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Comment by not_a_shill | Hacker News Reader

I would think the social discontent is more harmful to society than the excess diesel soot itself. I imagine if I were in the position of a broke truck driver trying to get by I would see the guy trying to take money out of my pocket as more of an existential threat than soot.

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If you talk to a random sampling of New Yorkers, I suspect that you'd find much more social discontent in the lax enforcement of our idling and parking laws (and related things, like placard abuse) than in this.

(Besides: it's a strange thing to appeal to when one side is physically assaulting the other.)

I imagine that would be true. There are very few people getting beat up by truck drivers relative to the number of people who don't like lax enforcement of idling and parking laws, placard abuse, etc.

>(Besides: it's a strange thing to appeal to when one side is physically assaulting the other.)

To many people there is not much difference between physical and economic damage. Add in the perceived personal disrespect and that's why you get fights.

But it’s not soot, it’s poison. Is there a legitimate reason for the driver to leave the truck idling?

If it's running equipment (refrigerator, loading deck, food truck, overnight accommodation, cold weather, etc).

If they really want to make a difference, they should enforce this against individuals too, not just companies. Lots of people leave cars idling when waiting in the heat/cold/rain. That adds up too.

Refrigerated trailers have their own separate engine.

Refrigerated box trucks don't have a separate engine for the box.

Yep, and those are generally more common in the cities.

I don't think the distinction between soot and poison really changes the willingness of someone to physically attack a snitch.

As for legitimate reasons to leave it idle, I have no idea.

> As for legitimate reasons to leave it idle, I have no idea.

Air conditioning/heating

If you get in and out of the cab all day, wear more clothes. That's what I did, worked great. In the summer it's just not that big a deal, you're sweating in every other part of the job anyway. Roll the windows down maybe.

If you're talking about the cargo, the insulation will easily keep up over an hour or two plus of being stopped.

Driving with frosted up windows is not safe

I'm not sure what this comment means, sorry.

You run the heater to defrost the glass in your car. It often takes a few minutes for it to be effective. Otherwise, you can’t see and you’re a danger to yourself and others.

In the winter, it’s more common than putting gas in your car. It’s kinda odd explaining this though

I live in the subarctic region, a stone’s throw away from the arctic circle. We have snow and frost in winter.

We use ice scrapers. :) As a matter of self-reliance and/or common courtesy.

Defrosting the windows with the engine is really not nice, especially not when it’s a diesel with the fumes hanging in the winter air and going inside people’s windows and into baby carriages and kindergarteners’ noses.

It's not only not nice, it's a genuinely bad idea. If you have large sheets of glass (truck windows) and large heat differentials, you are asking for catastrophic failure due to uneven expansion. I know multiple people this has happened to personally, and there are also some truck manufacturers who recommend against this kind of defrosting for exactly this reason.

The pollution from the idling vehicle is an externality that the truck driver isn't paying for. Why should they be allowed to do that?

You're buying food transported by trucks that burn diesel, producing externalities that you haven't paid for. Why should you be allowed to do that?

I shouldn't. The externalities should be charged where they occur and any increase in price should be passed on to me.

>I shouldn't [ be allowed to buy food ]

Thanks, that should be all we really need to see here.

> The externalities should be charged where they occur

You can walk to the farm and negotiate with the farmer to buy from him rather than allowing it to be transported back by diesel, are you doing this or is this just more hypocrisy?

> >I shouldn't [ be allowed to buy food ] > Thanks, that should be all we really need to see here.

I've never said that I shouldn't be allowed to buy food. I simply believe that when I do, I should pay the true cost of it.

> You can walk to the farm and negotiate with the farmer to buy from him rather than allowing it to be transported back by diesel, are you doing this or is this just more hypocrisy?

You have an oddly black and white view of the world. There are plenty of things that I think we should change that currently benefit me. I can participate in the system while still recognizing its flaws and arguing that they should be fixed. I can't reasonably opt out of everything where I disagree with some aspect of it. Do you believe that politicians should vote against all bills that they disagree with any part of?

I think the wealthy in my country should pay more taxes than they currently do. I make more than the median income so this would probably result in me paying more taxes too. I can hold this view without donating part of my salary to the government. I'm against capital punishment. If I see someone committing a crime they could receive the death penalty for I'll still call the police. Do you believe that these views also make me a hypocrite?

>I've never said that I shouldn't be allowed to buy food. I simply believe that when I do, I should pay the true cost of it.

A distinction without a practical difference. It's effectively impossible to buy food at the true cost. Therefore you don't think you should be allowed to buy food.

>If I see someone committing a crime they could receive the death penalty for I'll still call the police. Do you believe that these views also make me a hypocrite?

Yes. If you narc someone out to a system that metes out the death penalty and you disagree with it, then you're no better than the executors.

>I think the wealthy in my country should pay more taxes than they currently do. I make more than the median income so this would probably result in me paying more taxes too. I can hold this view without donating part of my salary to the government

Yes this is highly hypocritical. You want to demand others do something at gun-point that you won't even do voluntarily.

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