Comment by cogman10
15 hours ago
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
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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'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.
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Ok I’m not from the US. Why do people do this?
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.
> and not longer after that I saw it up on jacks in a neighborhood auto shop
Things that didn't happen for 200 please
#NothingEverHappens
In the real world, sometimes grownups have to actively do things to make their worlds nicer. We can’t all just sit around being cynical or nothing ever gets done.
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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.
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For those, like me, who aren't familiar with the term "rolling coal": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal
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...
It's very much on purpose. To do it with a modern diesel truck you need to remove the DPF, and reprogram the ECU to run rich and to ignore the missing DPF.
I wish they'd go back to just hanging plastic testicles from the trailer hitch, honestly.
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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.
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I’m sorry, but while I’m sure there’s a few people on earth who have intentionally done this…to imagine its happening around you all the time vs people being just lazy about issues on their vehicle…is quite frankly lunacy.
It’s always fascinating to run across the MAGA-style conspiracy theories on the far left, they’re ironically very similar.
“I get coal rolled every time in step on my bike!”
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... 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...
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What on earth? I can't understand USA at all..
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.
>Demand that your local government installs PM 2.5 / 10 monitors on each of their spy cams.
While we're at it can remind 'em Flock politicians don't have our votes
> Demand that your local government installs PM 2.5 / 10 monitors on each of their spy cams
You don't need that. You can just take a picture of a car with black smoke coming out of the exhaust.
Had too google "rolling coal".
That is insane.
> 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".
How about assault? I have stood in a peaceful protest while truck after truck rolls coal in my face and the cops just watch as I am poisoned. If I sprayed mace in the car windows I would go to jail.
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.
Bill Gates is a patron. He’s not a climate scientist.
If you have to point to patrons opinions on science to back your own then I assume you are incapable of a real discussion on the topic and will ask you to bleat like a sheep in other threads.
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".
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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?
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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.
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