Environmental concerns have led to many new discussions surrounding diesel fuels and their overall cleanliness. More specifically, “rolling coal” has come up as a debate.
New Jersey became the first state in the U.S. to ban the act of rolling coal, but Colorado isn’t far behind. The Colorado Independent reports a new anti-coal rolling bill has passed the both the state house and congress. Now, it moves on to be signed by the governor.
The bill has received bipartisan support to deter “the act of knowingly blowing black smoke through one or more exhaust pipes attached to a motor vehicle with a gross vehicle weight rating of 14,000 pounds or less in a manner that obstructs or obscures the view of another driver, a bicyclist, or a pedestrian.”
Of course, many owners of Chevrolet, Ford and Ram trucks are likely guilty of attempting to roll coal at least once.
After two failed attempts to pass an anti-coal rolling bill, rewording garnered additional support from Republicans. Some still believe it will be hard to prove intent, but supporters argued smog equipment would have to have been illegally modified to partake in coal rolling.
If the governor does sign the bill, rolling coal will become a class A traffic offense and warrant a $100 fine.
Comments
So stepping on the gas pedal will get yout a ticket even if you are not speeding
Truth – coal rollers also have gun racks. Men with jacked trucks, gun racks, and a need to fart black smoke in the face of non-truck folk, have a pretty OBVIOUS problem. Like Trump, they have small ‘hands’.
Me? I drive an FR-S. I’m 6’5″, 220lbs, I lived in Vietnam for 2 years, and I work out every day. I’m ready to meet a coal-roller. Today.
Post of the day!
I also don’t need to drive a ‘murican diesel truck to feel tall and strong, haha. Some “men” do though.
Stepping on the gas pedal on a modified vehicle designed to blow black smoke in the face of of a driver or car/truck you disapprove of – I think that’s what they’re getting at…
How about we make a law that keeps people from keeping track of what other people do with their personal items!
If you don’t want these trucks around you then stay away from them. It’s not like you can’t tell which tricks are set up to do this!
Why do we have to create a new law to protect a person that can solve the problem on his or her own!
If you see a truck like this go around or slow way down so you are not affected.
Just no
Why should I have to pass (most likely illegally) or slow down below the limit to accommodate someone who intently and dangerously impedes my ability to safely drive my car on a public road? How about the ones you find in youtube videos who intentionally wait for a Prius or Volt and rollcoal them? And how would one stay away from them? Trucks are everywhere, and most you’d never know until it’s too late. Get real.
When you stop worrying about what other people are doing with their personal items you might have a better life!
It’s not a safety issue, it’s a issue because you don’t like what they are doing. I bet if people were complaining about something you liked to do you would be to happy.
These trucks are easy to identify you just choose not to. You don’t want to do anything to solve your problem except find a soap box and scream at the top of your lungs so you can force somebody else to change. Because the idea of you changing is impossible.
So you could avoid this problem if you wanted to but you refuse to so just so you can prove a point!
Soap Box … like the one you’re standing on?
“If you don’t like them, stay away”
“Everybody knows what they look like”
“It’s up to you to drive around every truck you see”
“My truck and its black coal are my personal items, no more than a little phone in my pocket”
“People telling me I’m stupid in normal voice are in fact screaming drooling lefty loonies”
Your soapbox is so big I can’t see the top of it.
What it comes down to is that people like you don’t like what people do with their personal property and you feel you can make them change because it bothers you.
Here’s a idea if you stay away from these people and stop showing them attention maybe it wouldn’t be important to them anymore.
This country had taken so many freedoms from us, if this keeps up one day we all will be driving the same cars, same speed, same color, same same same ect! Because of people like you who can’t stand seeing someone having fun with their toy.
When the government takes all of our freedoms away they will have people like you to blame!
One more thing if a vehicle is emissions exempt then that means he or she can build what ever engine combo they want!
Stop being jealous! It makes you look weak and sad! You live your life and let then live their life!
And your soap box grows even larger, obscuring the sun.
I actually agree with some of your points, but my point is that when you get on your soap box, don’t cry when other people get on theirs. You want a safe space? It’s not on your computer.
My soap.box doesn’t restrict people from doing what they want to their cars and trucks! Your soap box does!
Game
Set
Match
How about you keep your truck street-legal and not modify it to be less-efficient?
removing DPFs and whatnot have huge reliability and fuel economy benefits.
In fact there’s a good argument to be made that doing so, despite polluting a little more, has a positive impact on the environment. Many Turbodiesel owners find that DPF removal and tuning can almost double the fuel economy of their truck, lowering the emissions per mile.
With that being said, those who tune their vehicles specifically to “Roll Coal”? Yes. Yes I agree wholly with you.
Coal Rolling on purpose has become a growing safety and environmental issue. I regard Coal Rolling as juvenile behavior, like burning rubber, but one that affects the health of all. Long standing and more recent studies have found that big and microscopic particulate pollution from all diesel vehicles is a significant health threat.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4894930/
The real deal is that almost all of these trucks are heavily modded to gain as much horsepower and torque as possible. THIS MEANS THEY HAVE REMOVED ALL POLLUTION CONTROLS because they restrict max power from the huge turbodiesels. This is why they COAL ROLL , just read diesel power mag , insane hp/tq machines . One of these modded diesels probably pollutes more than a 1000 vw tdi with cheat software.
The people referenced by “rolling Coal” aren’t simply removing air pollution controls for more performance, they are actually tuning them explicitly to burn excess fuel.
They are typically seeing reduced horsepower and torque and worse fuel economy simply because they are dumping fuel.
There is a difference between the person who has some soot as a byproduct of performance, and someone who is “rolling Coal” or intentionally tuning their truck to maximize soot output.
Do these trucks pass emissions inspection? If the answer is yes then you should leave them alone!
And no I don’t own a diesel truck!
Think about it, Brian.
They won’t pass emission tests, that is why it is an issue in rural areas and states where no emission tests are required. The county in southern Oregon that I live in is exempt from state DEQ testing of vehicles newer then 1974, so we have a lot of illegal emission modifications on both gas and diesel fueled vehicles. Most of eastern Oregon(half the state) is also exempt as is a lot of the west. Large areas of the Mid-west and SE US also do not require testing.
I build performance vehicles, but they have the full complement of emission equipment and will pass 50-state emissions tests. Fortunately, they are not driven often so what pollution they do contribute is minimized. One gallon of burned fuel puts 18-22 pounds of pollutants into the air, even on pollution controlled vehicles. So, the less we drive high fuel consuming vehicles, the better we treat the planet.
Coal Rolling is the type of inconsiderate irresponsible behavior that is killing this planet. If coal rollers insist on this type of moronic behavior, please do the rest of us a big favor and go kill some other planet.
The emissions issue is really a non-starter here, unfortunately. Coal-rolling is deliberate, in-yer-face pollution by Cletus’ friends, yes, but there simply isn’t enough of them to really make a dent on the real problem. It’s like F1 and IMSA, polluting, yes, but not in enough size.
MAJOR POLLUTION comes from daily commuters driving their Corollas and Cruzes 5 miles back and forth every day. Just 10 minutes on the freeway past the Pentagon in Virginia pollutes as much as all the coal-rollers in history.
Keep commuters on bicycles, in trains, and busses, and on foot.
ICE engines should be just for fun from now on.
How about a law that bans stupid people from putting ridiculous amounts of camber on their fwd lawn mowers
OK I have had a tdi and there are no real emissions test . They look , read a piece of paper and pass you. There is no thing they put in your exhaust pipe for diesel to test anything. No one ever gets caught for bigger injectors, turbos, removal of dfi system, 4 to 5 inch straight pipes, reflash of ecu changing fueling curves . Do you thing a stock truck would ever produce that much black smoke? Nope not without modification. Same goes for gas turbo cars . Subaru sti, audis, bmws, they all have reflashed ecu to surpress any check engine codes .
Rednecks and their ridiculous dirty vehicles need to be put in their rightful place. Rednecks are best left isolated and penny less while their motorized atrocities belong in the crusher.
Good Lord what a bunch of prissy assed namby pamies here. Get over it and quit trying to regulate everything under the sun you effin idiots. 🙂
Once we become a Hydrogen fuel cell society, coal rolling and all emission concerns will be a thing of the past.
I’m going to be Rollin’ H20
Now, I’m a lover of muscle cars, muscle trucks, diesel trucks and V-twin American Motorcycles. I enjoy good smokey burnouts & coal rolling as long as it’s done where it wont cause issues. Now I wont lie, I’ve laughed at people rolling coal as they roar past someones Prius or some little econobox Jap-crap whatever, that’s just kind of the nature of “Car Culture.” There are some who show more restraint than others and save that kind of hoonigan behavior for car shows and the track or just showing off with friends and there are some who will do it to other motorists on the road for different reasons. Some may do it out of disdain for foreign tuners, econobox vehicles, slow drivers, etc. While obnoxious, it’s not life threatening. Honestly the people who want this stuff banned are usually people who favor hybrid technology and self driving vehicles and things like that. For this group of people, most of you will never understand why we enjoy burnouts and coal rolling. It’s like why we enjoy Wawa & Dunkin Donuts and y’all enjoy Starbucks and Panera bread. My thing would be you guys enjoy your thing and let us enjoy ours. Stop trying to make our lives as boring, stuck up and uptight as your lives are.
That’s the whole I was trying to make these people don’t want to let you do your own thing. They want to live in their world and not have anyone tell them how to live but have a say in what other people are doing with their own vehicles.
I have a street truck and I have had people who have told me that I shouldn’t be able to drive a vehicle like that on the street because it’s destroying the planet. Well I could really care less, this planet will be here long after I am gone.
I would love to be able to enjoy my thing but some people just can’t stomach that idea!
I’m not totally opposed to this.
Now if I stomp on the pedal, I will get some “soot” to come out the back of my diesel.
I don’t think THAT is the intent of the law.
I think the intent of the law is the people who intentionally tune their cars to spit out massive clouds of black smoke.
In other words, people intentionally polluting en masse to cause a distraction.
I agree that if your going to pull over diesel vehicles because you see a little bit of soot, thats BS, but if the person is literally trying to create chaos by pumping out as much black soot as they can so no one around them can see to make a statement and be a PITA, then that should be illegal because its a public nuisance.
And I’m not trying to sound whiny, but if I took a motorcycle and wanted to drive on the sidewalk, I can’t do that.
If I wanted to juggle knives in a school playing ground, I can’t do that.
If I wanted to start a mosh-pit at the grocery store, I can’t do that.
Even if fire arms are legal where you live, I can’t go running around waving guns in your face.
So if a little bit of soot pops out of a vehicle and you on your high horse see it and get upset, get over yourself.
But if your literally trying to inconvenience other people and endanger them by engolfing them in black sooty smoke, then you are in fact intentionally causing harm on those around you simply for the purpose of anarchistic behavior. There is no functional reason to do it except to upset and rile others up. That seems like a reasonable reason to ticket someone.
Well,, from an environmental stand point that dog don’t hunt! Even when blowing the thick black smoke, diesel is still cleaner than gas as it is less removed from what comes out of the ground than gas, thus making it a purer product than gasoline. But most importantly, diesel exhaust molecules are heavier than that of gasoline emissions. Gasoline molecules float into the atmosphere, while MOST of the diesel molecules eventually settle to the ground.
HOWEVER…. I think from a road safety standpoint this is a good bill. The line that I support is where it says “in a manner that obstructs or obscures the view of another driver, a bicyclist, or a pedestrian.” I know people tho have been in accidents because their view was obstructed by the smoke.