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Is it even legal in USA? In EU, that would make your card road illegal instantly.

by kbart 10y ago

omegaham 10y ago
Depends on the state. Some states do emissions testing that fails such people, and officers are on the lookout for vehicles that are visibly violating the standard. Other states are indifferent as long as you aren't assaulting others with it. Obviously, seeing as how they're doing it for attention, it's very unlikely that someone would roll coal with the intention of not blasting someone with soot.
mikeash 10y ago
It's not legal. Even in states without emissions controls, you're still violating federal EPA regulations. But the feds have much bigger fish to fry and don't care to enforce stuff against individual car owners.
Grishnakh 10y ago
No, it's not legal, but AFAICT it's usually activated with a switch, not always-on, so the cops would have to actually catch them in the act. Also, this kind of thing is surely almost always done in areas where there's no emissions testing (such as the South), so it's just not that easy to catch violators.
Zak 10y ago
A police officer once told me his favorite traffic ticket to write was "excessive visible emission". I've noticed a difference in the approach to enforcement of many minor regulations between the US and Germany, where I've spend a considerable amount of time. In the US, it's common for things like vehicle emissions and safety to be subject to many regulations, but only checked if somebody complains or the police happen to notice. In Germany, cars are regularly subjected to fairly strict inspections. So people in the US do a lot of things with their cars that aren't technically legal. For the most part, this doesn't seem to be a major safety issue. In an analysis by the Department of Transportation[0], 4.9% of crashes were found to involve a tire/wheel deficiency and 1.9% involved some other vehicle deficiency. Tire pressure monitoring recently became mandatory on new cars sold in the US, which should have a significant impact on the most common maintenance issue. It's likely that a comprehensive vehicle inspection program would not have a particularly good cost/benefit ratio relative to, for example improving traffic flow and signaling at intersections. 36.2% of crashes involved intersections. [0] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811059 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

Is it even legal in USA? In EU, that would make your card road illegal instantly.

by kbart 10y ago

Is it even legal in USA? In EU, that would make your card road illegal instantly.

Depends on the state. Some states do emissions testing that fails such people, and officers are on the lookout for vehicles that are visibly violating the standard. Other states are indifferent as long as you aren't assaulting others with it. Obviously, seeing as how they're doing it for attention, it's very unlikely that someone would roll coal with the intention of not blasting someone with soot.

mikeash 10y ago

It's not legal. Even in states without emissions controls, you're still violating federal EPA regulations. But the feds have much bigger fish to fry and don't care to enforce stuff against individual car owners.

Grishnakh 10y ago

No, it's not legal, but AFAICT it's usually activated with a switch, not always-on, so the cops would have to actually catch them in the act. Also, this kind of thing is surely almost always done in areas where there's no emissions testing (such as the South), so it's just not that easy to catch violators.

Zak 10y ago

A police officer once told me his favorite traffic ticket to write was "excessive visible emission". I've noticed a difference in the approach to enforcement of many minor regulations between the US and Germany, where I've spend a considerable amount of time. In the US, it's common for things like vehicle emissions and safety to be subject to many regulations, but only checked if somebody complains or the police happen to notice. In Germany, cars are regularly subjected to fairly strict inspections. So people in the US do a lot of things with their cars that aren't technically legal. For the most part, this doesn't seem to be a major safety issue. In an analysis by the Department of Transportation[0], 4.9% of crashes were found to involve a tire/wheel deficiency and 1.9% involved some other vehicle deficiency. Tire pressure monitoring recently became mandatory on new cars sold in the US, which should have a significant impact on the most common maintenance issue. It's likely that a comprehensive vehicle inspection program would not have a particularly good cost/benefit ratio relative to, for example improving traffic flow and signaling at intersections. 36.2% of crashes involved intersections. [0] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811059 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...