5/15/2026 at 5:49:09 PM
> The government says it needs this information to identify and interview witnesses who can testify about how the tools were actually used.Why start this whole thing, if you don't already have this information and have people willing to help you as witnesses?
Sounds to me they're saying they don't have this already, but why is this investigation happening in the first place then? Rather than finding every user of the tool, find the users who use the tool in the way you don't approve of, then request the information for those?
Really bananas approach to go for "Every single user of the app" and "Everyone who bought a dongle" when it has very real and legal use cases.
by embedding-shape
5/15/2026 at 6:17:36 PM
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.
by cogman10
5/15/2026 at 6:29:27 PM
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.by kstrauser
5/15/2026 at 7:23:05 PM
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).by Tangurena2
5/15/2026 at 9:57:24 PM
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
by kube-system
5/15/2026 at 10:54:18 PM
I used to live in Massachusetts. I'm not sure it's a benchmark to look up to. If 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.by lacewing
5/16/2026 at 10:17:45 AM
That's temporary though. Or at least was supposed to be temporary to prevent immediately disqualifying existing vehiclesby alphabeta3r56
5/16/2026 at 11:46:20 AM
> If buy a brand new car from a dealer, your next stop must be an inspection stationHas the car never been inspected before, since it's new? Then it'd make sense that it'd be inspected before allowed on the road, not sure this is such a big deal?
by embedding-shape
5/16/2026 at 12:19:51 PM
Why would a brand new car not be road worthy? Is it common for new cars to be unsafe to drive?by jt2190
5/17/2026 at 9:17:09 AM
How would you know unless you inspect them? I'd just assumed every car needs to be inspected, new cars after they're built, but never bought a new car so I don't know how it works. I guess the manufacturer then self-reports that the car is roadworthy after the construction?I'm currently sitting and thinking about importing a second-hand car from another country, neighboring country also in Schengen, EU and EEA, just like us, even if that car passed all their local inspections, I'm gonna have to make it pass through our local inspection before I can register it here. Kind of felt like it'd be similar with new cars, but also, I don't know.
by embedding-shape
5/17/2026 at 1:29:23 PM
> How would you know unless you inspect them?By making the seller lose their license if they sell cars that are not roadworthy? Why should the risk and liability be on the buyer?
by tremon
5/17/2026 at 4:05:55 PM
New cars are certified by the manufacturer to meet safety standards when builtby kube-system
5/15/2026 at 11:34:28 PM
Why should that be required? Let people do as they will and impose penalties for problematic behavior (including negligence). I lived in a state with safety inspections and AFAICT it was little more than yet another disproportionate speed bump for the poor and a complete waste of time for society at large.I do see the merit of inspecting larger trailers (such as for boats) once a year given the combined increased likelihood of incompetence and risk to life when things go wrong. But even then I think it doesn't actually accomplish much in practice. The time and effort would be better spent on targeted public education campaigns, possibly mandatory.
For emissions, again who cares. Regulations imposed on the high volume manufacturers broadly solves all the issues that are easy to solve. The rest are either willful violations or collectors. The latter is technological in nature and inevitably gets grandfathered for both safety and emissions everywhere I've lived.
by fc417fc802
5/16/2026 at 1:17:30 AM
I live in a country with mandatory (mostly-)yearly car inspections (and all other motor vehicles).Many time you don't even know that there's an issue and they only find it during the inspection. Handbrake works only on one side, normal brakes don't work properly on one of the wheels, there's play in one of the joints or tie rods, etc.
You park, pull the handbrake, you have no idea that if you parked on an incline, your car would roll downhill, but because they noticed it during an inspection, you get that fixed. At the same time, you're forced to replace all the blown lightbulbs etc., even the ones not used daily (fog lights, etc.), since they check those too. Many people don't even notice their brake lights not working.
by ajsnigrutin
5/18/2026 at 2:44:39 AM
> Handbrake works only on one side, normal brakes don't work properly on one of the wheels, there's play in one of the joints or tie rods, etc.Do any of these states even actually check for these things? Texas used to have required safety and emissions requirements. It was largely tires aren't completely shot and seem somewhat straight (alignment was definitely not a requirement though), essential lighting is functional (headlights, taillights, turn signals if originally equipped), wipers are OK. Emissions was a check of the gas cap and an OBD-II scan. For motorcycles there was a braking test but I never saw a similar test done on a car.
That said I think it shouldn't have gone away. Personally I think if you're going to operate such a dangerous thing in public it should have a lot of scrutiny. I've seen too many cars experience some kind of crazy failure from poor maintenance end up hurting others on the highways around me. Having a desk job at a window facing two major highways for a long time, you see so much injury and death, so much of it avoidable.
by vel0city
5/23/2026 at 12:41:24 AM
In US? I have no idea.In my country (slovenia), yes. They put the car on a plate, check from below, put it on rollers, check both sets of brakes, exhaust, lights, etc.
example (oldtimer, but still, the process is the same): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epIEsExVNIc
by ajsnigrutin
5/16/2026 at 9:26:22 AM
UK here, so yearly "MOT" inspections.Last year the handbrake was like you say, only on one side. And the seatbelt mount was weak.
This year it uncovered two gaping holes near the suspension struts.
I can't imagine not having that inspected at least yearly!
by marysol5
5/16/2026 at 5:04:42 AM
I was sold incorrect tyres once, picked up in the inspection. Why wouldn't I want to know?by normie3000
5/16/2026 at 6:50:50 AM
And yet somehow in the US states that don't have inspections things keep working. It's not as though we don't have statistics regarding the causes of traffic incidents.by fc417fc802
5/16/2026 at 9:27:15 AM
"Keep working", or people get injured, or die at higher rates due to faulty vehicles on the road.US road infrastructure is pretty bad at the best of times, highways are devoid of safety and notification systems. Hence why MASSIVE pile ups are a thing
by marysol5
5/16/2026 at 10:10:35 AM
There is a world of difference between keeping working and working safely.I don't know about technical and emmission inspections in the US but in our country they also check stuff like properly aligned headlights so you don't blind other cars, the brakes, geometry etc., and I'm pretty sure without those check the cars would drive on the roads and cause safety issues.
> For emissions, again who cares.
Well for example removing a DPF from a diesel car which was popular sport for a time and driving such a car in a densely populated area can be considered directly causing cancer, so a lot of people care about this. And only spot checking for this is ineffective and expensive, though it is done in some countries anyway (Austria I think?).
by tpm
5/16/2026 at 11:18:40 AM
The safety part was exactly my point about the statistics. I've never come across anything to indicate that a noticable number of injuries or deaths are in any way related to equipment failure. The typical contenders are things like intoxication, drowsiness, distraction, and blatant recklessness or even anger.Headlights is the only thing I'll agree with you on as being terrible in the US (at least all the parts I've lived in and visited). It's purely a matter of enforcement though. People replace the stock bulbs with arbitrary stuff they ordered that's absolutely blinding and the police seem to just ignore it. It's incredibly frustrating.
What I meant by spot enforcement was responding to credible reports or opportunistic observations with surprise physical inspections. Basically the same thing they do for equipment condition in the states that don't have safety inspections. If there's black smoke billowing from your tailpipe or other obviously faulty equipment I think it's reasonable for the police to investigate that.
by fc417fc802
5/16/2026 at 1:26:28 PM
It’s definitely debatable, and is unlikely to be a primary factor in a significant number of events. It’s also hard to measure because the data is pretty bad.As an example, your tire could blow out and cause you to hit a drunk pedestrian. It would be flagged as an alcohol related crash. Police are mostly interested in violations and liability, and you are responsible. Unless it’s a fatality, nobody will even ask if your failure to stop was related to poor brakes or bald tires.
In my opinion, the only clear stat is how many people are dead. Everything else requires domain expertise to interpret.
by Spooky23
5/17/2026 at 8:39:43 AM
Yeah and those stats show a big difference. In the UK there are 2.6 fatalities per 100,000 population on average per year. And in the USA it’s 14.2That’s five times higher!
For those that don’t know these are all the checks done yearly to every passenger car over 3 years old. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/car-parts-checked...
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
by diroussel
5/18/2026 at 4:33:47 PM
The UK also has much stricter training requirements prior to being granted a license, among other differences. I don't think we can pin all the differences on the yearly MOT.by MobiusHorizons
5/16/2026 at 5:32:06 PM
> It's purely a matter of enforcement though.I would argue it's more effective to enforce stuff like this with mandatory periodical inspections than to leave it to random police checks. There are several reasons for that - the police are already doing lot of things, so they might not care; 'normalisation of deviation' etc.
by tpm
5/16/2026 at 1:13:43 PM
If you spend your time in the northeast and drive south semi-regularly, you notice it if you’re observant. There’s broken down cars and shredded tire debris everywhere.Inspection is one driver of that. Salt eats cars up north which limits daily drivers to 8-10 years which is probably a bigger one. But a significantly higher number of vehicles aren’t really road worthy.
by Spooky23
5/16/2026 at 10:29:22 AM
It's easier if you don't have those pesky cyclists and pedestrians.by TitaRusell
5/16/2026 at 3:15:59 AM
I’d disagree. It keeps cars with bald tires, faulty brakes and other defects off the road. Poor people who can’t afford these things shouldn’t be driving the cars.Motor carriers have a totally different regulatory regime that has a direct influence on highway safety. The issues there are due to the varying jurisdictions.
by Spooky23
5/16/2026 at 12:46:57 AM
For emissions there is often nothing visually wrong with the car. So you’d essentially be giving up on enforcement if you didn’t require everyone to get their car checked at least every few years. Doing it every year is IMO overkill.As to safety inspections it’s not a very large effect, but they do save lives and the expense is generally rather small. Yes it impacts the poor more, but that’s because getting unsafe vehicles fixed or off the road is kind of the point.
by Retric
5/16/2026 at 6:42:06 AM
> So you’d essentially be giving up on enforcementYes, that is precisely what I was suggesting. At least in the general case. Spot enforcement of notable cases when witnessed (such as the aforementioned coal rolling) seems like a good idea to me.
It comes down to the cost benefit tradeoff. Most cars will be used as sold, will be kept in good repair, and will eventually be scrapped due to a failure unrelated to the emissions system. I'm entirely unconvinced that regular testing leads to an overall improvement large enough to matter assuming sufficient requirements were imposed on the vehicle at the time of manufacture.
> it impacts the poor more, but that’s because getting unsafe vehicles fixed or off the road is kind of the point.
That's not what I meant. Try getting a safety inspection in a poor neighborhood. The places are booked out and you probably can't afford the time off work even once you do manage to reserve a slot. Or you end up waiting in line for a few hours. At least that was my experience.
On top of that I doubt it catches many worthwhile violations. People are quite good at looking out for their own lives and pocketbooks.
And again there's spot enforcement. I've lived in states without safety inspections and never felt unsafe. The police would issue "fix it" tickets if they saw anything they thought was truly unsafe after which it was on you to sort it out with the court.
by fc417fc802
5/16/2026 at 7:03:50 AM
> I'm entirely unconvinced that regular testing leads to an overall improvement large enough to matter assuming sufficient requirements were imposed on the vehicle at the time of manufacture.Only ~95% of cars pass emissions tests last year (it varies by state). As each car is tested several times over its lifespan you’ll find the majority of IC cars eventually need something fixed to reduce smog.
This isn’t some wildly inefficient system it’s actually quite effective at improving air quality.
by Retric
5/16/2026 at 3:56:45 PM
But that's 95% of cars that didn't need to be tested. All that the testing requirement does is reinforce the (correct) public's perception that it's a free money scheme. If the "check engine" light is not on in a modern car it's pretty much good to go.When cars do need an emissions related fix, it's almost always that little charcoal canister that people flood with gas because nobody told them why it's a bad idea to top off the tank after the first click.
by temp8830
5/16/2026 at 4:18:55 PM
> But that's 95% of cars that didn't need to be tested.That would only be true if the government was aware of which cars were in the 95% ahead of time. The fact that so many cars fail means even the driver isn’t sure let alone the government.
Even cars significantly newer than the average age of cars on the road regularly fail the emissions tests without any obvious issues ahead of time. Which means without testing you don’t know which cars will pass.
by Retric
5/18/2026 at 2:56:25 AM
I've had a few cars fail emissions over the years and it was never because of the vapor. It was normally P0420 codes that weren't resolved from O2 sensors and other attempted fixes on 20 year old Hondas. Or fouled EGR airflow spaces needing cleaning. Or EGR/manifold baffles that would get stuck.by vel0city
5/17/2026 at 7:02:34 PM
Police generally don’t issue fix it citations in the US in anywhere except for the most affluent neighborhoods where it’s unusual to see vehicles in poor condition.You can go to any poor neighborhood in the US and find visible safety issues with vehicles in a matter of minutes. Police in poor neighborhoods have more pressing issues to be dealing with.
Regardless, the police aren’t equipped to be dealing with vehicle safety or emissions issues anyway. They can’t tell whether a vehicle driving down the street has blown shocks, faulty brakes, or ball joints that are ready to pop off the vehicle. Most of these issues aren’t visible unless you have the car up on a lift. As long as your exhaust is quiet and your lights generally work, you’re unlikely to be cited by police anywhere in the US.
People with faulty equipment are crashing every day in the US and it’s never recorded that it’s the cause. In the vast majority of cases, there’s no way anyone would ever know.
by kube-system
5/16/2026 at 1:14:35 AM
I have never met anyone who properly fixed an emissions problem, and I think that's what GP meant by willful violations. Any car old enough to have emissions problems isn't worth enough to fix properly, so you cheat it by doing things like buying a spacer for the O2 sensor. Personally I'd be shocked if emissions inspections had a significant effect on total vehicle emissions, and I think that the most effective things are done at the manufacturerby retatop
5/16/2026 at 2:52:06 AM
I can personally name 3 people who had their catalytic converter replaced to pass an emissions inspection. Trying to cheat the system when they stick a hose on your tailpipe and test the emissions isn’t trivial.by Retric
5/16/2026 at 2:47:00 AM
I'm just one person, but I replaced the catalytic converters on my FJ Cruiser so it would pass the emissions testby inquist
5/16/2026 at 5:02:27 AM
How old was the car? Was the old one faulty? Thinking of getting an FJ but not sure the thought is coming from a sensible place.by normie3000
5/17/2026 at 4:20:17 PM
The volume of incidents on the road make it entirely impossible to practically hold people accountable in that way.If you are rear ended at a stop light because someone behind you had faulty tires or brakes, nobody is disassembling the car to try to prove negligence. If the incident was serious enough that the police even respond, the last thing they’re going to be doing on scene is measuring your brake pads.
by kube-system
5/18/2026 at 12:42:52 PM
> For emissions, again who cares.Most cars do indeed meet emissions regulations. From the essay Million Dollar Murray [0]:
> In Denver, five per cent of the vehicles on the road produce fifty-five per cent of the automobile pollution.
> Stedman is a chemist and automobile emissions specialist at the University of Denver. His laboratory put up the sign on Speer Avenue. “Obviously, the older a car is the more likely it is to become broken. It’s the same as human beings. And by broken we mean any number of mechanical malfunctions—the computer’s not working anymore, fuel injection is stuck open, the catalyst died. It’s not unusual that these failure modes result in high emissions. We have at least one car in our database which was emitting seventy grams of hydrocarbon per mile, which means that you could almost drive a Honda Civic on the exhaust fumes from that car. It’s not just old cars. It’s new cars with high mileage, like taxis. One of the most successful and least publicized control measures was done by a district attorney in L.A. back in the nineties. He went to LAX and discovered that all of the Bell Cabs were gross emitters. One of those cabs emitted more than its own weight of pollution every year.”
When I moved to Denver, there were inspections (I think annually). Later, they were eliminated and now there are remote sensors set up along side various onramps. The main sensor is on one side, a box about the size of a suitcase, and the other side is a mirror, since the sensor aims a laser and measures the absorption lines of what comes out of the exhaust (and takes a photo of your license plate). If your car is a gross polluter, you get a letter from the DMV telling you to get it checked.
Anecdotally, I used to have a late 80s Geo Spectrum. When it failed emissions, after attempting to repair it, it turned out that the reason the oxygen sensor failed was due to a crack in the exhaust manifold. The way the engine was arranged, if left untreated, the crack in the manifold would direct exhaust gases into the radiator which is why there were so many engine fires (resulting in a total loss of the vehicle).
Notes:
0 - Written by Malcolm Gladwell, this essay is about "power law distributions", where a few percent produce wildly different results:
https://housingmatterssc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Mill...
by Tangurena2
5/16/2026 at 1:13:13 AM
Safety inspections I’ve dealt with were largely regulatory capture for auto shops. Oh, your fender is rusty? Better replace that, even if this is your fishing wagon!CA doesn’t require annual smogs, but once your car is a certain age, it’s at least biennial. I just did ours last week.
by kstrauser
5/15/2026 at 11:15:32 PM
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...
by mmh0000
5/17/2026 at 4:40:20 PM
That’s a really shallow interpretation of the data.1. The safety inspections were never rigorous to begin with. Everyone who drives a piece of shit car in a state with safety inspections “knows a guy”. And in many urban areas, you can just drive around without an inspection.
2. Police very rarely sit at the roadside doing root cause analysis after an accident. If somebody loses control of their vehicle, they write a report for insurance or at most write them a ticket for failure to maintain control. So of course you don’t see a measurable increase in accidents due to faulty equipment. It’s because they rarely look for faulty equipment after an accident. So they aren’t measuring it.
by kube-system
5/16/2026 at 9:20:56 AM
"Free Money" from what? If they don't need repairing, they can't get it?We have yearly inspections in the UK (twice yearly for any "public" carrying, like a taxi). If your vehicle is in working order you only pay the £39 fee
by marysol5
5/16/2026 at 1:32:42 PM
If it’s due on June 1, most people show up at the last minute. So you have time pressure which makes you vulnerable to upsell.My girlfriend almost got swindled by this. She needed brake pads and rotors, and they tried to slide unnecessary fluid changes and other stuff. Like replacing a $14 air filter for $120.
by Spooky23
5/16/2026 at 7:17:13 PM
Do you mean that 39 pounds are not money or that checking the ECU status requires 39 pounds in resources so the shop breaks even on that?by pandaman
5/16/2026 at 12:41:07 AM
It's probably a much larger list if you expand it to every other year. Though that won't make for nearly as exciting a post.That reminds me, I am overdue for a smog check...
by pdntspa
5/16/2026 at 4:32:10 AM
I wouldn’t say it’s piss poor in the entire US just because it is draconian in those 3 states.by kortilla
5/21/2026 at 4:48:49 AM
I don't understand how desiring less air pollution and safer vehicles is draconian. Driving is a big responsibility; it's one of the primary causes of death for Americans and it's one of the primary causes of poor air quality.The reason we don't view it with the gravity it deserves is because driving is required. For most people, the options are drive or be homeless.
by array_key_first
5/17/2026 at 4:27:39 PM
It’s piss poor because you can go to any Walmart parking lot in this country and find vehicles visibly unsafe.by kube-system
5/16/2026 at 9:27:28 AM
"draconian"Jesus christ
by marysol5
5/18/2026 at 1:35:34 AM
yep, you might want to consider why those states are a minority. Reacting with incredulity to try to convince people a minority view is better is not good for whatever it is you’re trying to sell.by kortilla
5/18/2026 at 2:34:00 AM
They're a minority because the prevailing attitude in the US is that the only way to solve transportation for the poor is to enable them to drive broken cars around.by kube-system
5/16/2026 at 10:22:31 AM
Montana doesn't have cities large enough to notice the smog I presume?by TitaRusell
5/15/2026 at 9:14:03 PM
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.
by IncreasePosts
5/15/2026 at 9:59:19 PM
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.by dylan604
5/15/2026 at 11:46:25 PM
Patiently collect multiple (say 3) independent reports of the same plate. Have the police show up for a surprise physical inspection (free of charge naturally). Track the sources and targets of reports to watch for any abuse.by fc417fc802
5/15/2026 at 6:34:34 PM
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.by cogman10
5/15/2026 at 6:58:15 PM
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.by cyberge99
5/17/2026 at 6:00:51 PM
> Especially when Tesla’s have a BioWeapon air filtration setting.I'm sure it's just as capable as the bulletproof glass.
by FireBeyond
5/16/2026 at 9:28:44 AM
The "freedom fighters" who love to cuck themselves to oil barons and hand over their cash, rather then building themselves energy independence systems.They will never cease to boggle my tiny mind
by marysol5
5/15/2026 at 9:47:10 PM
Not an obvious google (for me), so here's the link:https://air.arb.ca.gov/Forms/VehicleComplaint/SmokingVehicle
by flomo
5/16/2026 at 2:10:36 AM
> and not longer after that I saw it up on jacks in a neighborhood auto shopThings that didn't happen for 200 please
by vasco
5/16/2026 at 3:36:33 AM
#NothingEverHappensIn 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.
by kstrauser
5/16/2026 at 5:33:29 AM
In the real world, in a city as big as San Francisco, probabilities say otherwise.by vasco
5/15/2026 at 9:26:42 PM
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.by dylan604
5/15/2026 at 9:59:17 PM
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.by forshaper
5/16/2026 at 12:25:29 AM
I don’t known if its the heat or lack of greenery but everything I hear about riding bikes or motocycles in Texas just makes it sounds like there is some deep latent aggression there. I have bicycled in a bunch of states including the Southeast and never encountered anything like the stories people tell about Texas.by porknubbins
5/16/2026 at 1:22:30 AM
Open up any kind of cycling content on social media and you see droves of comment literally calling for killing cyclists. Turns out some people are just ontologically evil.by tokai
5/16/2026 at 9:30:25 AM
Same with the UK too, there's a semi-famous guy who regularly posts recordings of drivers on their phones etc.And the sheer amount of hatred he gets, alongside the threats. You'd think he was head of ISIS or something
by marysol5
5/16/2026 at 5:51:20 PM
I think social media just gives people a palce to express their most unrestrained nasty opinions.by porknubbins
5/16/2026 at 12:33:16 AM
It has basically 0 pedestrian or bike infrastructure (at least where I was at, Irving, was that way). You have to drive everywhere otherwise you are literally in the middle of the got dang road.The speed limits are also all high. They get up to 50 mph in as many places as possible.
It also doesn't help that they've got some of the worst road marking of any state I've been in. There were a lot of roads where it was simply unclear how many lanes were supposed to exist.
Now imagine throwing a bike into all this.
I don't think it's so much aggression as it is really really terrible infrastructure.
Also, FTR, Texans are actually pretty polite drivers (at least they were circa 2011 in Dallas area).
by cogman10
5/16/2026 at 3:43:38 AM
> I don't think it's so much aggression as it is really really terrible infrastructure.These are separate issues. Both are real.
by donkyrf
5/16/2026 at 12:57:49 AM
> I don't think it's so much aggression as it is really really terrible infrastructure.As one that has been hit and coal rolled, I'll stipulate that I have a biased take that would disagree. I get that people in Irving are probably not as used to bicycles, but where I'm at is one the most popular places for biking (white rock lake). So drivers in this area are definitely used to bikes. These people to me are the meme version of the MAGA crowd. They're also the people that have no qualms doing 50mph in a 30mph zone. Infrastructure or not, these people are these people
by dylan604
5/16/2026 at 5:23:04 AM
There’s something about driving cars, particularly larger ones which induces extreme violence in people. These same people wouldn’t kill you in a fist fight but would do it with their cars without a thought.by Gigachad
5/19/2026 at 9:01:16 PM
Yeah, I notice something with the size of the vehicle that does this. Shout out to much of Oregon and the much of the non-desert-WA inland PNW for being very nice to pedestrians & cyclists though.by forshaper
5/16/2026 at 6:20:04 AM
Ok I’m not from the US. Why do people do this?by stingraycharles
5/16/2026 at 10:53:23 PM
It makes small people feel powerful.by xnx
5/17/2026 at 3:56:17 AM
Right wing anti-environmentalist political statement.by benchloftbrunch
5/15/2026 at 8:49:14 PM
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.by spike021
5/15/2026 at 9:25:18 PM
I got a nastygram from CARB once for something like that. I think they follow up.by tedd4u
5/15/2026 at 6:21:29 PM
For those, like me, who aren't familiar with the term "rolling coal": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coalby andyjohnson0
5/15/2026 at 7:40:55 PM
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.
by hughdbrown
5/15/2026 at 7:48:06 PM
https://old.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/1tdj76y/oc_id...Many more:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/search/?q=coal&restric...
by js2
5/16/2026 at 9:33:22 AM
Had a car in front of me have a rapid deconstruction of the engine in front of me while driving down a motorway.Driving into a ploom of steam and smoke, while also being hit with fragments was terrifying.
by marysol5
5/15/2026 at 7:45:23 PM
I wish they'd go back to just hanging plastic testicles from the trailer hitch, honestly.by bityard
5/15/2026 at 8:08:17 PM
Something like these? https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1h82ja1/new_generati...by malfist
5/15/2026 at 8:19:17 PM
Maybe they finally realized that they had been giving their trucks gender affirming care.by mindslight
5/16/2026 at 3:48:31 AM
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.by donkyrf
5/15/2026 at 8:48:16 PM
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.by mrgoldenbrown
5/15/2026 at 9:10:18 PM
"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.
by KennyBlanken
5/16/2026 at 4:38:24 AM
> 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.No you wouldn’t. You’ve just described 2nd hand smoke which you can easily get hit with walking down any sidewalk in the US.
by kortilla
5/16/2026 at 9:34:05 AM
Doing an intentional act, vs a passive outcome is two differing thingsby marysol5
5/18/2026 at 1:33:21 AM
Blowing smoke in someone’s face can be very intentional and nobody would ever make news or be arrested for doing it to some passerbyby kortilla
5/21/2026 at 4:55:01 AM
Blowing smoke in someone's face is very little smoke in practice, because air is a thing. Also, realistically, you're not getting cancer from someone blowing smoke in your face.Smokers get cancer because they smoke tens of thousands of cigarettes. You won't get cancer because you kind of smoked .1 cigarettes. Also, the majority of lifetime smokers don't even get lung cancer.
by array_key_first
5/21/2026 at 5:00:36 AM
Largely because there's so many other tobacco and nicotine related diseases to get instead: A full range of scientific evidence, extending from the molecular level to whole populations, supports the conclusion that secondhand smoke causes disease. The scope of this evidence is enormous, and encompasses not only the literature on secondhand smoke but also relevant findings on active smoking and on the toxicity of individual tobacco smoke components.
356 links to supporting studies and works
by defrost
5/21/2026 at 5:10:06 AM
Of course second hand smoke causes disease - we know that. But you have to consider the context in which we attacked that. The second hand smoke they're referring to is nearly constant smoking indoors, which was standard in the past.Smoking blowing smoke in your face once is one time and outside. It's easily millions of times less smoke exposure than what you're referring to here.
by array_key_first
5/22/2026 at 8:58:01 AM
> Smoking blowing smoke in your face once is one time and outside.You've had a short life with minimal exposure to smokers then.
by defrost
5/22/2026 at 9:30:35 PM
I haven't, actually, practically my entire family smokes. But it's very different these days. The amount of second hand smoke I'm exposed to is still, realistically, thousands of not millions of times less than that that the average person would be exposed to a few decades ago. Because there's less smoking in general, and of the smoking left it's done outside.by array_key_first
5/15/2026 at 9:58:49 PM
Wtf people are doing this on purpose? What's wrong with people?by stavros
5/15/2026 at 11:18:14 PM
The "people" doing this are exactly the type of people you'd expect...Just the first thing that came up in a youtube search, there are thousands more:
by mmh0000
5/15/2026 at 11:20:20 PM
Wait, this isn't something that they configure the truck to do all the time? They can turn it on and off?I thought this was some shitty way of being "special", like a loud exhaust, but being able to turn it on and off to gas people is downright evil.
by stavros
5/15/2026 at 11:27:33 PM
It's not a "switch" per-se (though some of the kits have realtime tuning switches to make more/less smoke on demand).It's a purposely poorly-turned engine + accelerator control.
TL;DR: poor turning, and floor it (high RPM).
This video gives a pretty good overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miTnnJ7xMv8
by mmh0000
5/15/2026 at 11:29:29 PM
Ah, even worse, you can gas people and your engine pollutes normally as well.I didn't think people would be this shitty, but here we are.
by stavros
5/15/2026 at 11:20:39 PM
A nasty combo of sadism and tribalism and stupidity.by UltraSane
5/15/2026 at 10:16:33 PM
Chest-thumpingby curt15
5/17/2026 at 10:23:40 PM
Can you provide a citation on this? Sounds like worthless conjecture.Please provide a arXiv claim to back up your post or delete it from HN.
by llm_nerd
5/16/2026 at 4:43:39 AM
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!”
by pembrook
5/21/2026 at 4:57:13 AM
I have had people tell me to my face that they try to run cyclists off the road. You know, just casual attempted murder.That's what people have told me. You are seriously underestimating how much some people hate cyclists.
by array_key_first
5/16/2026 at 5:08:29 AM
Happens to me every time the car rental place gives me a hybrid.by pigeons
5/18/2026 at 3:05:55 AM
I see people rolling coal every day of my life here in North Texas. Often multiple different people on a 20+ minute drive.by vel0city
5/15/2026 at 8:24:13 PM
... 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.
by rsync
5/15/2026 at 10:30:21 PM
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...by ChoGGi
5/16/2026 at 5:26:11 AM
I’ve never seen it in Australia. Rarely you see a rusted out shitbox with bad emissions but I’ve never seen a new vehicle modified like this.by Gigachad
5/15/2026 at 10:12:58 PM
What on earth? I can't understand USA at all..by fsniper
5/17/2026 at 4:28:25 AM
We Americans can't understand ourselves either.by benchloftbrunch
5/15/2026 at 11:08:15 PM
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.
by hedora
5/16/2026 at 7:50:35 AM
> Demand that your local government installs PM 2.5 / 10 monitors on each of their spy camsYou don't need that. You can just take a picture of a car with black smoke coming out of the exhaust.
by ErroneousBosh
5/16/2026 at 6:06:30 AM
>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
by Barbing
5/16/2026 at 12:02:54 PM
Make a law that fines coal rollers heavily, gets their car seized, their driver’s license revoked for life — all for the first offense. Give cops bonuses for the most coal rollers caught, allow them to power trip as much as they like, and I guarantee that a full-on hunting season will open.by WesolyKubeczek
5/15/2026 at 9:20:29 PM
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.
by KennyBlanken
5/16/2026 at 10:43:52 AM
This admin caring about the environment and emissions control should be ringing alarm bells and raising red flags.by fakedang
5/16/2026 at 8:13:55 AM
Had too google "rolling coal".That is insane.
by internet_points
5/15/2026 at 9:45:22 PM
> 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".
by kube-system
5/16/2026 at 3:17:01 AM
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.by hilariously
5/17/2026 at 4:26:40 PM
I mean it technically is. But clearly the cops don’t see need to charge it.by kube-system
5/15/2026 at 8:06:56 PM
They are probably owned by off duty policeby wahnfrieden
5/15/2026 at 6:48:19 PM
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.
by legitster
5/15/2026 at 7:11:31 PM
> 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.
by rootusrootus
5/15/2026 at 7:24:52 PM
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".
by cogman10
5/15/2026 at 10:03:13 PM
> environmental protections is one of the weaker aspectsThat 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.
by rootusrootus
5/15/2026 at 11:17:21 PM
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.
by hedora
5/16/2026 at 12:18:03 AM
> Traditional Libertarians: No organization (government or otherwise) should be large enough or powerful enough to infringe on anyone's liberties.But how?
by triceratops
5/17/2026 at 11:21:10 PM
One easy way: Limit the size of organizations + governments, and ban border control. Don't like San Francisco? Move to LA or Sac, and you get a completely different government.Don't like Meta or Fox News? No worries, they would have been broken up at 1% their current size.
by hedora
5/18/2026 at 3:08:48 AM
But one or two people and petty cash can be enough to infringe on the rights of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people.by vel0city
5/19/2026 at 5:09:41 PM
That's 3-7 orders of magnitude less than what the current resident of the white house has achieved, depending on how you count.Also, in your scenario, a half dozen or so people could probably take care of the one or two problematic people. There's also a lot of common law around what "cannot infringe on others rights" means, going back 100's of years. My right to infringe on your rights is not included in the set of rights that phrases like that refer to.
by hedora
5/19/2026 at 5:15:32 PM
> That's 3-7 orders of magnitude less than what the current resident of the white house has achieved, depending on how you count.I agree with this.
However, the standard was:
> No organization (government or otherwise) should be large enough or powerful enough to infringe on anyone's liberties
No organization should be big enough to trample on anyone's rights.
You said that's an easy standard to meet. Seems downright impossible to me.
> a half dozen or so people could probably take care of the one or two problematic people
Cool, vigilante justice.
by vel0city
5/15/2026 at 8:23:55 PM
(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".
by JoshTriplett
5/15/2026 at 8:39:15 PM
> (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).
by cogman10
5/15/2026 at 8:52:46 PM
> 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.)
by JoshTriplett
5/15/2026 at 9:06:04 PM
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.
by cogman10
5/15/2026 at 9:29:44 PM
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.by JoshTriplett
5/15/2026 at 11:12:45 PM
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).by iamnothere
5/16/2026 at 12:23:53 AM
Left libertarians, while they exist, are definitely a minority opinion.But I'd say that they also don't have a good solution to this problem as it requires more centralized enforcement to really make a difference. A tribal council shunning the polluter or even ejecting them from the community isn't likely to result in them stopping their behavior. Not unless a huge portion of the world adopts that government (which is unlikely).
by cogman10
5/16/2026 at 2:13:04 AM
Minarchists (both left and right), Georgists (“geolibertarians”), and centrist Niskanen “liberaltarians” are often given a libertarian label, and none are strictly opposed to a degree of government intervention to defend fundamental rights including the preservation of natural resources. It’s often agreed among these groups that common resources (like clean air and large bodies of water) should be defended against spoilage, as nobody can “own” these resources.With the exception of the Niskanen group, it’s true that none of these groups have much of an effect on policy in recent decades, but I’d argue that’s more of a consequence of our governmental structure shutting out those with libertarian views except when it’s in the service of increasing the wealth of the already wealthy.
There’s a large segment of the population that desires less control/intervention imposed on the Everyman, versus the Randian view that centers on freedom of action for wealthy industrialists. You can see this group present in any discussion about Flock, or digital ID, or age verification. Or problems related to copyright (an artificial government-granted monopoly). These people just aren’t well-organized and don’t have any political power. Their only representation comes from mavericks like Massie and Wyden, who often get marginalized by their parties, or outsider influencers like Louis Rossman.
The group I just mentioned (libertarian populists, perhaps?) is less likely to care about regulations on big intangible things like corporations, large-scale economic activity, or highways, and more likely to care about regulations that affect average individuals, very small businesses (especially self-employed or contractors), or small groups like hobbyists. They see many regulations as benefiting key Red or Blue donor groups at their expense, and it’s often hard to argue with that!
by iamnothere
5/15/2026 at 9:13:35 PM
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?
by KennyBlanken
5/15/2026 at 11:03:23 PM
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?
by pattrn
5/15/2026 at 10:08:25 PM
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...
by rootusrootus
5/15/2026 at 9:32:00 PM
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.by andrepd
5/15/2026 at 7:31:52 PM
Guy tries to drive courtously around you and this is how you take it? You're unhinged.by redsocksfan45
5/15/2026 at 9:06:36 PM
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.by rectang
5/15/2026 at 11:10:14 PM
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.by pattrn
5/15/2026 at 11:44:25 PM
That's possible, and I hedged a bit with an "if I understand correctly" because it was unclear to me how reliable the "coal roller" assessment was.But if the bike rider's judgement was mistaken, the only consequence seems to have been that a driver of a diesel truck had ill wished upon them from afar. There's no mention of the truck getting reported to the police, and I speculate that the bike rider, as someone capable of recognizing the truck driver's good intent, might be cautious about escalating.
Nevertheless I'm sure that there will be those who continue to see the bike rider as an "unhinged" monster.
by rectang
5/18/2026 at 3:11:11 AM
> Is there some way of knowing a truck is set up to "roll coal"?The vehicle is modified considerably from its stock configurations. Its plainly evident to see based on the very public improper function of the emissions of the vehicle.
by vel0city
5/15/2026 at 9:12:48 PM
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.by IncreasePosts
5/15/2026 at 9:37:08 PM
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 switchby californical
5/15/2026 at 10:34:02 PM
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.by ChoGGi
5/15/2026 at 8:01:43 PM
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.
by lovich
5/15/2026 at 9:59:42 PM
Even the so-called experts on climate change, like Bill Gates, have given up on it.by jazz9k
5/16/2026 at 4:12:52 AM
[flagged]by lovich
5/15/2026 at 6:37:49 PM
> Sounds to me they're saying they don't have this already, but why is this investigation happening in the first place then?They probably have tons of data and testimony from witnesses who use the product illegally. You can find hundreds of threads online of people telling you how to defeat emissions controls using their products.
The case prosecutors want to make is that EZ Lynk knowingly enables this behavior. If they can show that the majority of users are committing crimes with the app, that's a much stronger case than just rounding up a handful of witnesses.
by legitster
5/15/2026 at 7:18:25 PM
> If they can show that the majority of users are committing crimes with the app, that's a much stronger case than just rounding up a handful of witnesses.I still don't understand why this should even be relevant in cases like this. The thing is basically a generic OBD dongle, right? The same thing every DIY and shade tree mechanic uses to read codes and run service procedures.
Suppose 20,000 people buy it and use it for defeating emissions. Some other number of people buy it for the normal thing. Why does it matter at all whether the other number is 50 or 50 million? Those are the people who aren't relevant. Should the OEM be in trouble if some unrelated third party happens to write the emissions defeat code to require their dongle in particular so they have a high proportion of customers using it for that? Should they get away with promoting it for that if they're a huge company with lots of sales to people not using it for that? None of that should matter. The seller doesn't even control what the users are doing with it, nor should they.
If there is a law against advertising it for defeating emissions then prosecute them for the advertising. That's their crime, what the customers do is third party action.
by AnthonyMouse
5/15/2026 at 7:48:38 PM
> I still don't understand why this should even be relevant in cases like this. The thing is basically a generic OBD dongle, right? The same thing every DIY and shade tree mechanic uses to read codes and run service procedures.The difference is this company provides a bunch of cloud services to roll out specific tunes at scale.
From the original filing:
> "EZ Lynk worked with/previewed the EZ Lynk System for at least two delete tune creators during development and before launching the EZ Lynk System. Those creators later disseminated delete tunes using the EZ Lynk System. There were numerous social media websites, including the “EZ Lynk Forum,” where third parties discussed using the EZ Lynk System to defeat emission controls. The Forum was run by EZ Lynk and one of the delete tune creators EZ Lynk worked with during development, and it provided contact information for EZ Lynk technical support. EZ Lynk representatives interacted with posts and videos about deleting emission controls and installing delete tunes, including tunes from one of the delete tune creators EZ Lynk worked with during development."
So it does seem like the DOJ is going after them for collaborating on developing and enabling the tunes. I suspect the subpoena is about establishing damages.
by legitster
5/15/2026 at 9:03:10 PM
That doesn't address the issue at all. Why should the damages depend on what third parties do?On top of that, wow, if you're familiar with how humans think and how prosecutors write indictments, that's some weak sauce. Look at this:
> EZ Lynk worked with/previewed the EZ Lynk System for at least two delete tune creators during development and before launching the EZ Lynk System. Those creators later disseminated delete tunes using the EZ Lynk System.
They worked with some developers. No claim that they knew what the developers were planning to produce at the time. Later the same developers published something alleged to be illegal.
> There were numerous social media websites, including the “EZ Lynk Forum,” where third parties discussed using the EZ Lynk System to defeat emission controls. The Forum was run by EZ Lynk and one of the delete tune creators EZ Lynk worked with during development, and it provided contact information for EZ Lynk technical support.
Users posted things on social media. There was a thing called "EZ Lynk Forum" that wasn't even entirely controlled by the company and from what I can tell was actually a Facebook group. The group listed the (presumably publicly known) contact info for their tech support.
> EZ Lynk representatives interacted with posts and videos about deleting emission controls and installing delete tunes, including tunes from one of the delete tune creators EZ Lynk worked with during development.
"Interacted with" as in the company's peons weren't lawyers, so their PR flacks liked posts praising the company and their tech support answered tech support questions, without paying attention to whether the user was doing something they weren't supposed to.
This is looking increasingly like a farce. That kind of stuff is vapid. If a user has a tech support question and mentioning that they want to defeat emissions means the company refuses to answer it then the user just comes back later or with a different account and asks the same question without mentioning their use case, right?
These kinds of prosecutions are the worst. It's punishing a company for saying the wrong things, i.e. having insufficiently aggressive lawyers, even if it has no real effect on what they do. It's a trap for the unwary and a bludgeon against companies insufficiently bureaucratic to have all their employees trained in corporate censorship practices.
by AnthonyMouse
5/20/2026 at 5:17:52 PM
Your attempts at dismissals of supporting points don't hold up. The company was enabling illegal behavior, knowingly. It would be like if Cox was helping people use the pirate bay.by JCattheATM
5/15/2026 at 8:38:15 PM
Why are they subpoenaing Apple and Google for this information instead of EZ Lynk for their own records of distribution?by Bjartr
5/15/2026 at 7:39:48 PM
> The same thing every DIY and shade tree mechanic uses to read codes and run service procedures.Now you have me wondering if this is their real target, to go after people who are defeating CRM on their vehicles so they can repair them themselves or in their small mom-and-pop garage of choice. But right to repair is popular, so they have to claim it's for something else.
by corywadd
5/15/2026 at 7:21:12 PM
> EZ Lynk knowingly enables this behavior.idk, knife makers are knowingly enabling knife attacks. If there's at least one EZLynk customer who isn't breaking a law then it seems to me the company is in the clear. I would use a gun analogy but, in the US, guns have constitutional protection.
by chasd00
5/15/2026 at 7:37:21 PM
I think the difference is that a knife is more or less used for what the manufacturer advertises it for.Something similar has happened with gun manufacturers regularly. It's relatively easy to make a semi-automatic user-convertible into an automatic weapon. But selling your rifle with instructions like "we absolutely DO NOT RECOMMEND cutting this specific notch off of the trigger group with a hacksaw BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE ILLEGAL" has not been appreciated by the ATF or our court system.
by legitster
5/15/2026 at 10:13:12 PM
> The case prosecutors want to make is that EZ Lynk knowingly enables this behavior.We have decades of legal precedent saying that the makers of products with substantial legal uses should not be held responsible for the illegal actions of some of their customers.
Most recently, we have the Supreme Court ruling that ISPs are not liable for customers who use their internet connection for copyright infringement.
by GeekyBear
5/15/2026 at 6:53:33 PM
Then they don’t need to unmask users to get testimony, right?by JoBrad
5/15/2026 at 5:54:54 PM
Why stop there? Why not request the PII of every person who could have plausibly downloaded the app at any point in time?by seemaze
5/15/2026 at 6:53:20 PM
https://dictionary.justia.com/overbroadby lern_too_spel
5/15/2026 at 6:00:38 PM
It's the only way to be sure. Also, think of the children.by khazhoux
5/15/2026 at 7:12:19 PM
My guess: they want to make the case that illegitimate use cases are indeed the primary use case. Their approach is to randomly sample all users and show that the vast majority use it to defeat emissions, undermining the app maker’s defence.I don’t think that justifies the overreach. As you said, if they don’t have a case already, they shouldn’t be allowed to violate user privacy on speculation that some statistical evidence might hypothetically fall out of the data. But the legal system may disagree.
by computomatic
5/15/2026 at 7:41:32 PM
I suspect there is a bit of parallel construction going onThey might already know for a fact that illegitimate use cases are the primary use case, they just cannot use any of their evidence in court
So they are seeking a way to legally obtain the information they already have, basically
It's shady but my understanding is it happens kind of a lot in modern policing. They can get illegal information much easier than legal information. So the illegal information sort of forms the justification for the time and money spent pursuing and gathering the same information legally
by bluefirebrand
5/15/2026 at 7:52:03 PM
I wonder if they will use this case (depending on how it turns out), for a case against 3d printers."You knowingly enabled $XYZ", etc.
Or AI companies, for that matter...
by esseph
5/15/2026 at 8:07:28 PM
The supreme court struck that down for the Sony case. It was determined that since ISPs do not offer a service that is used specifically to break the law, they are not liable when their customers do. It would be the same argument here. the app is literally just an ODB tool, like many others on the market.by tencentshill
5/15/2026 at 6:24:06 PM
If you've ever seen any body cam footage on YouTube I'd wager that about half of them have a moment where the cop is asking someone for information they're not legally required to provide, and it's framed as "I have to investigate." The smart ones reply with some flavor of "ok, I'm not required to help you investigate."This seems like a much more invasive, much more expensive version of that. "We have [potentially spurious] evidence that this application is used in way we deem a Bad Thing. We need to violate the privacy of this company and thousands of individuals to gather evidence that we should be required to get before bringing this suit in the first place, but we're the government so we don't have to do that."
by pc86
5/15/2026 at 6:31:31 PM
Next up: expect the same treatment if you've ever downloaded a .gguf from HuggingFace.by CamperBob2
5/15/2026 at 6:37:16 PM
I've learned never to believe the reasoning provided in DOJ filings. Realize it is written as a calculated manipulative tool to get a particular result. Whether they want it for the purpose stated is almost immaterial. The only thing you can really glean is they want the result is of whatever they're asking for, but no one knows if it is for the reason they state.by mothballed
5/15/2026 at 9:26:49 PM
Cynical hat: they think they can use this case to establish precedent to later compel unmasking a different set of users.by hack1312
5/15/2026 at 11:06:56 PM
That’s fine. We’re also going to need a list of every user who bought a <name gun accessory here> as well.by LastTrain
5/16/2026 at 4:06:01 PM
Testing the fences... if they can get away with access to all the dataz, why settle for some of the dataz...by wutwutwat
5/15/2026 at 8:36:12 PM
It's called "parallel construction".by nurple
5/15/2026 at 11:31:23 PM
> Why start this whole thingIt's a pretext for when they want to force companies to reveal the names of their political enemies down the road. I'm certain of it.
Why I think so: The rinky-dink panel that Trump formed to address "christian persecution" recommended that the IRS go after pastors who break tax laws by preaching from the pulpit. Sound counterintuitive? It's a pretext to generate cause for a lawsuit that would be challenged right up to the supreme court (the institution does not deserve the respect of being treated as a proper noun at this point). They want to overturn The Johnson Amendment[0] and they have the right justices installed to achieve it.
Nothing these crooks and liars do is for the benefit of anyone but themselves and their cronies. They are open grifters and proven liars. They aim to remake the country into a christian nationalist fascist state.
by alsetmusic
5/15/2026 at 6:33:52 PM
The DOJ first sued EZ Lynk in 2021, accusing the Cayman Islands-based company of violating the Clean Air Act by marketing and selling “defeat devices.” These tools allegedly allow users to bypass factory emissions controls on diesel vehicles, primarily through the EZ Lynk Auto Agent app paired with an onboard diagnostic (OBD) hardware dongle.
That's not a a valid argument. That's just an opinion.
The DOJ obtained a lawful subpoena through the legal system to request this information. The legal case is against EZ Lynk and by interviewing users (how will they know who to interview if they can't get the data? duh!) they can build their case against EZ Lynk and their product if the main usage is violating the Clean Air Act.
How else would the DOJ obtain evidence if they don't know who is buying the product?
by ericmay
5/15/2026 at 6:37:40 PM
> (how will they know who to interview if they can't get the data? duh!)What I don't understand is how they know someone has to be interviewed, but they don't already know who, which makes me question how the investigation got started in the first place?
> How else would the DOJ obtain evidence if they don't know who is buying the product?
The question is, how did the investigation got started, unless they already can see that people are misusing the product? And since they obviously must be able to see that people are misusing it, why don't they instead obtain evidence about those specific users, that they must have observed already?
by embedding-shape
5/15/2026 at 6:50:50 PM
Lawful evidence gathering doesn’t require you to know the answer to every question you want to ask someone up front. Nothing would ever get solved if investigators couldn’t act on the perfectly logical conclusion that the suspect must have talked to SOMEONE to get this part of the crime done, and this SOMEONE ELSE knows who that was.The balance is in tailoring the access that the investigators have to the SOMEONE ELSE. They have to convincingly demonstrate the connection between the questions they want to ask the third party and their ability to legally use that evidence to further their case.
It’s like saying the cops can’t subpoena the taxi dispatcher because the suspect only ever talked with the driver.
by dcrazy
5/15/2026 at 6:46:23 PM
The case is against EZLynk, not the folks using the product.> The question is, how did the investigation got started, unless they already can see that people are misusing the product? And since they obviously must be able to see that people are misusing it, why don't they instead obtain evidence about those specific users, that they must have observed already?
Well you'd have to get into the legal case for the specifics, but I don't think this is an accurate assumption to make. They can just see the product "on the shelf", test it for themselves, realize it can be used to violate the Clean Air Act, and then request the ability to talk to the consumers of the product to see how they use the product or if they've used it to violate the Clean Air Act. You don't have to engage with a specific person at all.
How else do you get what might be illegal products off the shelves? Perhaps the users primarily use it for other purposes and the interviews bear that out? That would inform the DOJ and the court on the merits of the case.
by ericmay
5/15/2026 at 8:11:03 PM
> How else do you get what might be illegal products off the shelves?Your premise is that there is a difference in the product.
The product is a piece of hardware that connects your phone/laptop to the car's computer. Are you using it to program the computer to bleed the brakes, or are you using it to program the computer to defeat emissions tests? It's the same hardware dongle either way. A roll of duct tape isn't a different product when it's being used in the commission of a crime.
You can try to prosecute companies that actually ship the thing with software to defeat emissions, but that doesn't really do any good. People would just get the generic hardware from the store and the defeat software from anonymous third parties over the internet.
If you actually want to stop it, try one of these: The old style emissions tests, where they put the car on a dyno with an exhaust probe, have been mostly phased out because the equipment is a lot more expensive. Keep some of it around. Then when someone goes in for their emissions test, roll a D20 and if they get a 1 their vehicle is taking a trip to the full service facility and if the exhaust probe says something different than the car's computer their car gets a free forensic analysis to check for a defeat device. Finding one means jail time.
by AnthonyMouse
5/15/2026 at 9:13:25 PM
Your understanding about how this works is incorrect, I think that's the problem.If a product being sold is primarily being used for a purpose which violates the law and does not otherwise have fair usage the government can and has pursued and won legal cases resulting in the product being banned. That is no different here. The reason for interviewing consumers is to help determine what the product is being used for to help inform the legal case. It may turn out that it's primarily used for fair usage or "practical" purposes which don't violate the law and the DOJ may drop their case. It may turn out everyone is using these to violate the Clean Air Act in which case it will likely and should be banned.
> A roll of duct tape isn't a different product when it's being used in the commission of a crime.
If the vast majority of the time the roll of duct tape was used in the commission of a crime, it absolutely could and likely would be banned.
by ericmay
5/15/2026 at 9:21:56 PM
> If the vast majority of the time the roll of duct tape was used in the commission of a crime, it absolutely could and likely would be banned.Which continues to be an absurd premise. So if the original use case for duct tape was kidnappings then it should be forever banned because a sample taken at that time had that statistical distribution, and thereafter no other uses can be adopted because it's banned?
It seems a lot more reasonable to prosecute kidnappers rather than the makers of generic tools.
by AnthonyMouse
5/16/2026 at 4:44:41 PM
> It seems a lot more reasonable to prosecute kidnappers rather than the makers of generic tools.As someone who is pro 2nd-Amendment (but not pro-gun) I of course appreciate this argument.
There are certainly gray areas. The most immediate example that comes to mind are bongs or other items used for smoking pot (maybe other things? I'm not too sure). Ultimately it comes down to what the government and regulators think, what they can argue in court, and so forth. And if the people don't like it, they can take democratic political action.
by ericmay
5/16/2026 at 12:07:50 AM
> If the vast majority of the time the roll of duct tape was used in the commission of a crime, it absolutely could and likely would be banned.This is the same argument they use in the UK to ban things like long knives or realistic airsoft guns. We don’t really do that here in the US. Activists often try, but eventually the laws get struck down.
by iamnothere
5/16/2026 at 4:40:25 PM
I'm not entirely familiar with the arguments used by the UK, but in the US neither long knives or realistic airsoft guns are used for wide scale law-breaking. That would probably be the key difference.by ericmay
5/15/2026 at 6:42:40 PM
It's worth pointing out that EZ Lynk is a sleezy company that originally tried to hide behind a Section 230 protection (lol).Their more recent legal defense of the product was throwing their own users under the bus: "we can't control if our customers are using the product to break laws". So they are the ones who framed all of the customers as potential criminals.
by legitster