I would rather they continue to exist than the alternative of a horrifically authoritarian sterile controlled-society dystopia, which is what certain parts of the world are rapidly heading towards.

We live in a country where freedom is predicated on allowing certain things that others don't like. Being loud and obnoxious is just a natural part of the culture of expressing that freedom. They're not doing it all the time anyway.

Your right to swing your fists ends where my face - or my lungs - begin.

A little smoke isn't going to do anything, hypochondriac.

No need. I've seen them.

In the States, for example: Every state I've looked at has laws that make it illegal to roll coal.

And at least in my own state (Ohio), it's a primary offense. A person can be pulled over and ticketed for this even if they're doing everything else by the book. It's super easy to spot.

It seems that it persists not because of a lack of laws, but because of a lack of enforcement.

IMO they exist in spite of the laws (and more broadly "woke" science) and I'd expect much more of them if they became legalised.

do you really think there’s no way to prevent or penalize that behavior without preventing the user from owning and operating their own engine?

also, what scale of harm do you think exists from those people?

do you really believe that control of one’s own engine should be removed from all vehicle owners if a few people misuse it?

do you understand that vehicle manufacturers use their proprietary systems that control the vehicle to exploit customers?

> also, what scale of harm do you think exists from those people?

Serious health complications, particularly to cyclists and pedestrians. Significant pollution surges:

> According to government estimates, the practice can increase nitrogen oxide emissions as much as 310 times, non-methane hydrocarbons 1,400 times, and carbon monoxide 120 times. [https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/rolling-coal-donal...]

> AED estimates that the emissions controls have been removed from more than 550,000 diesel pickup trucks in the last decade. As a result ofthis tampering, more than 570,000 tons of excess oxides of nitrogen(NOx) and 5,000 tons of particulate matter (PM) will be emitted by these tampered trucks over the lifetime of the vehicles. [https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/epa-on-tampered-diese...]

The reason diesel folks delete emissions is because the way the new diesel motors are set up actually kills the motor. Buying a new motor (or a whole truck!) is extremely expensive. Now if the automotive industry came out with an efficient diesel that also ran well for more than 100k miles, we’d see a lot less deletions.

It's far more expensive to run a chemical plant where you just dump your waste products in the river, but that doesn't make it right or legal.

All 550K diesels with modded emissions are not rolling coal, that is a wild extrapolation

I didn’t ask the multiplier of badness of a single individual doing a bad and stinky thing, I asked what you think the _scale_ is. Do you believe that all people with trucks modified to do this are doing it at all times? Or even half the time? How many people do you think are doing it?

I am absolutely certain that more people are rolling coal than are tinkering with their engine timings for benign performance reasons.