
A Vigilante Fighting Engine Exhaust - gringoDan
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/30/the-vigilante-fighting-engine-exhaust
======
nimbius
+1 for this guy. as an engine mechanic my third most common question is "can
you get my car to pass a smog check??"

And the answer is usually, "maybe." So many cars are just behind on the
maintenance that one expensive checkup is all it takes before they pass and
become slightly less noxious on the road.

The biggest, most infuriating thing for me however is professional drivers /
truckers that insist upon idling because "WELL the sticker says its CALIFORNIA
clean idle certified!" That doesnt mean people wont hate you for filling the
streets with diesel fumes while you finish your lunch.

~~~
ginko
>The biggest, most infuriating thing for me however is professional drivers /
truckers that insist upon idling

Why would they do that? Isn't that just a waste of fuel? I know some people do
that in extremely cold climates because they won't get the engine to start
again otherwise, but I would guess unless you're in Alaska that shouldn't be
an issue.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Idling for more than sixty seconds is illegal here in Norway. Of course not
many people are prosecuted for it. And as for not getting the engine started
again, well that might have been a problem fifty years ago but in all my more
than three decades in Norway I have not had any trouble starting a car in the
cold except when I have left the car unused for weeks so that the battery is
low.

Perhaps you are right about Alaska though, much colder there.

------
yardie
Exhaust particulates are the absolute worst as far as city dwelling. I had a
balcony overlooking a boulevard in Paris. I would have to clean it every week
from the diesel particulates that settled there. One time, after we went on
holiday, I came back and tried to clean it and just gave up. It was so thick
it filled 3 dust pans. After that I just locked the glass door and never went
out there again.

Then I thought about how much of that junk is making its way into my lungs.

The city of Paris has only recently started to take any action on it. One was
to ban trucks of a certain age. But now everyone is requesting waivers because
they can't meet deliveries in the city.

~~~
magduf
This is one big advantage the US has over Europe: for the most part, only
trucks/buses have diesel engines. Gasoline engines don't produce all the
particulate pollution that diesel engines do, and Europe made a big mistake by
adopting diesel for passenger cars. As a result, our city air is much cleaner.

~~~
blattimwind
> Gasoline engines don't produce all the particulate pollution that diesel
> engines do

With injection engines this simply isn't true any more.

> made a big mistake by adopting diesel

The small injection turbo diesel engines offered much higher efficiency and
thus much lower CO2 emissions (~half) compared to contemporary gasoline
engines (they still do). Other parts of the emissions profile (e.g. NOx) have
almost exclusively to do with how efficient the engine is run, e.g. gas
engines that are close to efficiency to diesel engines will produce similar
amounts of NOx.

Broadly speaking, as more aspects of the combustion are externally, forcibly
controlled, differences between diesel and gas engines become a lot less.

(The average German car has a 1.6 liter three or four cylinder engine doing
something like 4.5l/100km ~ 50 mpg; basically no one is driving big cars with
six or eight cylinder engines).

~~~
stefan_
The biggest mistake in all of this isn't even diesel vs gasoline, it's that
the majority of engine and technology advancements have gone into making cars
even more ridiculously powerful and oversize. If a fully loaded van can clear
a 10% incline alpine pass with a mere 60 kW engine, there is no justification
whatsoever to have any more than half that power in a car driving in the city,
or pretty much all over the place.

Gasoline vs diesel feels a bit like fructose syrup vs table sugar, it's pretty
clear in both the US and Europe that regulations have not kept up enough of a
downward slope on emissions to prevent technological advancement from going
into grotesque growths like the SUV instead of cleaning up the exhaust and
reducing consumption further.

~~~
mmirate
And when the drunk driver of a 10-seat family van plows into you at high
speed, do you want your "compact car" to become a "compacted car" with you
inside?

Personally, I don't believe my life is quite worth the money I'd have saved by
driving a small sedan instead of the larger vehicle I drive.

(If it were, then I daresay my budget would be severely lopsided. Seriously;
what kind of idiot would I have to be to spend more than 70% of my net income
to car-related expenses?)

~~~
corv
A pickup or SUV isn’t needed to stay safe - especially not when all other cars
are compact.

This reasoning reminds me of the tragedy of the commons.

~~~
TeMPOraL
This is totally tragedy of the commons reasoning. There exist big cars on the
road, so I need a bigger one to protect myself against them. I'm half-
surprised that no one is selling civilian-use APCs at this point.

~~~
mmirate
Pfft. I couldn't weave, pass and lanechange through the usual shitty traffic
if my vehicle was that unmaneuverable.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Isn't the traffic shitty (and dangerous) precisely _because_ of the occasional
people "weaving, passing and lanechanging" like crazy?

~~~
mmirate
When I make a right-hand turn onto the far-right lane of a divided highway
with four lanes in my direction, and over the next three blocks, three lanes
become right-turn-only (gradually narrowing the road down to one lane) but I
need to not make any of those right turns?

You bet I need some fancy footwork to avoid being forcibly detoured. And you
bet that once I'm in the correct lane, I make a point of emulating the people
far in front of me, by almost-tailgating the person directly in front of me.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
I mean, I don't even get why people just idle their cars like that.

I've been told it's to keep the air conditioning on, but I see people idling
with their windows rolled down, in the summer and winter alike. I've been told
it's to play the radio, but most of the time I can't hear any radio and in any
case, come on- you got a phone right?

There's no good reason that applies in most situations and that makes it even
harder to understand. Because it means people just ...don't turn their engine
off when they're only stopped for a while. Because. I don't know. It costs
action points?

~~~
mclehman
>I've been told it's to play the radio

Is it common for the car to need to be running to listen to the radio?

~~~
mwarkentin
Not sure if sarcasm, but no.

------
subpixel
This man is my hero. I've knocked on dozens of car windows at Costco over the
last several years, and now I realize I can get paid.

------
gregwtmtno
I can't read the article (I really should subscribe) but I think people
seriously underestimate the positive effects moving to electric cars will have
on city livability and city property values. Because we're all born into a
world where engine particulates are ubiquitous, I think we're missing how much
of an improvement clean air would be.

~~~
jaggederest
Black carbon from diesel, train, and ship exhaust is incredibly toxic. I think
it's going to be the equivalent of lead, in the future.

~~~
ams6110
Not even close.

Lead does irreversible brain and organ damage to developing children. Carbon,
at worst, may increase your chances for respiratory disease or lung cancer.

~~~
hollerith
No at worst it increases whole-body inflammation.

~~~
exxr
This lecture is quite a good one for the health effects of diesel
nanoparticles [https://youtu.be/aXEal4YJsOU](https://youtu.be/aXEal4YJsOU)

------
Zanni
We don't have that law in Hawaii, unfortunately. I used to love to eat at a
local Quiznos which had outdoor seating, but was located next to a
supermarket. People would park there cars five feet from where I was eating
and let them idle for 20-30 minutes while they sort out their grocery list, or
while one person runs inside to shop and the other waits. Made me crazy--the
noise, the stink. I stopped eating their, and apparently everyone else did
too, as they went out of business.

~~~
grahamburger
Quiznos have been going out of business everywhere for several years. I think
this dead rat commercial was the beginning of the end:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZrks-
BPeLQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZrks-BPeLQ) (I'm sure the exhaust
didn't help though!)

------
dghughes
>...showing a video he’d taken with his phone of a concrete truck near the
corner of William and Fulton Streets.

A truck carrying concrete has to keep the drum rotating to keep the concrete
mixed. To do that it has to have its engine running.

~~~
cup-of-tea
Yes but they shouldn't be doing it near people's houses. Concrete mixers are
supposed to go directly to the construction site and deposit their load on
time.

------
cornellwright
While I agree with the objective - that cars/trucks should shutdown instead of
idling, I have to wonder, do we really want to a society where people are paid
to report their neighbors? Sure it seems like this guy is doing everything
properly (documenting real cases of random idling), but what happens when
people start using things like this for harassment/revenge, fabricating idling
cases (similar to the Uber vomit cleanup scam), and generally making a living
off getting people fined.

Compare this to a trained law enforcement officer who doesn't personally make
money on every fine who will take the whole situation into account, rather
than just trying to make a buck.

This make work out fine at this small scale, but we should be cautious when it
comes to creating untrained citizen bounty hunters.

~~~
Reason077
_" I have to wonder, do we really want to a society where people are paid to
report their neighbors?"_

It's sad, but I think we need do need this. Too many people are uncaring and
ignorant, and will behave badly if they don't think there are consequences. We
shouldn't just turn a blind eye to anti-social behavior.

~~~
jimmaswell
I'd call reporting idling the anti-social behavior. Snitching on someone
breaking an unjust law to save a meaningless amount of emissions.

~~~
monochromatic
Unjust??

~~~
jimmaswell
Yes, it's unjust to not allow people to idle their cars. It's a minuscule
portion of total emissions that's not worth the tradeoff of convenience.

------
clumsysmurf
This dovetails nicely with a new study from Canada, which found 25% cars
produce 90% pollution.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150421105344.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150421105344.htm)

"The study made on-the-spot measurements of 100,000 vehicles as they drove
past air-sampling probes of the main laboratory on College Street, one of
Toronto's many major roadways."

Also interesting was their findings of how pollution from roads permeates the
surround areas, and the complex ways pollution from multiple roads produces
additive exposure.

------
nwah1
Engine exhaust is full of carcinogens. Given this, it is entirely fair to fine
polluters in proportion to the level of harm they cause. Outsourcing the
enforcement to citizens is a bit strange, but it is important work and someone
should be paid to enforce the law.

~~~
bunderbunder
Outsourcing the enforcement to citizens might be the only practical way to do
it.

According to the article, in about 18 months, his 25% cut of the fines
amounted to roughly $5,000. Assuming you could hire city employees to do it,
you'd probably want to cover their salaries with the fines. Let's say city's
overhead from prosecuting these cases is 25% (Judges need to get paid, too),
so that's $15,000 in 18 months, or $10,000 in 12, if they spend as much time
at it as this guy. He's obviously motivated, and keeping an eye out whenever
he's on the streets, so let's assume a full timer can only manage about 10x as
much vigilant time as him. That's $100,000/yr. Assuming you want to cover both
salary and benefits, that might not be enough in NYC.

And, assuming the program were at all successful, then you'd expect revenues
from it to drop rapidly as every commercial operator in the city starts
warning their employees.

~~~
et2o
100k/year is definitely well above (~2x) the median salary for someone in
public service in a job like this in NYC. Police officers in the NYPD start
around 42k/year.

~~~
icebraining
Salary is just one of the costs. There's pensions, equipment, training, etc.

------
klondike_
I suppose he got his wish considering newer cars automatically shut off the
engine after idling for a few seconds, and turn it back on when you want to
go.

~~~
magduf
This feature is far from universal at this point. You'll find it on some
higher-end cars, but that's about it.

~~~
King-Aaron
Stop-start cars are amazing when the battery/alternator starts getting a
little dicky after a few years. Pull up to the lights, engine shuts down, and
doesn't start back up. Genius.

~~~
oh_sigh
Have you actually experienced this or are you just assuming it might happen in
the future?

~~~
mmirate
It's a very reasonable assumption for anyone who's been around cars for more
than a decade of their lives. Electrical systems in most consumer-grade
vehicles have rarely been able to exhibit the kind of reliability expected of
most of the other nontrivial moving parts.

------
oppositelock
What about refrigerated diesel trucks? When the diesel engine turns off, the
cooling turns off. Has this tattletale also considered the horrendous
emissions of engines whose catalysts cool down? Idling is sometimes cleaner,
sometimes dirtier, this kind of blanket enforcement makes no sense to me.

Where I live in CA, people object to diesel idling more due to noise than
anything else.

~~~
hollerith
The refrigerator is usually powered by a separate engine mounted high on the
front of the trailer.

------
o_____________o
Thanks, George. Now please get noise violations on the NYC cars that pollute
our air with pealing horns. Cab drivers especially seem to spend their entire
shift impotently honking.

~~~
chillacy
When I was in Shanghai most recently, I found out that they had solved the
issue of honking (which used to be even worse than anything we have in the US)
by having these microphones at intersections triangulate honking, capture a
photo, and mail the driver a ticket and link to the video. It's definitely on
the scale of big brother, but it also works.

~~~
o_____________o
Damn, that's amazing. I would imagine that the city could be convinced by
forecasting the money they would bring in on fines.

How does that system work for honking between intersections?

~~~
chillacy
Good question, I wasn't able to find details, just some basics:

[https://radiichina.com/beijing-installs-car-horn-
detectors-t...](https://radiichina.com/beijing-installs-car-horn-detectors-to-
battle-noise-pollution/)

[https://www.shine.cn/archive/district/jing-an/Crackdown-
on-h...](https://www.shine.cn/archive/district/jing-an/Crackdown-on-horn-
cacophony/shdaily.shtml)

------
tomxor
This absolutely pisses me off too, especially when it's right outside my home
because it's also noise pollution. I don't understand these people... do they
go home and just leave taps running while fiddling with their phones? there is
no good reason to do this unless you are in an extremely cold environment.

~~~
Frye9876
Even in a cold environment it doesn't make sense to idle your car to warm it
up.

~~~
EpicEng
Ever lived in a cold environment? You idle to let your heating system get up
to temp. I grew up in a cold area and no way was I going to jump in my car
right away in -20 degree temps.

~~~
Frye9876
Yes. Almost the entirety of engine wear occurs when the oil temp is too cold.
By turning on the vehicle and immediately driving (conservatively below 2k
rpms) you greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to warm up your engine
oil versus when left idling at 500rpms. I learned this from reading the manual
to my BMW and Subaru.

In -20 degree weather you won't accomplish much idling and should purchase an
engine block heater if concerned.

Interesting article confirming what I am saying:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/29/the-b...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/29/the-
biggest-winter-energy-myth-that-you-need-to-idle-your-car-before-
driving/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a28864233635)

~~~
EpicEng
I don't doubt you, but I know for a fact that by turning on my car and waiting
inside I could get in and the car was warm. No waiting. Did this for twenty
years.

~~~
gamblor956
You two are talking about different things. Frye is talking about warming the
engine compartment; Epic is talking about warming the passenger space. You can
warm the engine compartment more efficiently without idling by driving at low
RPMs for the first few minutes; however, idling is as (or almost as) effective
as low-speeding driving at warming the passenger area.

~~~
EpicEng
>however, idling is as (or almost as) effective as low-speeding driving at
warming the passenger area.

Again, twenty years of turning the car on, going inside for 15 mins, and
coming out and sliding into a warm car.

I'm not anywhere near knowledgeable enough to explain the details. I am fairly
certain however that I was not hallucinating this throughout my entire
childhood and young adult years.

------
exxr
If anyone wants to learn more about the health effects of diesel exhaust,
beyond the oft publicized "lung cancer" risk, this is a very detailed lecture
on the topic from a guy at WWU.

[https://youtu.be/aXEal4YJsOU](https://youtu.be/aXEal4YJsOU)

------
VectorLock
What if more laws had monetarily incentivized vigilanteism?

~~~
mmirate
Then more people would correctly point out the parallels with a variety of
dystopias, including nonfictional examples.

------
wffurr
Gitem tiger!

I wish we could go past idling and start mandating some serious emissions
controls, especially on diesel truck and heavy equipment engines in urban
areas, but also on all the rest of the emitters.

------
mnm1
Sounds like a problem that would easily be resolved by federal regulations
that would turn an engine off after three minutes automatically unless some
other switch, ideally obscured or hidden behind a ui, is pressed (has to be
pressed each time the engine is started). Seems like a simple solution, like
lights that turn off with the engine but like that advancement, it'll probably
take decades to standardize without proper federal regulation.

------
olliej
Well I certainly misread that title. I literally thought someone had
weaponised (or whatever Batman like thing) exhaust.

------
brundolf
If only they could enforce against those ridiculous smoke-stacks people
install on their trucks. Here in Texas - even in Austin - I probably see one
or two a week:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/07/rolling_coal_conservatives_who_show_their_annoyance_with_liberals_obama.html)

Every time I see one, I just want to drop a softball-sized lump of silly-putty
down there.

~~~
cellularmitosis
Are you complaining about the chrome exhaust stacks, or about modifying the
engine to purposefully produce lots of black smoke? At least in Denver, you
can report the black smoke: [https://denver.cbslocal.com/2017/10/18/sheriffs-
office-asks-...](https://denver.cbslocal.com/2017/10/18/sheriffs-office-asks-
public-to-report-drivers-rolling-coal/)

~~~
_bxg1
Generally I assumed they went hand-in-hand, but maybe that's not always the
case.

------
air7
Is a bounty for reporting an offense a common thing in the US (or elsewhere)?
I've never heard of it.

------
neuralRiot
This sounds a bit stupid, drivers will wander instead that creates more
emissions than idling.

------
jimmaswell
This is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. 3 minutes? A $350
fine? Are you kidding me? I spend longer than that idling in a fast food
parking lot eating my food. How do any judges sleep at night enforcing this?
I'm not going to sit in a hot/freezing car in traffic if I can help it by
running the climate control inside for a while first (definitely takes more
than 3 minutes, or especially that particularly ridiculous 1 minute in school
zones). I guess these people would prefer my dog suffer in the heat instead of
sitting in air conditioning for 5 minutes while I get something out of a gas
station. More and more reason I never want anything to do with NYC.

The goal of protecting the environment is so that it can better serve us in
the future. The environment is not an end in itself. Idling regulations are
far too great of an inconvenience compared to the tiny benefit. I hope this
war on cars is just a fad.

~~~
hfdgiutdryg
_I spend longer than that idling in a fast food parking lot eating my food._

That's weird. Why not just go inside to eat?

As for the dogs, I'm sure the judges are happy to make exceptions for
exceptional circumstances. It sounds like the law is targeted at the largest
groups of offenders: commercial vehicles idling unnecessarily, and parents who
(bizarrely, IMO) insist on waiting in a long line of cars to pick up their kid
after school.

~~~
foobar1962
> ... parents who (bizarrely, IMO) insist on waiting in a long line of cars to
> pick up their kid after school

The alternative is to constantly drive around, which is worse in terns of road
safety and emissions.

~~~
hfdgiutdryg
The alternative is to let the kids ride a bus or walk. Or park and get out
instead of sitting in your car idling.

