The rise in popularity of electric vehicles and other eco-friendly modes of transportation has led to an unfortunate and harmful countermovement: coal rolling.
The practice entails illegally modified diesel engines releasing massive plumes of smoke from the tailpipe, typically in front of bikers and Teslas as a form of protest to environmentally conscious commuters.
A dashcam video posted to the subreddit r/Roadcam captured a coal roller in action, with the footage showing a white GMC pickup truck in the U.S. spewing out noxious black fumes as it accelerated by traffic on a two-lane highway.
According to a report from the Environmental Protection Agency, diesel truck owners who deliberately disable emission controls to roll coal release 570,000 tons of oxides of nitrogen and 5,000 tons of particulate matter over the vehicle's lifetime.
One of the byproducts, nitrous oxide, is a particularly hazardous plant-warming gas that impacts the atmosphere 265 times more than carbon dioxide, per the EPA.
As a result, "these trucks have an air quality impact equivalent to adding more than 9 million additional (compliant, non-tampered) diesel pickup trucks to our roads," reads the report.
Coal rolling violates the Clean Air Act, and a few companies that produced or sold devices that deactivate emission controls have been fined millions — and in the case of eBay, billions — of dollars.
While not all states explicitly prohibit drivers from the act, fines can range from $100 in Colorado to $5,000 in New Jersey. Some coal rollers have been pulled over as well.
"Question is why do this at all. The extra fuel, the danger it poses as it blinds the people etc. No need for this at all," commented one user on the original post.
"How is this legal? Someone needs to pull all these trucks from the road," wondered another.
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