driving. And they're doing it to someone breathing hard.
If I sprayed some cancerous chemical in someone's face, I'd be arrested within the hour. I'd be on the regional news, even.
The double standards around motor vehicles never cease to amaze.
Wtf people are doing this on purpose? What's wrong with people?
Chest-thumping
I had a driver in a Ford F-150 do this in front of me last week as he pulled away from a light. The smoke totally blacked out the windshield for 5 seconds while I was in motion. I was totally blinded by this.
I had no idea this was a thing, much less that it was something people did on purpose.
https://old.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/1tdj76y/oc_id...
Many more:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/search/?q=coal&restric...
I wish they'd go back to just hanging plastic testicles from the trailer hitch, honestly.
Something like these? https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1h82ja1/new_generati...
Maybe they finally realized that they had been giving their trucks gender affirming care.
... and for those that assume, understandably, that this is strictly a US cultural phenomenon, I must (sadly) report that I saw a very new Ram 1500 dump black exhaust onto a cyclist on the 9 between Saint-Léonard and Crans-Montana. This happened in summer of 2022.
In terms of US cultural exports, for every jazz music and snowboarding I guess there has to be some coal rolling and fake service dogs.
I see rolling coal pretty regular in Alberta, Canada. Though not as an intentional act towards bicycles/EVs behind the truck, just people with a rich mixture that like burning money. That and it's legal to do a diesel delete...
What on earth? I can't understand USA at all..
> Hell, I've seen a truck roll coal around cop cars and, obviously, nothing happened.
> This is just gross privacy intrusion masquerading as "protecting the environment".
You're conflating two entirely different groups of people working for two different governments with entirely different motivations. It is entirely possible that the cops in the situation you observed didn't have any issue because they didn't think they were breaking any law they enforce. Your local police and EPA Special Agents have different jobs.
The Clean Air Act is a federal law. There are 10 states with laws directly targeting "rolling coal".
I was on a bike ride with my young kid. We were going up a hill and being passed by a lifted diesel truck. I could tell that the driver was desperately working the throttle to avoid accidentally blowing smoke in my kids' face.
Congratulations, buddy. You've designed your life around being such a massive unlikeable asshole to random strangers. But for a brief moment you understood shame.
I'm generally pretty libertarian, but I'm all for throwing the book at these guys.
> I'm generally pretty libertarian, but I'm all for throwing the book at these guys.
To me that seems perfectly in line with being libertarian. One of the legitimate roles of the government is protecting people from violence by other people. Libertarians are not anarchists.
Not to my understanding. Libertarian protections are from my understanding all about the quantifiable damages that were done by any given action. They don't usually go beyond that.
That's why most libertarians would be in favor of blowing asbestos insulation with the thought that "well, eventually the mesothelioma victims will sue which will stop the practice". You couldn't preemptively sue, however, as you don't have any damage you could demonstrate until after the cancer starts.
There might be flavors of libertarians that aren't that way but it's my understanding that environmental protections is one of the weaker aspects of the libertarian mindset. Especially since it simply doesn't account for "all the damage is done and the people that did the damage are now gone".
You're describing Corporatist Libertarians.
Traditional Libertarians: No organization (government or otherwise) should be large enough or powerful enough to infringe on anyone's liberties.
Corporatist Libertarians: No government should be powerful enough to infringe on the liberties of corporations.
Corporatism has taken over about 50% of the Democrat, Republican and Libertarian parties. They're what people usually mean when they say "moderate" in the US, and why no branches of the federal government have an approval rating above 33%. It's also why things are going downhill so fast: It doesn't matter which party is in power, even if they've got a filibuster proof majority and all three branches in their pocket. Their corporate faction will still be powerful enough to block progressive and populist legislation.
> environmental protections is one of the weaker aspects
That is probably why we are not on the same page here. I'm thinking in terms of the actual harm. Someone rolling coal near me is causing violence to me. The damage to the environment is more difficult to quantify, and that is not the angle I would approach it from.
You are perhaps confusing libertarians with anarcho-capitalists. Ancaps are a subset of libertarians. I think among other right-wing libertarian varieties there is a broader spectrum of beliefs, and left-wing libertarians generally would not support anything that pollutes the commons (although they would disagree about the best means of preventing such pollution).
(Most) libertarians still support addressing externalities.
One common libertarian solution for something unproven would be "it's your job to purchase insurance for this new way of doing things, and convince an actuary that it's safe; the insurance premiums will stop you from taking risks with unproven technologies without appropriate precautions/testing/etc".
> (Most) libertarians still support addressing externalities.
Not really. They support it in terms of individual responsibility and not as a government role.
> The standard libertarian solution for something unproven would be "it's your job to purchase insurance for this new way of doing things"
No libertarian I'm aware of would force someone to purchase insurance. But it also does not address the externalities problem. We have in this thread an example of an externality that doesn't have a solution. Rolling coal does small amounts of damage. An insurance agent would be happy to insure someone with a modded car that rolls coal because there isn't going to be a claim related to it.
The same is true for any CO2 emitting activity. The damage is an externality that builds up with very small individual acts. I know of no way this would be addressed with libertarian philosophy (grant for me that man-made climate change is real and a problem if you want to argue against this).
> Not really. They support it in terms of individual responsibility and not as a government role.
To a libertarian, a major part of the government's job is to enforce contracts and property rights. Externalities are mass infringements on other people's property rights, that need to either be avoided or appropriately compensated. Emitting CO2 does damage to a common good everyone has an interest in.
> No libertarian I'm aware of would force someone to purchase insurance.
I didn't say the government would force them to. (Though some smaller-scale voluntary association might well do so.)
The problem you'll have in a libertarian framework is who can bring a claim against who for CO2 emissions and for how much?
Like, let's say I have a slam dunk case that my $1000 tree died due to climate change. I have the receipts, documentation, everything (unrealistic as it is). How would I go around recovering the damages I'm owed? Who would figure out that "Ted there who drove to work for the last 20 years contributed $0.0001 of your damages. The concrete plant over there contributed $0.001. The coal plant $0.01".
I'll also point out you did not address the rolling coal problem.
It is not impossible, in a libertarian framework, to have appropriate court cases to establish standard collective rates and trading frameworks for CO2 emission limits. And that does solve the problem of individual vehicle emissions, as well.
Libertarians consider anyone doing things they don't like to be anarchists, and anything they do, to be "freedom."
You ever notice that areas with very high libertarian numbers tend to have lots of problems with illegal dumping, and lots of people who think registering and insuring their vehicle is optional?
I've lived in the most libertarian state in the country for the majority of my life. I've never noticed any illegal dumping, and I've never heard any libertarians call anyone an anarchist (maybe once?). If anything, it's the non-libertarians that call libertarians anarchists.
On what are you basing your opinions?
I would say that libertarians come in many flavors. And many of them are not big-L libertarians.
> You ever notice [...]
No. It may be true, but I would like to see evidence rather than conjecture. I have seen plenty of trashy areas that I would not associate with a high concentration of political libertarians.
I would agree that there is an entire flavor of libertarian who, for example, felt like they must not wear masks during the pandemic because they were being told by the government to wear them.
My position on that version of libertarianism is in line with Penn Jillete's. I.e. https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/je34ya/penn_ji...
You're right that's what it should be, as me and my kid's right not to get trampled to death beneath a 2m hood clearly trumps your "right" to drive a 4-ton machine at unsafe speeds wherever you please. But sadly that's not how most "libertarians" think.
Guy tries to drive courtously around you and this is how you take it? You're unhinged.
If I understand correctly, the trucker was set up to roll coal on other people, and only made an exception for this specific kid on a bike. It's not "unhinged" to stand up for others who have been targeted even while you were spared — it's just common decency.
Is there some way of knowing a truck is set up to "roll coal"? If not, then this could just be the OP thinking poorly of someone just trying to drive carefully around a family. It would be jumping to a very pessimistic conclusion without evidence.
But anyone who "rolls coal" doesn't have a truck set up to always do that. They'll have a switch on their console which makes it happen (or something digital). You don't need to try to not roll coal if you don't want to. Probably what happened is the person just drove a normal truck and knows that diesel fumes are stinky and tried to coast by the bikers so there would be the least amount of exhaust near them.
Not necessarily- many blow out black smoke when the throttle is pressed hard, but not when pressed gently. From what I understand there is a way of tuning the ECU to do this. But also there can just be a switch
Diesel fumes always stink, idling or driving. You mash down a throttle on a deleted diesel and it'll blow smoke. It can be a decent cloud depending on the last time you womped it.
The only masquerading is some basic OBD functions slapped onto an app that is entirely designed for the sole purpose of installing emissions evasion firmware. Most of the reviews brag about it, even.
And do you really think they're HQ'd in the caymans by coincidence? No. It's to avoid any repercussions.
You can get similar basic OBD functions from any of a dozen free apps on iOS or Android that do that all far better and for a few dollars.
FFS they even sell another app for editing (ie falsifying) electronic driver logs.
They are probably owned by off duty police
With this admin any comment on “protecting the environment” is an obvious lie when they state that climate change doesn’t exist and are opening up every national land then can to resource extraction.
Like it’s normally a dubious claim when trying to violate privacy but for them it’s fucking laughable if only it wasn’t so ominous.
Even the so-called experts on climate change, like Bill Gates, have given up on it.