Texas asks people to avoid using their cars

vegeta@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 289 points –
Texas asks people to avoid using their cars
newsweek.com
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In Texas? Good luck. This is the state where people express themselves by putting horns on their cars.

It's also the state where you sometimes have to drive two hours just to get to the supermarket.

Yeah, I think the latter component is what makes this request ludicrous. Everything in Texas is so spread out. It is not a place you can reasonably get around without a car. Mass transit exists, but it's pretty inefficient in most the cities.

People who've never lived in Texas really don't get it. Everything is spread out to an almost ludicrous degree. I drive an hour to get to my friend's house, and I don't even consider him to be far away. We both live in the same metroplex.

Public transportation is almost complete failure here due to not being prioritized, and driving anywhere is a pain in the ass with drivers from all over just winging it on congested streets. Don't even get me started on overpriced tolls that have become the only reasonable way to travel 30min+

Texas is not ok.

Your car doesn't have a horn?

These sort of horns-

That car is from Arizona.

You do know that's not the only car in the world with horns on it, right?

I just think its funny that out of the vast number of horned vehicles that stampede through Texas I guess? You find a pic of one in Arizona.

It was literally the first image I saw and it was an example of what I meant. I really didn't think it was necessary to check the license plate design.

You lack observational skills, and attention to detail.

Or I just don't give a shit about figuring out a license plate that doesn't clearly stay what state it is on it when I want to explain what I mean by horns on a car. Why would I? Exactly how tight do you think my anal sphincter is?

Tight enough, I reckon.

Really? Because I'm not the one complaining that a car whose license plate doesn't make it clear what state it's from is wrong!

Dude, it says Arizona on it. I ain't psychic, I didn't magically know what state it came from.

Maybe in tiny letters on whatever giant monitor you have. On my 13" notebook, I don't see the word anywhere.

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Not always. ~okay~ ~fine~ ~so~ ~always~

They also jack up the trucks by putting on wheels that are themselves taller than the fuel-efficient cars that they drive over like pavement.

There's also the trucks that do the "rolling coal" shit.

Fucking shit - TIL that's on purpose!?

Fun fact: they have to modify the emissions system of the truck to do it, violating Federal law (the Clean Air Act).

If you try to "roll coal" in an unmodified diesel (in proper working order), the "best" you'll get is a light haze of soot, not a black cloud. This is because the manufacturers do actually try to design them to be efficient, and every bit of soot represents unburned fuel that didn't get converted into propulsive force.

Yup, they remove the particulate filter and DEF system to get those clouds. Arguably, those systems do hinder efficiency in the system, but at the cost of pollution.

I have a 2020 Ram 2500 for a work truck, and I'm constantly amazed how quiet and efficient this thing is for 8000lbs, even with all the emissions stuff in place. I wouldn't remove any of it because I'm not about to be part of the problem as best I can, but it seems like manufacturers are starting to figure out a balance.

It's not just that; they also modify the ECU tuning and maybe even swap out fuel injectors themselves to dump in lots of extra fuel that there isn't enough air to burn. Even without particulate filters and DEF, Diesels don't naturally produce anywhere near that much soot. You've got to deliberately force them to be that bad!

(Source: I have a '98 VW TDI—made before DPFs and DEF were things—that I've modded for more performance, and even in the worst-case scenario of flooring it while running dino-diesel, it barely produces a haze. On B100 biodiesel, it's even cleaner.)

Bottom line is that if a Diesel is producing lots of visible smoke, it's either really, really old and shitty (think pre-1980s non-turbo indirect injection), or it's severely worn out, or somebody made it do it on purpose.

violating Federal law

Ngl, that sounds like a "feature", not a bug, given that we are talking about Texans here. I'm not even being pejorative, that's literally a thing they often proffer as worth being proud of, Remember The Alamo and such.

And yes that is a fun fact - thanks for sharing it!:-)

Yep. As a Prius driver, they do it to me all the time, because apparently paying less for gas than they do makes me a communist.

Hehe, if I was there I would wear a mask everywhere I went, just to fuck with people:-).

Even/especially inside of a vehicle.

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