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not all heroes wear capes
Under the Citizens Air Complaint Program, they can record idling trucks or buses, report them and keep 25% of any fines, which typically range from $350 to $600.
This seems pretty common sense.
I mean, bare minimum that’s over $80 per report. Even if you only get one per hour, that’s still fantastic money by most metrics. That’s like $14k per month, or ~$170k per year. And that’s just the bare minimum fine.
Per fine, not report. So there's the "did they actually get fined" portion of it. But still, That's a nice bonus if only one report goes through a week, for maybe an extra hour of time spent if you regularly bike commute, walk, etc.
Anzeigehauptmeister
The quota of complaints that was actually followed through / taken action on was similar to stuff actually recycled from collected recycling, both rates are below well 10% (in Germany).
I wish there was something like this for reporting people parked in bike lanes.
The cops won't ticket themselves.
That’s why this system is great though. Citizens report violations directly to the city and bypass the cops who never enforce these kinds of rules or violate them themselves. The city could fine the cops. Whether or not that happens is a different issue
They should, they'd triple their income.
There’s a street I cross in the morning that becomes a clearway during commute hours. I take a grim satisfaction in watching the tow trucks take away yank tanks, because of course their humans believe the rules apply to everyone but them.
clearway
yank tanks
What in the upside down hellscape am I reading here?
yank tanks SUV's?
A yank tank / wank tank is any SUV or pickup that is larger than the tanks we used to beat the Nazis (not joking)
lol that's great
Wish we got a more complete understanding of the truckers' side in this article - why is it so hard to turn off your engine instead of idling?
The guy quoted in the article says that some trucks need to operate their lift gates 15 or 20 times in a day. First of all, turn on your engine to operate the gate and then turn it off when you're done... Secondly, if it is impacting business too much to take that extra time to turn the engine on and off, invest in an auxiliary power source to operate the lift gate.
Maybe I'm missing something?
Former trucker. If it's hot or cold AF it sucks not having a or heat. If it's a hot day, it's way hotter on blacktop surrounded by hot engines.
It can be a pain to turn it on and off a bunch of times per day, I know it sounds minor, but when you're trying to keep track of a bunch of things, making sure the right cargo comes off or on in the right order in the right way, hitting multiple docks or stops in quick succession. Trying to claim the space you need and trip plan (a lot of people don't realize how difficult it can be to get a truck through a city, especially East Coast cities).
Then you get somewhere and hop out of your truck to check in, thinking it will take 30 seconds. Talk to whomever you may need to, clear obstacles and eyeball the space you need to get your trailer into. You'll run into clueless, apathetic and just all around useless fucks at every corner. The sort of people that make glaciers seem on point. 30 seconds can turn into 30 minutes real quick.
It's a tough gig, and having an army of mercenary profit driven people out there looking to make a buck off the guy delivering literally everything you need to survive that's not air (and sometimes even that too) is kinda bullshit.
Edit: I'm not endorsing excessive idling, just trying to give some perspective on why a driver may fail to turn it off.
And also that a policy that pays anyone to report it is suspect at best. Where are we drawing the line on that? Jaywalking? What about immigration? Who's to say I can't start a company that surveils and informs for profit? It's a slippery damn slope with nothing nice at the bottom. Enforcement should be done with paid public servants, full stop.
To add to this as a Diesel mechanic,
Diesel engines are designed to operate continuously for the most part, the most wear and tear on the engines happen during start up and shut down.
They take large batteries and more effort to start so repeatedly doing that over and over in short intervals will lead to flat batteries and burnt out starter motors
Diesel engines run most efficiently I.e less pollution and better fuel economy when warm, cold engines cause more soot etc.
The engines wear poorly and develope carbon deposits from stop start operations too increasing fuel consumption and NOX emissions.
Lastly but certainly not the end of it is most Diesel trucks have what's known as a turbo timer, this keeps the engine running 2 minutes or more depending on settings after the ignition is turned off.
This allows oil flow around the turbo and prevents unnecessary heat damage to components.
Certainly if i applied some thought to this i could come up with more reasons and others could argue against but that's what I've got to say on the matter
I will only counter with one point. The smell of DEF in every city everywhere every morning, noon, and night. 🤮
We need something better than diesel.
It's wild, I can't smell Def at all.
I'll give you the fact it's nightmare to repair especially on plant machinery.
Constant issues haha
Thanks for this perspective!!
an army of mercenary profit driven people out there looking to make a buck off the guy
that's one interpretation. another could be "a group of people who care enough about the air quality of their neighborhood that they finally stand up for themselves".
There's a lot of externalizing of costs going on. The trucks are idling because the drivers are operating at the slimmest possible margin under the assumption that idling doesn't cost anything.
What we actually would want to get to is that idling does have a cost (environmental, health, pleasantness of the area, etc). And that cost ought to be passed up the chain so that the various goods being shipped are more expensive.
But without a more centrally-managed economy, the implementation is to put all the pressure on the truck drivers and leave them responsible for passing that pressure to the next step up the chain. It doesn't work out very well in practice because the drivers need to make a bunch of capital expenses for something like adding a cab AC and adding a batter-powered lift, but they've been operating at low margins so they're not in a position to do it.
Local deliveries should be happening in electric vehicles. And 90% of long range trucks should have been a train. Go back in time a few decades and get the godless MBA having fucks out of the railroad industry.
Boom! Y'all should elect me king of everything, just solving problems left and right!
You'll have my vote for king as soon as you provide the time machine to enact your plan
I'll put the braniacs on it right after my coronation.
Local deliveries can be fixed in a few years with proper regulations, and that's giving a generous time span for businesses to adapt.
Oh, I definitely agree on the local deliveries but. But you also mentioned going back in time a decade as part of your plan.
Local deliveries should be happening in electric vehicles.
Including cargo bikes, not only electric box trucks.
Cargo bikes kinda suck for very heavy loads and terrain, theres a reason they used to be ubiquitous throughout China, but now everyone uses gas and electric.
*manual cargo bikes, you see a decent amount of 3+ wheeled electric or gas bike things carrying bikes, trash, veggies, w/e
I think I seen some calculation where it said that an engine uses the same amount of fuel to start as it does to idle five minutes. I don't know if that was average, a specific engine, or if it referred to gas or diesel though.
I think that used to be true on older cars, but with modern passenger cars emissions/fuel use for start up is about the same as 10s of idle. No clue if that's true for these big diesel vehicles tho.
Idling diesel is supposed to be very bad but long haul trucks are better at it because they need to keep refrigeration running. Either way, something like 2 minutes of idle is almost universally worse.
Modern ICE passenger cars even automatically turn off their engine at traffic lights. Engine startup has become so reliable that the car can guarantee to spin up the engine and resume applying engine power the moment you press the gas pedal.
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My understanding is that turning off and on a diesel engine is not great for it or something like that. Sorry, my grandpa was a mechanic and I'm half remembering something he said.
Ya it's more wear and tear. It was more true with older engines than newer ones. Newer trucks have a more complex starting mechanism that's easier on the engine.
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My grandpa drove a semi truck;
The A/C was part of it, some truck stops even had a thing called “IdleAir” that was like a window unit so you didn’t have to leave your engine running. For semis nobody wants to sleep in a sunbaked box with no air.
But according to him, for the really big engines, turning it off and on causes more wear and tear than leaving it running. So back in the day when diesel was still very cheap compared to gas they all got in the habit of leaving it on all the time.
Even the cops leave their cars on all the time where I am from.
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If you're loading and unloading 20 times a day, you're doing local delivery and should probably be in an electric truck in the first place.
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$1, $5,$3, $7, $4 and $2!
Jokes aside, this is a pretty rad program.
Under the Citizens Air Complaint Program, they can record idling trucks or buses, report them and keep 25% of any fines, which typically range from $350 to $600.
Even if you aren't doing it 6-9 hours a day like this guy is, getting a cool $75-$150 for making a report while out of the house anyway doesn't sound bad at all.
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Idling is illegal here often but I see vehicles doing it all the time. Would love if a scheme like this existed in the UK
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this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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