No idling
For the past decade, an uptown mortgage broker named George Pakenham has been predicting that the scourge of engine exhaust caused by needless automobile idling will soon become as socially unacceptable as secondhand smoke. After years of rapping on the windows of passenger cars and delivery vans, reminding drivers that the law prohibits idling for longer than three minutes within the city limits, and only occasionally being rebuffed with remarks like “Go move to China” and “You are not human,” he felt like he had reason to be optimistic. He has produced a children’s book devoted to the subject, “Big Nose, Big City,” and also a documentary, “Idle Threat,” which has screened in Nevada City, California, and at Westfield High School, in New Jersey, where he was, as he recalls, “treated regally,” as a member of the class of ’68. He has FaceTimed with officials at the American Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria—a city that is known, apparently, for its terrible air quality. In May, he visited P.S. 31, in Greenpoint, where students showed off anti-idling posters they’d made (the legal limit in a school zone is sixty seconds) and took turns wearing a gas mask that he’d brought. But the broader wave of concern about the wasted oil and smog produced by idling engines, Pakenham confessed recently, is “way behind schedule.”
This is something that’s been driving me crazy for years, and it’s gotten even worse lately. In my neighborhood there can be one or two people sitting in an idling car on every block.
Why do people do that?
Partly, I guess, it’s to have air conditioning or heat while you sit in your car…but why sit in your car? Especially if you need to keep it running in order to sit in it comfortably? I can see why electricians and plumbers and the like do it: they’re on the job and it costs time and money to drive somewhere for lunch. But everyone else? Why are they using up their gas, adding to their carbon footprint, and poisoning the local air, just to squat in a car playing with a phone?
It needs to stop.
And what can be even worse – a colleague of mine has a shared garage with his neighbors; he went out one day and found his neighbor’s teenage daughter sitting in the running car, texting, with the garage door closed. He rapped on her window, and asked her to turn her car off (the way the garage is structured it is actually possible for the CO to get into his apartment). He has seen her do that several times since, just sitting in the idling car texting with the door closed. He was treated rudely by teen and parents when he pointed out the problems.
Idling seems to be an official state sport around these parts. I see a lot of empty cars idling, waiting for their owners to return. I timed one once – it was idling for over 10 minutes. You’d think the price of gas would be enough to discourage that, but no.
And most of the idling vehicles are pick ups and SUVs (partially because most of the vehicles around these parts are pickups and SUVs – the odds are good for most of the idling vehicles to match that).
Of course, I will say that air quality is not a problem here. Oh, we have decreasing air quality. It’s just that people refuse to see it as a problem. Global warming? Liberal hoax. Toxic compounds? Liberal hoax. EPA? Evil, demonic, satanist institution created by a consortium made up of FDR, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, all doing the bidding of Hillary Clinton in an attempt to destroy all business and industry in the country.
I’ll admit to having done this very occasionally. Most often reasons:
1: I’m going someplace in the cold, and want to heat the car up before leaving. In many instances, I might not even be in the car at the time. This probably accounts for the vast majority of this activity.
2: I’m coming home, have parked, and got drive-thru food that I just want to eat quickly and then throw the trash straight into the bin, instead of having to do the clean-up inside. Since I have electric windows, even if the weather is nice, I have to keep the car running if I don’t want to turn it off and on again just to roll them up after I’m done; if the weather is lousy, of course, I’m likely to want to leave the car running.
3: I’m listening to the radio, and there’s something I want to listen to the end of (typically a bit on NPR). I don’t actually have a stereo in my house, which means that continuing to listen would require me to go inside, fire up my laptop, figure out how to get a streaming broadcast–by that time, along with usual ‘get home, deal with stuff’ issues, I’m probably missing the piece I wanted to hear.
All of these are, of course, totally selfish, but easily rationalized, since I don’t do any of them frequently. I should probably cut down (to the point of elimination) on #2, at least, since that might mean I end up eating less fast food, so double-bonus.
Well I’ve been idling at the plant but it’s got no AC and it’s been around 100 degrees every day for weeks…
So I guess there’s that…
Freemage, my Nissan Note (UK model) has a setting which lets me operate the windows and the radio without the engine running.
It also has an optional mode which switches the engine off when I come to a stop with my foot off the clutch. It restarts when I put my foot back on the clutch. At first I was nervous that it wouldn’t restart, but it seems to work every time, and it prevents a lot of pollution at traffic lights.
inknlast, apart from the environmental concerns that is incredibly dangerous for both the girl and the occupants of the attached houses. We had a tragedy here a few years back where a family left the car idling in the garage attached to the house to charge the battery. The entire family died as they watched TV.
On a similar note, the convenience of keyless vehicles means there have been instances of people inadvertently leaving their cars running in the garage, with disastrous results:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/business/deadly-convenience-keyless-cars-and-their-carbon-monoxide-toll.html
As for idling advertently, it’s on my (rather long) list of pet peeves, along with double-parking when there’s a spot *right there*, honking to announce ones arrival, and unwillingness to merge responsibly in traffic (it’s like a zipper, people!). I’ve officially attained curmudgeon status, I think. Only the idling contributes to pollution, but perhaps my fuming at the others contributes to global warming?
Rob – that is exactly what my colleague (also a biologist) told her. She seemed not to give a damn, but basically I think she didn’t believe him. How is that possible? I knew when I was six that was dangerous (but then, I started reading mystery novels early, and if she isn’t a reader, maybe she hasn’t learned that?)
Helicam, I could add to your list failure to yield to the yield sign when entering a roundabout, thereby forcing the car already in the roundabout to learn to fly immediately in order to avoid disastrous (though low speed) collisions.
Freemage – item # 2 – but what is the problem with just turning it back on to close the windows? I have surmised that one reason people do this is a reluctance to turn it off for a relatively short time, but what I don’t understand is why. Do people think it will break if they turn it on and off too often?
Helicam, I endorse all your pet peeves, I think they’re perfectly cromulent.
Sorry, one of my big pet peeves is folks idling in the LONG lines at drive through windows. I find it really annoying and asthma inducing. Starbucks and coffee huts (hutches?) are the worst. There’s always a line when I pass them, and they always take forever. One franchise actually sends a worker out to take orders while the line slowly progresses up to the window.
Also around here the folks idling in the parking lots for no apparent reason, are almost always the BIG SUV/Pickup owners belching out diesel fumes. I’ve heard the excuses. Something about taking up more fuel to stop/start the thing, but they could be idling for hours – not that I’ve timed them.
So very glad to hear that this kind of stuff bugs other people.
Freemage, #2. In every car I’ve owned with electric windows, from 1970’s models to present, as long as the ignition is on the windows (and all other electrics) can be operated without having to start the engine. If your’s doesn’t, it suggests an electrical fault.
iknklast, #7. Your colleague’s neighbour may be under the (mistaken) impression that modern cars with catalytic converters only emit H2O from their exhausts.
cazz – “Something about taking up more fuel to stop/start the thing” – I remember being told that as a child, and being incredulous but also being assured it was true. Your comment inspired me to look it up at long last. Nope, not true.
One of those dumb “everybody knows” things that isn’t true.
https://www.edf.org/attention-drivers-turn-your-idling-engines
My employers have one of those fancy new turn off when you’re idling cars – it was disconcerting at first but we all got used to it. (Maybe the dog still dislikes it, I don’t know.) That feature would make zero sense if turning the car back on used a bunch of gas.
Ophelia, mine does that. It was disconcerting at first, because it “stalled” at every stop light, but since I deliberately bought a hybrid, I expected it and got used to it…but it still bothers people who are riding with me.
I had to do that sometimes when I worked at McDonald’s. It really did disturb my asthma, but this was pre-ADA so I had no real way to stop them from making me do it short of quitting. And I needed the job.
Our car turns itself off when idling, too. I agree that it took a bit of getting used to but now I miss it if I’m in a car that doesn’t do it.
It’s people not doing the small, hardly noticeable things – like turning off an idling engine – that are nevertheless a gain for the environment, which really piss me off. Our local paper recently ran a story about a local MP calling for people and businesses to be more responsible with plastic, especially with bottles. This caused a number of people in the comments to whine about how it was virtually impossible to do anything about plastic waste and that the council’s recycling instructions are vague impossible to understand and how it’s all someone else’s fault.
Being me, I linked to the council’s very clear, very precise, very simple recycling instructions and pointed out a few things everyone can do, such as take water with you when you leave the house, use the UK’s Refill scheme, which plots businesses willing to give you free water on an app, take your waste home with you so you can be certain it’s properly recycled etc.
This generated a surprisingly vicious wave of anger from everyone else. I think they really wanted the environment to be someone else’s problem to the extent that they refuse to take steps to do simple, common sense things that require virtually no thought of effort to do some small good. They refused even to read about the little things they can do. They told over-the-top and completely untrue stories about how they knew someone who was fined thousands of pounds for putting one wrong item in the recycling bin, as if that would be an excuse not to recycle even if it were true.
This is a beautiful area (look: https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hfholidays.co.uk%2Fmedia%2Fassets%2Fimage%2Fasset_files%2FCRP4RX_32_R37alzc.jpg&f=1) and lots of people aren’t even slightly motivated to keep it like that.
latsot, a related problem that I see here is people who do recycle (only about 1/4 to 1/3 of all households) believe that they are done. That is all they need to do. They don’t need to cut consumption, reduce driving, eat less meat, or any of the other things that don’t make a huge difference when one person does them, but multiplied times 7 billion make an enormous difference. If you mention the environment, their answer is “I recycle!” and that’s supposed to be a conversation stopper.
I’m not a big fan of plastic recycling, because it just gives the impression that something is getting better, but it doesn’t make much difference. Where I live, we can’t recycle glass (awful, I know) and it’s hard to get things in glass anyway. Everything…literally everything…is wrapped in layers of plastic that won’t be recycled, or even if they are they won’t solve any real problem. When I was in Germany a couple of years ago, everything was in reusable glass, and the water bottles in our room were sterilized and refilled, and a new, full bottle every day. No significant waste, unless we happened to smash the bottle against the door in a fit of fury at being forced to be less environmentally destructive (I did not; I don’t think anyone else did, either, but I can’t swear to it).
Our city made plastic recycling incredibly easy. All you have to do is pitch in any piece of plastic with a triangle on it. They will sort later…we don’t even have to think about it anymore. Recycling has not increased with the newer, easier method. In fact, we’ve seen a decrease in recycling in recent years. (But we are a red state – that could be a protest against the so-called “Deep State”, which would be ironic since our recycling center is 100% privately owned and the owners make a profit – which is why we don’t recycle glass, because there is no profit in a country that only wants plastic. My wine bottles have to be saved to haul to another town somewhere when I happen to be going there).
Millions and millions of people endure endless hours of “traffic” daily – endlessly sucking each others exhaust fumes – it can’t only be that they are happy to escape dealing with their “families” or delay dealing with their “co-workers”
Soon someone will verify the link between carbon monoxide addiction and counter-productive behaviour.
I agree entirely and we should all be doing much, much more. But the particular despair I was talking about here is the one about people not even bothering to do things that take no thought or effort and indeed getting angry when someone suggests they should. Doing the simple things won’t solve the environmental crisis, but it can help to change attitudes. Recycling needs to be the first step and – as you say – we need to make better choices about packaging where we can. In the UK, we’ve started to see water being packaged in paper containers and there’s a return in some places to glass bottles for milk. It’s nowhere near enough, but there is evidence that attitudes are changing. Far too slowly, of course. Supermarkets sell vegetables with no packaging, but the vast majority of people choose the ones wrapped in plastic. Why? Buggered if I know. For some reason it’s a thing here to sell three capsicum peppers wrapped together in plastic. The shelf RIGHT NEXT to these wrapped peppers has unwrapped ones. They are exactly the same. But just about everyone reaches for the wrapped ones, apparently without thinking. There’s always a cheese counter where you can get exactly the bit of cheese you want, wrapped in paper. Or you can get a piece that’s too big or small, wrapped in plastic from the aisle. Guess which one everyone goes for.
When I lived in Germany about ten years ago, recycling facilities were excellent and ubiquitous. The UK hasn’t caught up even yet, although in my area, the recycling is pretty good. It varies wildly from place to place. When we were in Keswick, in the Lake District, recently, there didn’t seem to be any recycling at all. We had to bring ours home with us.
The thing is that if you actually do go out of your way to do more than you have to, it feels good. It makes you want to do more. You don’t have to contort your life too badly to make an increasing difference, small though it is. I mean, for fucks sake, shower with a friend, where’s the downside?