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>For the people in this thread worried about violence against the reporter, I think it much more likely that drivers will simply get the message and turn off th

>For the people in this thread worried about violence against the reporter, I think it much more likely that drivers will simply get the message and turn off their damn engines. You obviously haven't tried to ask a delivery driver in NYC why their truck is running... I have done it several times in the east village, and got nasty looks and angry responses every time. I wasn't even recording or anything, just walked out of my door and said "hey man, any reason you have to run your truck right now?" And I'm also a 6 foot, not-skinny, guy.

tjr225 5y ago
I drive a 30 y/o diesel van and if I don’t warm it up for a while in the morning it runs like shit/dies. I had to explain this to a lady while I was loading it up for volunteer food delivery once. Probably doesn’t apply to most vehicles though.
- tebbers 5y ago
  How is that the lady’s problem that you’ve chosen to run something so disgustingly polluting with a disregard for her health?
  - kortilla 5y ago
    Maybe her health isn’t actually impacted and she’s just ignorant?
    - ehnto 5y ago
      It's pretty well established that diesel motors produce PM2.5 particles that are damaging to humans, if it's a 30 year old unit it's probably pumping it out in good quantities with little restriction. PM2.5 particulate from a diesel motor starts to irritate the lungs and eyes pretty quickly. We've always given a pass to cars for the unpleasantness they bring into a city because we figure there's no alternative, that's just how the city runs. But there are alternatives now, and people are getting fed up with the noise, smells and pollution. Even without the very well document health affects, cars are just shitty to be around when you're not inside one yourself, I think it's fair that we'd rather not deal with them when on foot or in your own home when possible.
      - adrianN 5y ago
        If it's sufficiently old it probably doesn't produce as much PM2.5. Very old engines tend to produce larger particles. There was an unfortunate period in the development of diesel engines where the engine burnt the fuel well enough to produce very small particles and high amounts of NOx but before filters were mandatory. Of course the old engines will in put out a lot more hydrocarbon pollution which is not particularly healthy either.
        ehnto 5y ago
        That's true, and if I'm not mistaken the increase in PM2.5 particles produced is due to the emissions requirement to reduce NOx output. Balancing two negatives in a way.
        adrianN 5y ago
        That is my understanding also. There is a tradeoff between very complete combustion in a lean mixture under high pressure that produces few particulates but lots of NOx and running a rich mixture at lower temperature that produces less NOx and more particulates. Fortunately modern engines have filters both for NOx and particulates, so that neither is really a problem. At least once the car has warmed up, which in cold climates and city driving can be roughly never...
    - kixiQu 5y ago
      Let's all try to be a little less ignorant, starting with how diesel exhaust can affect everyone's health, dose-dependent: https://oehha.ca.gov/air/health-effects-diesel-exhaust https://oehha.ca.gov/air/health-effects-diesel-exhaust https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/diesel-exhaust-and-cancer.html https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/diesel-exhaust-a...
  - tjr225 5y ago
    Its not my fault she parked behind me.
- ashwagary 5y ago
  Driving a vehicle with a cold engine (without a warm up idling period) will eventually destroy the engine.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    That's not really true for modern vehicles. They handle it a lot better. Many are also designed to turn on and off constantly at stop lights, so they're designed to properly handle temperature and lubrication during the start/stop cycles. If you're in a particularly cold winter you might benefit from it but really that's a judgement call. If you live somewhere mostly above freezing and drive a modern car, you're probably good to drive from the moment you start the car. Unless you're about to go full throttle on a racetrack, should be fine. I warm up my 96 Nissan before driving, but I just go easy for the first 5 minutes in the 2010 Nissan.
    - paulmd 5y ago
      > Many are also designed to turn on and off constantly at stop lights, so they're designed to properly handle temperature and lubrication during the start/stop cycles. Many late 00's engines were also designed to turn off cylinders to improve engine efficiency, but that turned out not to be implemented very well and engines died from carbon fouling. Big problem with Honda in particular iirc, and people would routinely bypass it to save their engines. Automakers have to comply with CAFE standards and other mandates, but at the end of the day there's no mandate that an engine made with gen-1 technologies will make it to 300k miles either. Automakers don't really care if your engine dies in 10 years or not, they've put out lemons before and they will do it again. Early CVTs failed at extremely high rates/short lifetimes, for example, and early OAT coolants like Dexcool were notorious for eating up every seal inside an engine. Early high-compression diesels had about a decade of their fuel injectors being eaten away by the abrasive sulfur before the ultra-low-sulfur highway diesel changeover. These technologies are of course completely normalized and trustworthy today, but that's not much consolation if you're the one paying the repair bills on a gen-1 lemon. For some reason "don't upgrade to a v0.0 release of a new major version of iOS" is common knowledge here but nobody wants to apply that same logic to cars. The general public gets it though. Now that cars have got 10 years of stop-n-start under their belt it's probably more reliable but still, it's a challenging design criteria for an engine. Not saying diesel fumes aren't a problem either, mind... we probably need to go electric in the long run. But at the same time, on the level of personal self-interest... it's probably better for your engine to not start and stop constantly. It's just bad when everyone is idling because they don't want to start and stop. Tragedy of the commons.
- fennecs 5y ago
  Why do you drive a 30 year old van?
  - refurb 5y ago
    Want to buy them a new one? I'm sure they'd be happy to accept it.
  - ls15 5y ago
    As far as I know, it is more environmentally friendly to drive an old car until it falls apart than producing a new one that has a better eco balance while driving.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      I remember from the "Cash for Clunkers" debacle, it was pointed out that scrapping an older car for a newer fuel efficient one took 20,000 miles driven on the new one to break even in emissions. (Manufacturing a new car releases lots of CO2.)
      - tinco 5y ago
        Your wording makes it a bit unclear, just for clarity: this means that GP is wrong, it's definitely better for the climate to have your old car crushed and buy a new car. The amount of CO2 expended during manufacturing of your car is not significant on the lifetime of the car. If it's really just 20,000 miles then frankly it might even be one of the most effective ways to turn your dollars into reduced CO2 expenditure.
        jtc331 5y ago
        This is where a hyper focus on solely CO2 emissions is likely harmful. One also needs to consider the environmental impacts of mining for all the raw materials, for example, for that new car.
        5y ago
darkteflon 5y ago
Sure, it’s not an ideal solution. If we had any sense, we would ban diesel and gasoline vehicles from our cities and subsidise their replacement with zero emissions vehicles. Combusting hydrocarbons have no place alongside our kids. People will look back on us in 50 years and laugh at how stupid we were. Until then, we need people to do what they can. We’re talking about commercial vehicles - either the owner will bear the cost, and make it clear to employees not to do it, or they won’t, and people will learn quick smart to turn off their engine anyway. In 95% of cases, people aren’t doing it with the intention of being anti-social - they’re just not aware of it. This sort of enforcement scheme is the kind of thing that changes cultures, starting with polluting corporates.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  In 50 years? I've been looking back at humans since I was born and thinking there is not much to be proud of. We made the planet a worse place for every other species expect maybe cats and dogs.
  - rythmshifter03 5y ago
    This is utter nonsense. Quality of life has improved in so many ways you must have simply not even bothered to check. I need to stop commenting late at night.
    - CodeShmode 5y ago
      "For every other species"
- kkfx 5y ago
  Try a small game: how much car's there are in your city? How many kWh/day they need? Now try to interpolate at national level and just try finding an answer to: how can we recharge? IMVHO single family homes, in a certain (albeit large) part of the world, well placed, that can at least two car per adult head, might run on p.v. and so energy is not a problem, on scale such hypothetical society can meet their energy need most days and can use wind/hydro/nuclear for the others. However: - most cities, witch means most densely populated areas of the planet and where most peoples live, can't do that, simply there is no physical space. - we probably can't produce enough batteries, in natural resources terms, to substitute all ICE cars, and keep producing them when after just 5-8 years initial batteries are dead (we still do not have viable way to recycle). If you follow the press you've might have read things like: - https://www.motorious.com/articles/features-3/uk-eliminating-car-ownership https://www.motorious.com/articles/features-3/uk-eliminating... - https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vny5/glorified-electric-golf-carts-for-all https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vny5/glorified-electric-go... etc witch clearly depict a future of a divided society: a small minority living in modern homes, with p.v. et al. to meet their energy needs, e.v., perhaps flying ones (witch might be cheaper than keep up a big road network in the actual climate change state) and the rest confined in modern smart cities, closely similar to factories or prisons, oh something like: - https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s... - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/how-we-help-clients/capital-excellence/cities https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/how-w... - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/19/why-greeces-expensive-new-migrant-camps-are-outraging-ngos https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/19/why-greeces-ex... - https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/34827717.html https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/34827717.html etc. I honestly do not know what can be our (humans) options so far, BUT certainly I do not like decisions made by those who are actually responsible of our tragic evolution. Personally I quit a large modern city toward a served-enough mountains area, building a new modern home, with insulation, anything electrical, p.v. with lithium storage to power and backup, with various backups (nearby water source, water recuperation at home, emergency/for pleasure airtight wood stove enough for heating the house etc) and the above depicted future society might be even good for me: as long as I can get services (food, tools, meds etc) my own personal life is already, still remain if nothing of that happen and can remain if such evolution happen, better than before, but such new society can't last longer. No society where too large part of population are pushed toward India's caste-alike isolation between cohort of people can really last much, especially in modern times where we need enough smart people to keep out tech up.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Electric vehicles would completely get rid of this problem. I doubt we will be talking about this in 10 or 15 years, though I wish the transition would occur more quickly.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > Electric vehicles would completely get rid of this problem. If the truck is 'idling' with the electricity flowing from its batteries, the pollution and climate impact is just dislocated in space and time to the power plant when the truck is charging. If the truck is off, then there is no problem, but now ICE motors also can automatically turn off and on.
  - beachy 5y ago
    Eh? If an EV is idling then there's no "electricity flowing from its batteries".
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      What does "idling" mean for the EV? Also, people often idle in order to use power, such as for heat, AC, the refrigerator in the back, etc.
      - _nalply 5y ago
        When idling an internal combustion engine burns fuel just for not stopping. This needlessly wastes fuel, causes CO2 emissions, stinks and spreads unhealthy soot blackening lungs and walls of nearby people and houses. An EV engine just stands still. If people use power, they draw that from the battieres, however this energy is not wasted but employed for something useful.
        wolverine876 5y ago
        > an internal combustion engine burns fuel just for not stopping True, if it's idling, but many (most? all new?) ICEs now automatically stop when the car stops.
jkaplowitz 5y ago
I don't think NYC's method of reporting reveals the reporter's identity to the driver, and assuming the reporter observes discreetly, NYC is dense enough that the reporter could be any of far too many different people for the driver to reliably target any attempt at retaliation.

tjr225 5y ago

I drive a 30 y/o diesel van and if I don’t warm it up for a while in the morning it runs like shit/dies. I had to explain this to a lady while I was loading it up for volunteer food delivery once. Probably doesn’t apply to most vehicles though.

tebbers 5y ago
How is that the lady’s problem that you’ve chosen to run something so disgustingly polluting with a disregard for her health?
- kortilla 5y ago
  Maybe her health isn’t actually impacted and she’s just ignorant?
  - ehnto 5y ago
    It's pretty well established that diesel motors produce PM2.5 particles that are damaging to humans, if it's a 30 year old unit it's probably pumping it out in good quantities with little restriction. PM2.5 particulate from a diesel motor starts to irritate the lungs and eyes pretty quickly. We've always given a pass to cars for the unpleasantness they bring into a city because we figure there's no alternative, that's just how the city runs. But there are alternatives now, and people are getting fed up with the noise, smells and pollution. Even without the very well document health affects, cars are just shitty to be around when you're not inside one yourself, I think it's fair that we'd rather not deal with them when on foot or in your own home when possible.
    - adrianN 5y ago
      If it's sufficiently old it probably doesn't produce as much PM2.5. Very old engines tend to produce larger particles. There was an unfortunate period in the development of diesel engines where the engine burnt the fuel well enough to produce very small particles and high amounts of NOx but before filters were mandatory. Of course the old engines will in put out a lot more hydrocarbon pollution which is not particularly healthy either.
      - ehnto 5y ago
        That's true, and if I'm not mistaken the increase in PM2.5 particles produced is due to the emissions requirement to reduce NOx output. Balancing two negatives in a way.
        adrianN 5y ago
        That is my understanding also. There is a tradeoff between very complete combustion in a lean mixture under high pressure that produces few particulates but lots of NOx and running a rich mixture at lower temperature that produces less NOx and more particulates. Fortunately modern engines have filters both for NOx and particulates, so that neither is really a problem. At least once the car has warmed up, which in cold climates and city driving can be roughly never...
  - kixiQu 5y ago
    Let's all try to be a little less ignorant, starting with how diesel exhaust can affect everyone's health, dose-dependent: https://oehha.ca.gov/air/health-effects-diesel-exhaust https://oehha.ca.gov/air/health-effects-diesel-exhaust https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/diesel-exhaust-and-cancer.html https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/diesel-exhaust-a...
- tjr225 5y ago
  Its not my fault she parked behind me.
ashwagary 5y ago
Driving a vehicle with a cold engine (without a warm up idling period) will eventually destroy the engine.
- ehnto 5y ago
  That's not really true for modern vehicles. They handle it a lot better. Many are also designed to turn on and off constantly at stop lights, so they're designed to properly handle temperature and lubrication during the start/stop cycles. If you're in a particularly cold winter you might benefit from it but really that's a judgement call. If you live somewhere mostly above freezing and drive a modern car, you're probably good to drive from the moment you start the car. Unless you're about to go full throttle on a racetrack, should be fine. I warm up my 96 Nissan before driving, but I just go easy for the first 5 minutes in the 2010 Nissan.
  - paulmd 5y ago
    > Many are also designed to turn on and off constantly at stop lights, so they're designed to properly handle temperature and lubrication during the start/stop cycles. Many late 00's engines were also designed to turn off cylinders to improve engine efficiency, but that turned out not to be implemented very well and engines died from carbon fouling. Big problem with Honda in particular iirc, and people would routinely bypass it to save their engines. Automakers have to comply with CAFE standards and other mandates, but at the end of the day there's no mandate that an engine made with gen-1 technologies will make it to 300k miles either. Automakers don't really care if your engine dies in 10 years or not, they've put out lemons before and they will do it again. Early CVTs failed at extremely high rates/short lifetimes, for example, and early OAT coolants like Dexcool were notorious for eating up every seal inside an engine. Early high-compression diesels had about a decade of their fuel injectors being eaten away by the abrasive sulfur before the ultra-low-sulfur highway diesel changeover. These technologies are of course completely normalized and trustworthy today, but that's not much consolation if you're the one paying the repair bills on a gen-1 lemon. For some reason "don't upgrade to a v0.0 release of a new major version of iOS" is common knowledge here but nobody wants to apply that same logic to cars. The general public gets it though. Now that cars have got 10 years of stop-n-start under their belt it's probably more reliable but still, it's a challenging design criteria for an engine. Not saying diesel fumes aren't a problem either, mind... we probably need to go electric in the long run. But at the same time, on the level of personal self-interest... it's probably better for your engine to not start and stop constantly. It's just bad when everyone is idling because they don't want to start and stop. Tragedy of the commons.
fennecs 5y ago
Why do you drive a 30 year old van?
- refurb 5y ago
  Want to buy them a new one? I'm sure they'd be happy to accept it.
- ls15 5y ago
  As far as I know, it is more environmentally friendly to drive an old car until it falls apart than producing a new one that has a better eco balance while driving.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I remember from the "Cash for Clunkers" debacle, it was pointed out that scrapping an older car for a newer fuel efficient one took 20,000 miles driven on the new one to break even in emissions. (Manufacturing a new car releases lots of CO2.)
    - tinco 5y ago
      Your wording makes it a bit unclear, just for clarity: this means that GP is wrong, it's definitely better for the climate to have your old car crushed and buy a new car. The amount of CO2 expended during manufacturing of your car is not significant on the lifetime of the car. If it's really just 20,000 miles then frankly it might even be one of the most effective ways to turn your dollars into reduced CO2 expenditure.
      - jtc331 5y ago
        This is where a hyper focus on solely CO2 emissions is likely harmful. One also needs to consider the environmental impacts of mining for all the raw materials, for example, for that new car.
        5y ago

darkteflon 5y ago

Sure, it’s not an ideal solution. If we had any sense, we would ban diesel and gasoline vehicles from our cities and subsidise their replacement with zero emissions vehicles. Combusting hydrocarbons have no place alongside our kids. People will look back on us in 50 years and laugh at how stupid we were. Until then, we need people to do what they can. We’re talking about commercial vehicles - either the owner will bear the cost, and make it clear to employees not to do it, or they won’t, and people will learn quick smart to turn off their engine anyway. In 95% of cases, people aren’t doing it with the intention of being anti-social - they’re just not aware of it. This sort of enforcement scheme is the kind of thing that changes cultures, starting with polluting corporates.

peakaboo 5y ago
In 50 years? I've been looking back at humans since I was born and thinking there is not much to be proud of. We made the planet a worse place for every other species expect maybe cats and dogs.
- rythmshifter03 5y ago
  This is utter nonsense. Quality of life has improved in so many ways you must have simply not even bothered to check. I need to stop commenting late at night.
  - CodeShmode 5y ago
    "For every other species"
kkfx 5y ago
Try a small game: how much car's there are in your city? How many kWh/day they need? Now try to interpolate at national level and just try finding an answer to: how can we recharge? IMVHO single family homes, in a certain (albeit large) part of the world, well placed, that can at least two car per adult head, might run on p.v. and so energy is not a problem, on scale such hypothetical society can meet their energy need most days and can use wind/hydro/nuclear for the others. However: - most cities, witch means most densely populated areas of the planet and where most peoples live, can't do that, simply there is no physical space. - we probably can't produce enough batteries, in natural resources terms, to substitute all ICE cars, and keep producing them when after just 5-8 years initial batteries are dead (we still do not have viable way to recycle). If you follow the press you've might have read things like: - https://www.motorious.com/articles/features-3/uk-eliminating-car-ownership https://www.motorious.com/articles/features-3/uk-eliminating... - https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vny5/glorified-electric-golf-carts-for-all https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vny5/glorified-electric-go... etc witch clearly depict a future of a divided society: a small minority living in modern homes, with p.v. et al. to meet their energy needs, e.v., perhaps flying ones (witch might be cheaper than keep up a big road network in the actual climate change state) and the rest confined in modern smart cities, closely similar to factories or prisons, oh something like: - https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s... - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/how-we-help-clients/capital-excellence/cities https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/how-w... - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/19/why-greeces-expensive-new-migrant-camps-are-outraging-ngos https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/19/why-greeces-ex... - https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/34827717.html https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/34827717.html etc. I honestly do not know what can be our (humans) options so far, BUT certainly I do not like decisions made by those who are actually responsible of our tragic evolution. Personally I quit a large modern city toward a served-enough mountains area, building a new modern home, with insulation, anything electrical, p.v. with lithium storage to power and backup, with various backups (nearby water source, water recuperation at home, emergency/for pleasure airtight wood stove enough for heating the house etc) and the above depicted future society might be even good for me: as long as I can get services (food, tools, meds etc) my own personal life is already, still remain if nothing of that happen and can remain if such evolution happen, better than before, but such new society can't last longer. No society where too large part of population are pushed toward India's caste-alike isolation between cohort of people can really last much, especially in modern times where we need enough smart people to keep out tech up.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

Electric vehicles would completely get rid of this problem. I doubt we will be talking about this in 10 or 15 years, though I wish the transition would occur more quickly.

wolverine876 5y ago
> Electric vehicles would completely get rid of this problem. If the truck is 'idling' with the electricity flowing from its batteries, the pollution and climate impact is just dislocated in space and time to the power plant when the truck is charging. If the truck is off, then there is no problem, but now ICE motors also can automatically turn off and on.
- beachy 5y ago
  Eh? If an EV is idling then there's no "electricity flowing from its batteries".
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    What does "idling" mean for the EV? Also, people often idle in order to use power, such as for heat, AC, the refrigerator in the back, etc.
    - _nalply 5y ago
      When idling an internal combustion engine burns fuel just for not stopping. This needlessly wastes fuel, causes CO2 emissions, stinks and spreads unhealthy soot blackening lungs and walls of nearby people and houses. An EV engine just stands still. If people use power, they draw that from the battieres, however this energy is not wasted but employed for something useful.
      - wolverine876 5y ago
        > an internal combustion engine burns fuel just for not stopping True, if it's idling, but many (most? all new?) ICEs now automatically stop when the car stops.

jkaplowitz 5y ago

I don't think NYC's method of reporting reveals the reporter's identity to the driver, and assuming the reporter observes discreetly, NYC is dense enough that the reporter could be any of far too many different people for the driver to reliably target any attempt at retaliation.